In one sense, by 2002 The Independent had begun to resemble the pre-Murdoch Times. It had a circulation of only a quarter of a million, could not afford to invest as much in journalism as its rivals and — despite its title — was dependent for survival on being bankrolled by a foreign-domiciled proprietor. As has been noted, the proportion of A-grade readers that were attracted suggested that The Independent never quite managed to topple The Times at the upper end of the market. But, unquestionably, many newspaper purchasers liked the idea of a paper that declared independence from its masthead, even in the days when it was actually in the grip of the Mirror Group.

In contrast, a paper owned by Murdoch was assumed not to be independent. There was a natural self-interest in The Times’s commercial rivals portraying it as the mouthpiece of its owner. By questioning the objectivity of the paper’s judgment, these attacks hit at the heart of its appeal. Every editorial decision, from backing the Conservatives to backing new Labour was, sooner or later, attributed to Murdoch’s hidden hand. Differences of opinion not only between his British newspapers but also with his own supposed opinions were disregarded or overlooked.

Those at the helm of other assets owned by News Corporation, the parent company of The Times, might have had different experiences, but a survey of the first 21 years of Murdoch’s ownership of The Times can only conclude that the interesting feature is how little he has influenced its editorial politics.

The one Editor who complained about coming under pressure to justify the paper’s opinions was Harold Evans, although there was no occasion when a change of line actually ensued. The suggestion that the decision to replace Evans was largely due to political differences is hotly disputed.

The issue of The Times’s Chinese coverage and whether there was a conflict of interest with News Corp’s Far East business aspirations has been examined in another chapter of this book. It exonerates Murdoch from any editorial interference, but does criticise the paper’s handling of the news story about Chris Patten’s book on China, which had been dropped by HarperCollins, also owned by News Corp.

There are also a few other scattered complaints: a belief among some that there is a pro-Israel bias that emanates, however indirectly, from the proprietor’s opinions, or the ordeal of the education correspondent, John Clare, who once had to endure a lengthy monologue in which Murdoch vehemently expounded his own (conflicting) views on the subject. Compared to the evidence that the proprietor has not interfered in the paper’s politics, these charges hardly sweep all before them. The “Murdoch press” was not, for instance, delivered on a plate to Tony Blair. According to Murdoch’s recollection of events, he did not even know what party The Times was going to support in the 1997 general election and was surprised to read it had opted to back a specific cause instead. This is also the recollection of the Editor at the time. Peter Stothard, indeed, claimed that he had never received a political instruction: “In all the time I’ve been writing, I can’t remember ever having heard the words ‘that’s a great leader’ or ‘that’s a terrible leader’ from Murdoch.” Far from being the recipient of unsolicited comments on the line the paper took, Stothard admitted: “I don’t think I’ve ever seen an e-mail from Rupert.” Telephone conversations, when they occurred, usually took the form of Murdoch ringing for a chat about how the paper was doing and what was making the news in Britain.

Indeed, by the 1990s, the proprietor’s trips to Wapping were not frequent. New York was his base and the film, television and satellite divisions of his business increasingly occupied his time. It was as likely that Sky’s fortunes would take him to London as any pressing matter with his broadsheets. Partly because of his expanding interests, the editors of The Times in the 1990s saw or heard much less of their proprietor than did their predecessors in the 1980s.

Simon Jenkins recalled that Murdoch was “scrupulous” about not breaking his guarantees on editorial independence. “I didn’t have one discussion with Rupert on editorial policy,” Jenkins maintained. Yet this is not to say that the proprietor exercised benign neglect. He remained a nuts and bolts newspaperman, easily annoyed by a bad picture headline or squashed “basement” article layout. He never forgot the lessons taught him as a young trainee on the Daily Express’s backbench by Edward Pickering, the Editor.

While Murdoch left his Times editors to get on with their political postures, Jenkins discovered: “He was obsessive about where the pictures were going and where the money was going and this and that was going.” On occasions when he did come over to The Times, he had the unnerving habit of leafing though the morning’s paper while mumbling dismissive observations about how poorly it was laid out or the priority given to different articles. “In many ways,” conceded Jenkins, “that’s more demoralising than having someone telling you whether you’ve got to be pro or anti abortion.”

Successful partnerships between editor and proprietor depended upon a mutual understanding of what was to be rendered unto Caesar. The proprietor had to keep out of the paper’s politics and (despite his inclinations to be a chief sub) the daily decisions that were matters of editorial judgment. In turn, the editor had to recognise that major strategic decisions with budget implications had to be agreed with the proprietor.

There was nothing exceptional in this division of powers. It was in areas of grand strategy that Murdoch made his personal mark on the paper, deciding whether it could afford to undercut its rivals in cover price, invest in more business pages to take on the FT or change the number of sections in which it was printed. It was at this level that he intervened. Given his enthusiastic endorsement of investing in more sports pages, it might be contested that Murdoch’s influence was as much manifested in expanding the paper’s coverage of the Euro ’96 football championship as its opposition to the euro currency. Murdoch was not interested in owning The Times as a ticket into the British Establishment and nor was it deployed effectively as his prime weapon in exerting political power. As far as he perceived it, Margaret Thatcher cared much more about where the massed battalions of The Sun were going to attack. During the government of her successor, The Times did little to endear itself to those in power, yet nor did it align itself with the official Opposition either. It could not even quite bring itself to endorse the party that was obviously going to win the 1997 general election by a landslide majority. If the paper’s wires were pulled to a particular and cynical strategy, it was hard to comprehend what the agenda was.



Rather, Murdoch’s motivating interest in The Times seemed to relate more clearly to its central place in the history and development of his first and greatest hobby — newspapers. It was the paper from whose offices his father, Sir Keith Murdoch, had once worked, the paper whose life had been saved in 1908 by Sir Keith’s friend and patron, Lord Northcliffe. In Britain, at least, the populist Northcliffe is the press baron with whom Rupert Murdoch has been most frequently compared.

Murdoch made his name as an owner of tabloids who then bought his way into broadsheets. Nicholas Coleridge, who wrote a book about newspaper tycoons, has suggested: “Had he acquired his papers in a different order — if The Times, the South China Morning Post and The Australian had come first — and he’d only then moved on to buy the tabloids, the world’s perception of him would be substantially different.” But that is an idle scenario, since in the Murdoch empire it has been the profits of the tabloids that have funded the loftier acquisitions. Of course, his purchase of The Times was not conceived in a fit of sentimentality alone. It came as part of a package that included the highly profitable Sunday Times.

Furthermore, The Times was, and remained, the company’s flagship newspaper and, as such, added value, however indirectly, to the international prestige of News Corporation. Reflecting in June 2002 on the growth of News Corp from an Australian newspaper group to a global media organisation, its president, Peter Chernin, stated his belief that acquiring The Times in 1981 “was the real transforming purchase of the company”.

Yet it was never just another deal. Murdoch enjoyed a challenge. Earlier that same month, he had been asked in an interview what he thought would be his lasting contribution as a patron of the popular arts. Without pausing for thought, he answered: “Saving The Times.”

Extracted from The History of The Times: The Murdoch Years by Graham Stewart, to be published by HarperCollins on November 21 at £30. Available from Books First at £27, free p&p, by telephoning 0870 1608080. © Graham Stewart 2005