Rupert Murdoch - and his son, James - have passed through the witness box at the Leveson Inquiry in London. No one would believe James - who in all likelihood would have never landed the positions he did in the Murdoch empire but for Daddy! Old Rupe! Wily, and many informed pundits would say, living in a parallel orbit. The Global Mail considers the evidence....
"As for much of the rest of his seven-hour testimony - gripping for media junkies; like watching paint dry for the most that aren't - Murdoch's former editor at London's The Sunday Times, Sir Harold Evans, saw Murdoch's performance more akin to the fanciful plots scriptwriters at News Corp's Fox Studios might concoct.
"Everything he says should be taken as the diametric opposite," Sir Harold told an interviewer on his wife Tina Brown's Daily Beast website afterwards. Murdoch's testimony showed, he said, that the mogul had "discovered a huge imagination. Frankly it's pathetic. I haven't stopped laughing all morning." Perhaps Evans, sacked by Murdoch, was miffed that Rupert said he hadn't read his famous account of their brief liaison, Good Times, Bad Times.
Others, including Murdoch's raucous cheerleader in Australia, Andrew Bolt, thought it "a brilliant rebuttal of the sniggering reports of his intellectual decline." Writing on the website of the Murdoch-owned Melbourne Herald-Sun, Bolt wrote: "Murdoch at 81 showed his memory of events of decades ago was as sharp as a razor, and his wit was just as keen. No stumbles, no doddering, no embarrassment, no lack of command."
At this point, it's useful to remember why Murdoch was there in the first place and why the world was treated to a rare, public and proper grilling by a skilled and well-researched interrogator of The Man Who Owns the News, the title of a celebrated Murdoch biography by the New York journalist Michael Wolff.
Murdoch was there ostensibly to explain how things were allowed to fester inside News Corporation's British division, News International — the now notorious phone-hacking scandal and its derivatives, which have seen more than 40 of his former staff arrested, some jailed."
"Everything he says should be taken as the diametric opposite," Sir Harold told an interviewer on his wife Tina Brown's Daily Beast website afterwards. Murdoch's testimony showed, he said, that the mogul had "discovered a huge imagination. Frankly it's pathetic. I haven't stopped laughing all morning." Perhaps Evans, sacked by Murdoch, was miffed that Rupert said he hadn't read his famous account of their brief liaison, Good Times, Bad Times.
Others, including Murdoch's raucous cheerleader in Australia, Andrew Bolt, thought it "a brilliant rebuttal of the sniggering reports of his intellectual decline." Writing on the website of the Murdoch-owned Melbourne Herald-Sun, Bolt wrote: "Murdoch at 81 showed his memory of events of decades ago was as sharp as a razor, and his wit was just as keen. No stumbles, no doddering, no embarrassment, no lack of command."
At this point, it's useful to remember why Murdoch was there in the first place and why the world was treated to a rare, public and proper grilling by a skilled and well-researched interrogator of The Man Who Owns the News, the title of a celebrated Murdoch biography by the New York journalist Michael Wolff.
Murdoch was there ostensibly to explain how things were allowed to fester inside News Corporation's British division, News International — the now notorious phone-hacking scandal and its derivatives, which have seen more than 40 of his former staff arrested, some jailed."
The New Yorker covers the Murdoch evidence thus.
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