A former top editor for Rupert Murdoch — and recent subject of a failed legal attack — Eric Beecher puts the spotlight on global media empire. It’s dollar signs at every turn. Anthony Klan reports.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and other politicians should stand up to News Corporation and stop “kowtowing” to the Murdoch media empire, says one of the nation’s top independent media operators.
Eric Beecher, former News Corporation editor and owner of independent news outlet Crikey, said that “for 100 years” Australian politicians had been bowing down to the media group at the expense of democracy.
Lachlan Murdoch, CEO of Fox News and chair of News Corporation, two years ago sued for defamation — ultimately unsuccessfully — over a Crikey opinion article about the US January 6 Capitol attack.
The next day, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong visited the media baron.
“The day after the defamation writ was issued, a large Commonwealth government car pulled up outside the Holt Street, Surry Hills headquarters in Sydney of News Corp,” Beecher told the Byron Bay Writers Festival.
“Three people got out of that car to go upstairs and visit Lachlan in his office — the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister of Australia.
“They went to visit him, they go to the Murdochs. It’s been going on for 100 years and they should stop”.
“It’s been going on for 100 years and they should stop” — Eric Beecher
Beecher, whose new book The Men Who Killed the News shines the light on the abuse of power by media moguls, said former Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews was one of “very few” politicians to consistently “stand up to Murdoch”.
“He made the decision right from the beginning when he became premier that he wasn’t going to be kicked around and he wasn’t,” Beecher said.
“In the run up to the last Victorian election, which he won in a very large margin, they were putting personal very, very denigrating personal stories on the front page of the Herald Sun about him and his wife.
“They have conducted a personal jihad against him all the way through…but he stood up to them and I just think that’s what politicians should do,” Beecher said.
“(Andrews) was one of the very few examples anywhere in the world, particularly in Britain and Australia…who stood up to Murdoch all the time”.
Beecher, who is chair and the biggest shareholder of Private Media, which publishes Crikey and other news sites, was editor-in-chief of Murdoch’s Herald and Weekly Times, which publishes the Herald Sun, in the late 1980s.
Before that he was editor of Fairfax’s Sydney Morning Herald.
Speaking with moderator and fellow veteran journalist, ABC global affairs editor John Lyons, Beecher said the media had enormous power, which can be “very positive as well as negative”.
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The Byron Bay Writers Festival Friday. Picture: Anthony Klan/The Klaxon
When asked by Lyons the “most important message” he had taken away from his research, Beecher said it was the “deeply troubling” fact that many journalists and major media outlets refuse to talk about their power.
“The thing that struck me ever since I worked for Rupert Murdoch and all the time since…and then particularly in writing this book, is the fact that journalists and media organisations won’t talk about their power,” Beecher said.
“I’m finding even in promoting this book, I’m doing lots of interviews and that kind of thing, but I’m noticing the bigger media organisations don’t want to talk about it.
“They don’t want to expose their audiences, smaller audiences now, to the idea that they have power, and I find that really troubling,” he said.
“They don’t want to expose their audiences…to the idea that they have power” — Eric Beecher
Beecher said his book was “not about the Murdochs or the Murdoch family”, although they feature heavily in it, but about “media power and abuse of media power”.
News Corporation owns between 60% and 70% of Australia’s newspapers by circulation, as well as the “right wing” Sky News TV, as well as, more recently, Sky News radio.
In the US its Fox News is considered the central force behind the deep erosion of American democracy and the nation’s resulting fall in international standing.
“This is a book about media power and abuse of media power” — Eric Beecher
Beecher said he had been working on The Men Who Killed the News in the background for several years, but Lachlan Murdoch’s decision to sue had spurred him on.
Beecher’s book The Men who Killed the News. Source: Simon & Schuster
“David and Goliath”
In June 2022 Crikey’s highly-regarded politics editor Bernard Keane wrote an opinion piece about the attacks on the US Capitol.
The final paragraph stated “the Murdochs” and “their slew of poisonous Fox News commentators” were “the unindicted co-conspirators” — a reference to the description given to Richard Nixon over Watergate.
Beecher has said Crikey had routinely received threats from News Corporation and had decided they wouldn’t be threatened.
But he said they decided not to be bullied and pushed back full-steam — taking out an advertisement in the New York Times telling Lachlan to sue. Which he did.
The advertisement said Crikey, which was dedicated to “freedom of opinion and public interest journalism”, had concerns Australia’s defamation laws were “too restrictive”.
“We await your writ so that we can test this important issue of freedom of public interest journalism in a court room,” it said.
The New York Times Advertisement. Source: Supplied
The “David and Goliath” battle predictably made international headlines.
As backdrop, News Corporation was facing a massive lawsuit launched in March 2021 by machines maker Dominion Voting Systems.
Following Donald Trump’s 2020 US election loss, Fox News spread his lie that the election had been rigged or “stolen”, making “ridiculous” claims Dominion’s machines had been somehow rigged.
