Murdoch's World

September 15, 2013
The story of the global Murdoch media empire's alternately triumphant and tumultuous journey into the 21st century. Media reporter Folkenflik (editor: Page One: Inside the New York Times and the Future of Journalism, 2011) regularly covers Murdoch's News Corporation (as its American branch is known) for NPR. Articles he wrote for the Baltimore Sun in 2002 questioning the accuracy of Geraldo Rivera's reporting from Afghanistan earned him the enmity of the News Corp-owned Fox News. That network's pugnacious conservatism is a hallmark of the Murdoch brand all over the world, most obviously at tabloids like the New York Post but also at the jewels in the empire's crown: The Australian, the Times of London and the Wall Street Journal. Though a public corporation accountable to stockholders by structure, News Corp is run like a family business for the benefit of chairman Rupert, primarily, and his heirs. An insular "mate" culture throughout the company encourages staff and management to view outsiders as the enemy. "It is the defining contradiction of Rupert Murdoch and his corporation that it has accumulated more influence than any other media company in the world and yet remains convinced of its status as an outsider," writes the author. Usually, this patently hypocritical stance serves them well in the bloody battles for properties and viewers. But in 2011, when rivals broke the story that Murdoch employees in the U.K. routinely hacked phones of politicians, royalty, and even ordinary people, like a 13-year-old murder victim, in search of scoops, it looked like the corporation's Achilles' heel was finally located and would foil its steady march to world domination. While chapters on Fox News--though amusing and of interest to American media watchers--can seem like material from another book entirely, Folkenflik lucidly and effectively sorts out the complicated phone-hacking story and its political ramifications.

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November 1, 2013

Award-winning journalist Folkenflik (editor, Page One: Inside the New York Times and the Future of Journalism, a companion to the acclaimed documentary of the same name) is a popular media correspondent for NPR. In a 2011 NPR "Weekend Edition" interview, he cited the media's critical role as a "watchdog service on major and powerful institutions in society," noting that conglomerates of Rupert Murdoch's media industry had set themselves above such accountability; that idea became the thesis of this work. More than a biography of Murdoch's world, the book portrays and analyzes personalities, motivations, and events leading up to the recent notorious phone hacking and political corruption scandal in the UK, along with strategies that subsequently averted collapse of the global organization, albeit at great personal cost to the iconic media mogul. Meticulously documented, the text includes more than 50 pages of notes detailing interviews (many confidential), as well as other evidence supporting this account of the media empire's rise, fall, and recovery. VERDICT Brimming with facts and pithy observations but lacking bullet points or sidebars, Folkenflik's title will interest the serious reader of history and criticism of the media's societal role and worldwide impact.--Elizabeth Wood, Bowling Green State Univ. Libs., OH

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2013
One cannot, even facetiously, describe this account of Rupert Murdoch's life and the most influential media empire in the history of the English-speaking world as fair and balanced. It is neither. But it is entertaining and informative, sometimes dauntingly so (as in the organizational details), though tilting more than slightly from that objective center that Murdoch's American broadcast news outlet, Fox, characterizes itself as being. Folkenflik, the media correspondent for NPR, has encountered Murdoch's world in that capacity and, formerly, when he was with the Baltimore Sun, and he has developed the contacts and style that make this reportage fascinating and credible. In covering the variety of media acquisitions and operations in Australia, the UK, and the U.S., Folkenflikwriting in the midst of the disclosures of hacking and the ensuing scandal, bloodletting, and criminal chargesportrays the corporate culture behind them. He describes the internecine wars, often familial, within an organization that, however much it claims to encourage autonomy, is consistently an extension of the man at its head, the Australian buccaneer, Murdoch.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)