HONG KONG - How many times have how many
Western governments hopped on their favorite
soapbox to lecture China on the virtues of press
freedom and human rights?
Now, thanks to
Rupert Murdoch, the tables are turned. As
Murdoch's News Corporation - the world's
second-largest media conglomerate, topped only by
the Walt Disney Company - teeters under the weight
of a phone-hacking and bribery scandal that
promises to get worse before it gets better,
Chinese state media are reveling in the unseemly
spectacle of it all.
Is this where the
Western media model leads - to criminal acts by
reporters and parliamentary grillings of media
executives interrupted by angry pie tosses?
Let's face it, the only person caught up
in the Murdoch maelstrom
of the past few weeks to have
acquitted herself with any semblance of dignity
and honor happens to be Chinese. When the svelte
and redoubtable Wendi Deng Murdoch, the
octogenarian media baron's 42-year-old wife,
stymied a parliamentary pie tosser last week with
a deft right hook to the nose on the floor of the
House of Commons, it was the most impressive move
any Murdoch had made for a long time.
His
interrogation by British members of parliament may
have been, as the elder Murdoch testified, "the
most humble day of my life". But it also could
have proved to be his most humiliating if he had
wound up wearing shaving-foam pie on his face in
photos and video seen around the world. Thanks to
his wife's quick thinking and athleticism (she
used to play volleyball in middle school but
clearly saved her best spike in defense of her
billionaire husband), he was spared that
abasement.
As it stood, the aging tycoon's
general cluelessness about what was going on at
the News of the World - the best-selling newspaper
in his vast stable of media outlets before
revelations of phone hacking and bribery by its
reporters forced Murdoch to shut it down this
month - made him look bad enough. And the arrogant
dismissiveness of his son, James, 38, head of News
Corp's operations in Europe and Asia, who was
trusted to do the lion's share of the talking as
father and son sat side by side fielding barbed
questions, also did nothing to help the cause.
Only Wendi's spontaneous show of nimble
beauty and fierce loyalty saved the hearing from
being an unmitigated fiasco for the Murdochs. But
she could not save the family and News Corp from
becoming convenient whipping boys for everything
that is wrong with the West in her native China,
where her husband's determined efforts to win
favor and become a major media player have been
rebuked by Communist Party officials.
And
who can blame Chinese commentators for seizing
this sensational opportunity to take their
revenge? For decades, they have endured lectures
from the West about their suppression of the media
as part of an ongoing, sweeping condemnation of
Beijing's callous disregard for human rights in
general; meanwhile, the no-holds-barred,
profit-driven media of the West - whose chief
symbol is indeed Rupert Murdoch; Disney, the
largest corporate purveyor of Western stereotypes
and propaganda, somehow mostly gets a pass - has
set a daily example of irresponsibility and
excess.
It is no surprise that now, with
the News of the World in the dock, former
reporters at rival tabloids - the Daily Mirror and
Sunday Mirror - are stepping forward to admit that
they engaged in the same illegal practices as a
matter of course. There is no telling where all
this will end.
Official publications such
as Xinhua, the People's Daily and the Global Times
have covered the News of the World scandal in
depth and detail, freely offering commentary on
how News Corp's current troubles reveal the
hypocrisy and empty sloganeering of the Western
media and political elite.
"Phone hacking
scandal crushing blow to Murdoch empire," one
recent Xinhua headline asserted; in another
article, the news agency predicted a major
overhaul of "the regulatory model of Western
media" now that its corrupt and fraudulent nature
has been revealed.
"Some experts in
Beijing and Shanghai believe that [the scandal]
directly exposes the inherent money-seeking nature
of Western media today," the agency said, "and the
false nature of the concepts of 'freedom',
'impartiality' and 'human rights' that they have
long bandied about. As the scandal has continued
to develop, it has become a major assault on the
model of media supervision and control in the
West."
An article in the People's Daily on
Thursday reminded readers that British reporters
do not have a lock on wayward ethics and conduct
in their trade, recalling that virtually every
media outlet in the United States jumped on the
bandwagon to invade Iraq in 2003 based on what
turned out to be false reports that then Iraqi
president Saddam Hussein was amassing weapons of
mass destruction (WMD).
And Murdoch's Fox
News, a de facto arm of the Republican Party and
an ardent supporter of the George W Bush
administration that perpetrated the WMD myth to
launch the Iraq war, was the invasion's loudest
and most demonstrative cheerleader.
The
Global Times was keen to point out the irony that
two of the more high-minded newspapers in
Murdoch's stable, The Wall Street Journal and The
Australian, have been consistent critics of
China's record on human rights and media freedom.
Suddenly, their voices have gone silent as their
owner finds himself pilloried for the criminal
acts of reporters working for one of his decidedly
low-minded tabloids.
These criticisms of
the West may be overzealous and willfully blind to
any of the merits of a free, unfettered media, but
they also have the sting of truth. The profit
motive often does poison the well of the Western
media, and Xinhua's prediction that a new and
tougher regulatory regime is in the offing will
likely prove true.
That would not
necessarily be a bad thing if that new regime sets
out to break up media behemoths like News Corp,
which has become far too powerful a political
player on the world stage, perverting the media's
traditional role as watchdog in a system of checks
and balances in Western democracies.
But
let's be clear: Murdoch is certainly not the first
profiteering media mogul to abuse his power.
Remember William Randolph Hearst? In 1887, at the
age of 23, he burst brazenly onto the American
publishing scene when he took over the San
Francisco Examiner from his father.
At the
peak of his career, Hearst owned nearly 30
newspapers in major American cities. He and arch
rival Joseph Pulitzer recklessly boosted
circulation and profits at their papers by
creating a new kind of titillating but fanciful
reporting dubbed yellow journalism, which Hearst
used to whip up enthusiasm for American military
adventures that eventually led to war with Spain.
In the age of cable television and the
Internet, Murdoch, a native of Australia who
acquired American citizenship in 1985, has far
more power and influence than Hearst ever dreamed
of possessing. But now the tycoon's many enemies
smell blood, and his empire is under threat. In a
fair system of checks and balances, Murdoch and
News Corp are due for a huge, ego-shattering
check.
That said, there is also a mighty,
monopolistic media empire in China. Its aging
chief executive officer is the Communist Party.
It, too, could use some checks and balances.
Kent Ewing is a Hong Kong-based
teacher and writer. He can be reached at
kewing@netvigator.com
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