Murdoch's World by David Folkenflik Read Free Book Online

hand.”
    A N ORDER : “Mate, get the story—I don’t fucking care how.”
    That culture, Jaspan said, allowed Murdoch and a small circle of trusted aides to “control the various entities because people know what’s expected—and know their cushy livelihoods are dependent on it.” Jaspan said mateship builds in its adherents a kind of self-constructed identity that proves tough to dispel: they believe themselves to be outsiders, rough-hewn, self-sufficient, distrustful or even contemptuous of authority. The establishment rules are not for them.
    This outsider image was—and is—a preposterous confection. Murdoch and his crew became consummate and powerful insiders, creating their own establishment from which to operate. In 2000, Freya Petersen was a twenty-eight-year-old Australian journalist working at Murdoch’s Courier-Mail tabloid in Brisbane. She had done a brief stint in New York City and wasinvited to spend a boozy night on the town with New York Post columnist Steve Dunleavy, an Australian, and some others from the paper. They started at Langan’s, a favorite bar just a block from the Post newsroom, and ended at Elaine’s, a restaurant patronized by the city’s political, cultural, and media elites. The owner, Elaine Kaufman, stopped by the booth to greet Dunleavy warmly by name. Petersen, sitting next to the columnist after a few drinks, started haranguing him about working for Murdoch, who, she said, had done so much to tarnish the industry.
    After a bit, Dunleavy stopped her cold and said, So what you’re telling me is that you never want to work for Rupert Murdoch again?
    â€œIt was a little shocking,” Petersen later said. “He’d distilled everything I’d said into a conclusion so simple, and one that demonstrated that he either didn’t understand—or care about—my concerns.”
    She recalled trying to engage him again on the substance of her complaints, but was stopped anew.
    What I’m hearing is that you never want to work for Rupert Murdoch again , Dunleavy repeated, pausing, and leaned in closer for effect. You know, I can make that happen . The bond between thetwo Australians had endured over decades. When Murdoch was enmeshed in a business feud with Warner Bros. chief Steve Ross,he tapped his mate Dunleavy to lead a team of Post reporters to dig up dirt on the man.
    Petersen’s eyes grew wide as she envisioned her professional life evaporating. She had placed herself outside the circle of “mates.” She joined Australia’s public broadcaster, the ABC, after working for a non-Murdoch paper in Brisbane, Queensland.
    In London, Rebekah Brooks, initially editor of News of the World , then the Sun , similarly prized devotion in reporters above all. Brooks (back then, Rebekah Wade) always presented something of an enigma for those who followed her meteoric rise in London.In her entry in Who’s Who , she was said to have studied at the prestigious French university, the Sorbonne. (The Daily Mail later reported with no small amount of snark that Brooks had only taken a short course there while working in Paris for an architecture magazine.) She had materialized at the News of the World as a secretary and occasional features writer in 1988 after a brief stint at a fledgling British tabloid called the Post . Little more than eleven years later she was the tabloid’s editor in chief and, at thirty-two, the youngest editor in chief of any British national newspaper.
    Her boldness, even impudence, tended to pay off. According to her peer, rival, friend, and predecessor at News of the World , Piers Morgan,Brooks had prepared particularly well for an interview with the presumed lover of Princess Diana at a fancy hotel room: she had arranged in advance for a team to “kit it out with secret tape devices in various flowerpots and cupboards.” On another occasion, she stole a scoop from the News