The pundits haven’t been all that impressed by The Murdoch Archipelago, the new book on the dangers and intrigues of media monopoly. They say it’s a two-dimensional rendering of the big guy, which smacks of conspiracy theory. Still, on the back cover we read that author Bruce Page was once an investigate journalist who ‘proved that Kim Philby was a KGB spy, that Robert Maxwell was a crook and that the drug thalidomide was never properly tested,” so the book must be worth something.
It’s worth passages like this: ‘Sumner Redstone of Viacom is reckoned one of the most influential corporate bosses in present-day America, and he does not deny it. But he has said that neither he nor anyone else he knows can bend governments to his will as Murdoch can.”
That specimen and others like it tend to get one thinking (a solid point in any book’s favour): is there a media baron on the local scene who is able to bend our government to his will?
The answer, once the thinking is done, is a resounding ‘no’. In the perennial battle between the State and private media, the former has a secure hold on its first-letter capital. Despite cries of ‘trial by media’ and the refusal of editors and journalists to reveal their sources in front of presidential commissions, there is no media mogul or media house making our government dance to silly tunes.
And it’s a good thing, too. As this month’s cover story by Graeme Addison suggests, we don’t need either side getting excessively pushy. But neither do we need media and officialdom cosying up to one another. When that happens, a la Chris Barron’s loveLife exposé on page 34 (loveLife, it should be noted, gets R25 million per year from the South African government), clauses in advertising contracts can block the publication of some vital editorial.