In the pre-trial discovery process, Dominion obtained documents proving News Corporation, including Rupert Murdoch personally, knew it was a lie, but Fox News continued pushing the lie so as not to lose viewers.
That is, the organisation actively lied to the American public, deeply undermining the democratic processes of the world’s most powerful nation, for money.
News Corporation was forced to pay Dominion a massive US$787 million ($1.19 billion) after choosing to settle rather have the affair play out in open court — where Fox commentators and executives were to testify and many more documents released.
As trial opening statements were to begin on April 18 last year it was announced Fox had agreed to settle, the largest known media settlement for defamation in US history.
Just over 48-hours later in Australia, Lachlan Murdoch’s lawyers dropped “the whole of the proceedings” against Crikey, agreeing to pay $1.3m in costs.
When asked in an interview last week why he thought Albanese, Marles and Wong had earlier visited Lachlan Murdoch he responded succinctly: “It was just kissing the ring”.
Moral Compass
Beecher said he had “one good year under Murdoch” but left after two years with his “moral compass” — the name of one of the book’s chapters — becoming “dysfunctional”.
He said Rupert Murdoch pressured him to editorially back then Victorian opposition Liberal leader Jeff Kennet (which he refused) and to fire the Washington correspondent of the Herald Sun who reported criticism of then Republican President Ronald Regan (he also refused). Beecher said he had been seriously admonished by a superior for reporting on the front page the deadly crash of an airline in the region — because the Murdoch corporation owned half of airline Ansett.
He said the company, a “100-year dynasty”, operated a “shadow of fear”, using “deep personal attacks” to publicly “personally denigrate” people, which served a “demonstration effect”.
At the company “ethics” was never discussed, Beecher said.
“Their objective and their proprietor’s objective is to make money”.
“Talking about ethical behaviour when in fact your primary, if not sole, objective is commercial…(then) the two things collide and so they don’t talk about it,” he said.
“I don’t think it’s about ideology, I think it’s purely about money”.
“I don’t think it’s about ideology, I think it’s purely about money” – Eric Beecher
Eric Beecher (left) and John Lyons on the first day of the Byron Bay Writers Festival Friday. Picture: Anthony Klan/The Klaxon
Like Beecher, Lyons is a former editor of the Sydney Morning Herald and also later worked for News Corporation, at The Australian.
The four-time Walkley Award Winner and author of the Balcony Over Jerusalem — recently updated in light of the war between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza — said there was good journalism done by the Murdoch corporation. That included “many major stories” in the Herald Sun under Beecher.
“I had six years as the Middle East correspondent (for The Australian) in Jerusalem and I ran a lot of stories about the treatment of Palestinian children in Israeli military prisons, I was able to get that into print,” Lyons said.
He said “if the organisation had a representative here today” they would say there had been a lot of good journalism.
“What would you say to the argument…that there is still some good journalism being done by the organisation?”
Beecher said that was “100% right” and “there hasn’t just been a bit of good journalism, there’s been a lot of good journalism”.
But it was undermined by “aggressively misinformative, inaccurate and particularly hysterical kind of journalism”.
“Even if it was only 5%…and I don’t think the ratio is quite like that…if you’re going to pollute society with that 5%, and it tends to have a disproportionate impact, what kind of organisation are you?”
“If it was my organisation and it was 0.01% I would be grossly embarrassed and I would stop it”.
Asked by an audience member what he would recommend for “someone who wants to start an independent publication now”, Beecher said a viable funding model was essential.
“To this extent Rupert Murdoch was right…but the key is it’s got to be viable, it’s actually got to be commercial or have a funding model that can last,” he said.
“That could be a not-for-profit model like The Guardian, which is owned and run by a philanthropic trust which has a billion pounds in the bank and so therefore The Guardian’s future is secure for arguably the next century.
“But if you don’t have a business model, no amount of passion and enthusiasm is going to make it last, and the worst thing is to start it and do it well and (have it fail).
“I speak with experience because I’ve started lots of things that haven’t worked because they weren’t viable,” he said.
“If you don’t have a business model, no amount of passion and enthusiasm is going to make it last” — Eric Beecher
To wrap up the session, Lyons set a scene:
“Imagine you go to New York and unexpectedly you get a phone call from Rupert and he says ‘come over to the apartment’ and you walk in, the fire’s going he’s got a glass of whisky he gets you to sit down. He says: ‘I know we’ve had our differences and I know you’ve written this terrible book about me but I’m in a self-reflective mood at my stage of life’. He looks you in the eye and says ‘Eric tell me tell me what you really think of the contribution I made’. What would you say to that?”
Sidestepping a little, Beecher responded:
“The question I would like to ask him because I think he’s been driven by forces that other people in the media, and particularly journalists, and his father was a fine journalist for a long time, aren’t driven by. And he’s been driven by dollars.
“And I would ask him how much is enough?”
The author worked as a journalist with The Australian from 2004 to 2019.
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