Peter Gallagher

It is dif­fi­cult to think of any­one less likely to offer an objec­tive assess­ment. Con­rad Black on why Rupert Mur­doch is a “great bad man”.

“Although his per­son­al­ity is gen­er­ally quite agree­able, Mr Mur­doch has no loy­alty to any­one or any­thing except his com­pany. He has dif­fi­culty keep­ing friend­ships; rarely keeps his word for long; is an exploiter of the dis­com­fort of oth­ers; and has betrayed every polit­i­cal leader who ever helped him in any coun­try, except Ronald Rea­gan and per­haps Tony Blair. All his instincts are down­mar­ket; he is not only a tabloid sen­sa­tion­al­ist; he is a mali­cious myth-maker, an assas­sin of the dig­nity of oth­ers and of respected insti­tu­tions, all in the guise of anti-elitism. He mas­quer­ades as a pil­lar of con­tem­po­rary, enlight­ened pop­ulism in Britain and sen­si­ble con­ser­vatism in the US, though he has been assid­u­ously kiss­ing the under­car­riage of the rulers of Bei­jing for years. His notions of pub­lic enter­tain­ment and civic val­ues are enshrined in the car­toon tele­vi­sion series The Simp­sons: all pub­lic offi­cials are crooks and the pub­lic is an igno­rant lumpen­pro­le­tariat. There is noth­ing ille­gal in this, and it has amus­ing aspects, but it is unbe­com­ing some­one who has been the sub­ject of such wide­spread def­er­ence and offi­cial prefer­ments.” Extract from FT.com

But, since “there is noth­ing ille­gal in this…” what is Black’s rea­son for throw­ing mud at Mur­doch? Injured “innocence-by-association”? Doesn’t work for me.