Murdoch: A Journalist Of Integrity.

No, not Rupert, his father Sir Keith Murdoch.

Born in Melbourne in 1885, Keith Arthur Murdoch became a journalist first with The Age and later with The Sydney Sun. During World War I he was based in London  as managing editor of the cable service run by The Sydney Sun and the Melbourne Herald. He was asked, in 1915, by the then Australian Prime Minister Andrew Fisher, to travel to the Middle East to check on concerns that had been raised about the Australian troops that had been stationed there. In August of that year, while in Egypt, he sought and received permission to visit the Australian troops at Gallipoli and report, subject to the normal wartime restrictions.

“The agreement he signed specified that he was “not to attempt to correspond by any other route or by any other means than that officially sanctioned” and during the war he must not “impart to anyone military information of a confidential nature…. unless first submitted to the Chief Field Censor.””

Quickly, Keith Murdoch discovered what other war correspondents already in situ were all too aware of, that the Dardanelles campaign was a disaster and that the truth was being covered up by the military censors. The Daily Telegraph war correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, asked Keith Murdoch to carry back to London an uncensored report to hand directly to the British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith so that he could be appraised of the real situation on the ground.

However, Sir Ian Hamilton, commander of the Dardanelles campaign in Turkey, discovered this plan and Keith Murdoch was arrested by Military Police in Marseille and the letter was confiscated. On his return to London on September 21st he made straight for the Australian High Commission and wrote his own letter to The Australian Prime Minister. He wrote:

‘The conceit and self complacency of the red feather men are equalled only by their incapacity. Along the line of communications, especially at Moudros, are countless high officers and conceited young cubs who are plainly only playing at war. …appointments to the general staff are made from motives of friendship and social influence.’

This letter found it’s way via the British Cabinet to the British press and at last the true situation in Gallipoli began to be reported. Sir Ian Hamilton was removed from his post and as a direct consequence of Keith Murdoch’s actions Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, who was responsible for the planning of the amphibious Dardanelles campaign was forced to resign.

Keith Murdoch went on to have a prestigious career in journalism before dying in 1952.

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Those, as you can see, are mighty big boots to fill and it has often puzzled me how his son, Rupert Murdoch got lost along the way. At what point did the journalistic passion to expose the truth and to hold power to account evolved into a business enterprise which ruthlessly exploited the power of the media, a power seemingly coveted for it’s own sake ?

I’ve read that Rupert Murdoch is very proud of his father and so, as you have read, he should be but one is left to wonder if he will ever fill those boots that were bequeathed to him, whether that inherited journalistic instinct might triumph yet over grubby business motives.

What would Keith Murdoch have done if he had come across a story that involved institutional child sexual abuse and establishment cover-up ?

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