Murdochs and others

Media bosses, like policemen, are not always loved but they do a difficult and essential job. The “monsters” in the title refers to the size media companies have reached over the years though, not to the personal characteristics of the leaders. That, as the saying goes, is another story—and a lively one.

The second volume of Sally Young’s planned trilogy on the history of Australian media ownership covers the period from 1941 to 1972—from Pearl Harbor to Whitlam—and on the size its business reached in that period, with extension into television as well as big increases in newspaper circulation, mergers and the relentless advance of technology. It became “the media”, no longer humbly “the papers” or “the wireless”. It was a golden age.

The most interesting part of the book is the byzantine politics of early television. Unlike newspapers, it required licences because of the limited air-space available. The newspaper chiefs wanted more band-width, but so did a lot of others, including people who didn’t want newspaper companies in television, or even private enterprise. Some didn’t want television in Australia at all. There did not seem much public demand for television until it arrived, years behind much of the world. In the end the newspapers got nearly all they wanted and it made them very profitable, more than offsetting the declining income from papers as circulation growth slowed and costs rose.

Television began broadcasting in Australia in 1956 and took a decade to become established around the country. That decade was the heyday of the Menzies era and the tussling between Prime Minister Menzies and the newspaper bosses is quite a story. It was known in outline, but the full intrigue is new.

The tricky relationship between politicians and media executives is a big part of the book, with copious source material in the official correspondence and the occasional spilling of beans. It was not overly scandalous—big business bosses frequently pressure politicians and vice versa—but years of it set out in detail makes good reading.

The book is set out more like a newspaper than an academic work, jaunty in style, with headlines, shortish sentences and paragraphs, and clearly marked breaks of subject within the chapters. It is easy to read and also good as a general history of the times.

Some of the people Young writes about:

Sir Keith Murdoch, star of Young’s first vol­ume, built up the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT) into Australia’s biggest and most read newspaper group, based originally on Melbourne’s evening Herald. The Melbourne operation alone, morning and evening together, was reaching a million papers a day. There is a touch of King Lear about him here though, intervening excessively and declining in judgment to the point of trying as he reached retiring age to fire his one-time prodigy, financial chief and expected successor Jack Williams, to avoid retirement or losing control. He died suddenly in 1952, aged sixty-seven, of a heart condition. Young wonders how Rupert would have fared had his father lived and stayed on top.

Rupert Murdoch was twenty-two when he took over the Adelaide evening paper, in which his father had built up a controlling interest for this purpose. (Keith was only a minor shareholder in the HWT.) The older generation thought of Rupert as “the boy publisher” and expected him to fail. In turn he could be brash towards them. One observer said young Rupert was “over-enthusiastic about achieving his ends”. Rupert quickly showed the extraordinary drive and judgment that (with some luck too) made him in time the world’s biggest, if also most controversial, publisher. Like his father, he was handy at relations with politicians—and not just in Australia.

Jack (Sir John) Williams, who succeeded Keith Murdoch at the HWT, was a quiet achiever who made the HWT even bigger. He disliked personal publicity and showy journalism, liked stories in his papers about troubled trees and animals. Nevertheless, he kept his papers, fattened by television, nicely profitable. Religious (a strong Catholic), he was a good employer. He urged his journalists to be fair and accurate and avoid getting too close to politicians and business figures who could influence their reporting. Nevertheless he was a regular drinking mate of Victoria’s Liberal Premier Henry Bolte, and the Herald rarely gave the Liberals much grief. Young seems to find Williams the most sympathetic of her subjects.

Rupert Albert Geary (“Rags”) Henderson is the most colourful of the proprietors, as he was in media gossip in his day, with his salty, biting, old Australian wit. Henderson was managing director of the Fairfax group from 1949 to 1964 but a powerful figure in Fairfax and the wider industry from the 1920s to the 1980s, though rarely seen in public or about the office. At least in gossip, he was not much liked. But it was mainly Henderson, small but dynamic, financially and strategically shrewd, who built the Sydney Morning Herald business into Sydney’s media monster.

His partner, rather than boss, was high-minded and dignified chairman (Sir) Warwick Fairfax, who provided the foundation family’s touch of altruistic prestige, public service and class. Warwick’s women were a factor too. His mother, Lady Mabel, was a big shareholder, lived to ninety-five, and was a background patron of the twosome with Henderson. His third wife, a tailor’s daughter from Broken Hill, is said to have told Henderson while on honeymoon with Warwick that she and Henderson could work together to run the company. “Madam, I already run the company,” Henderson replied. As Lady Mary, she went on to become a prominent Sydney hostess.

Frank Packer was a big, somewhat eccentric bully with flair, whose Sydney Daily Telegraph was mostly a good newsy tabloid, respectful of family values, but economically flimsy. The odd touch of right-wing eccentricity (a poster read ”Stalin Dead—Hooray”) gave it a lively touch. The Sydney working class famously read the “Tele”, but voted Labor. Packer was the proprietor most loyal to Menzies. Menzies, though, is said to have seen him more as useful and declined him a knighthood for many years; he seemed rough. Nevertheless it got Packer a television licence which became Channel Nine and swelled the indifferent profits of his Consolidated Press, and more so under his son Kerry. The Australian Women’s Weekly was an essential aid to the pre-television finances.

Packer’s closest favourite politician was sometime Prime Minister Billy (Sir William) McMahon, who was a neighbour in Bellevue Hill and often dined with the Packers. Packer’s earlier partner, former Labor Treasurer Ted Theodore, died at the beginning of this period and his sons sold out.

The less successful also get a critical mention, especially the old and new proprietors of the venerable Melbourne morning papers, the Argus, which closed in 1957 and the Age, which was going the same way until joining the Fairfax stable. Young sees bad management with both.

The book is mostly what journalists would call straight reportage, with lots of pertinent information, candid but without much comment or criticism. The message, however, is that newspapers and television need good managers and financial strength if they are to have good journalism and a long life. You might not love the bosses but you need them.

Young implies quite a lot about proprietor influence on the news, a subject that bothers many readers, but does not analyse it much or discuss the critical difference between editorials (leading articles) and reportage. The implication is that news reporting itself has not been especially controversial. It deserves more analysis.

The book ends with Bob Hawke telling Gough Whitlam at an election rally in 1972, as Whitlam neared the prime minister’s job, “You’ll regret the day you got into bed with Rupert.”

Media Monsters: The Transformation of Australia’s Newspaper Empires
by Sally Young
UNSW Press, 2023, 576 pages, $49.99

Robert Murray is a journalist and historian and frequent contributor to Quadrant on history.