Like most people on the left, I have no time for the media mogul Rupert Murdoch. His business modus operandi represents everything that is wrong about, not just the media industry, but the capitalist system itself. Greed is good, shafting people who get in your way is fair game and anything that enables you to make more profits is absolutely fine – all of this is part and parcel of the Murdoch approach.
In Bonfire of the Murdochs, author Gabriel Sherman chronicles a man who acts in a totally transactional way where his family ends up at each other’s throats, at his behest, and where even personal relationships become part of ‘the deal’ and are totally subordinate to making money and boosting the share price. That Rupert Murdoch is a stain on the international media industry is beyond doubt. The man who gave us the Sun, the News of the World, page three girls and the phone hacking scandal is clearly beneath contempt. But this is also a man who was fawned over by politicians on both sides of the Atlantic, desperate to curry favour with someone that they believed could help to ease their way into office.
Murdoch’s family business – and it is absolutely a family business – is a depressing catalogue of nepotism on the grandest of scales where mediocrity is lavishly rewarded and personal relationships are traded and bartered to benefit the greater good of the company. No wonder that the Murdoch siblings ended up in a blood feud pitted against each other (and their father) as they tried to gain control of a billion-dollar enterprise. But this is capitalism in tooth and claw and that is how it works.
The ailing Murdoch is now 94 and worth $23bn. His children are all worth billions too following a financial settlement that followed a court case that threatened to derail his plans to leave his company in the hands of his favoured son. Who cares, you may well ask. But Gabriel Sherman’s book offers a real insight into everything that is wrong about the money-driven international media industry through the prism of a totally dysfunctional media oligarch who has left an indelible stain over the many decades he has plied his sordid trade.
Read this book to find out how greed, disloyalty, misogyny and low politics are rewarded – and then rededicate yourself to fighting for a better, more equitable media landscape and society where filth like Murdoch and his ilk have no place.
Bonfire of the Murdochs, by Gabriel Sherman, is published by Simon & Schuster (2026).
