UFO Info Week-End

The strange silence of the British press in its non-coverage of the newly intriguing private life

The strange silence of the British press in its non-coverage of the newly intriguing private life of Rupert Murdoch has caused commentators to speculate about a secret newspaper proprietors’ agreement not to wash each other’s dirty linen in public. A shock separation after over three decades of apparently stable marriage, shacking up with a smart thirtysomething employee from China, a protracted and expensive divorce, the prospect of wedding bells before the end of the year and even talk of a Murdoch baby – these are the sort of private shenanigans among the rich and famous that would normally have the tabloids at their most intrusive and expansive.
Even the broadsheets could be expected to get in on the act, under the guise of what it all means for Murdoch’s business empire, especially how it complicates his desire to create a family dynasty. It might be unrealistic to expect the man’s own papers to carry much about it (few editors are that brave – or foolhardy) but surely his rivals would have a field day.Yet there has been no more than a few passing paragraphs in the non-Murdoch papers. We know little about the cause of the marriage breakdown, the details of the divorce proceedings – and next to nothing about the post- divorce state of Anna Murdoch or his paramour-turned- fiancee, Wendy Deng (bar an interesting but little-read piece in Punch, which may or may not have been accurate).

It is possible to argue that these are private, often painful, matters which do not deserve much of a public airing (and I would agree). But not if you own the News of the World or The Sun.The Daily Telegraph, which rarely misses a chance to have a go at his business dealings, has stayed strangely aloof from the fallout from his marital troubles. The Daily Mail, which normally devotes page after page to the foibles of the rich and powerful, has barely touched the matter. The baser tabloids, which specialise in exposing the extra-marital activities of even the most minor media celebrities, have ignored the goings-on of the most powerful media baron in the world.We know that Murdoch spoke to the proprietors of the Mail and Telegraph himself to counsel against the sort of unseemly coverage of his private life that his own papers dish out daily to less fortunate souls Other newspaper groups did not need him to lean on them.

They simply bowed to that most insidious of Fleet Street phenomena: self-censorship.There should be no mystery about the lack of column inches: there is indeed an informal proprietors’ old-boy network which stops them from dishing the dirt on each other. My only surprise is that supposedly well- informed press commentators are surprised it exists. I cannot be the only former editor to have first-hand knowledge of it.When I was at The Sunday Times I received an extensive dossier about Lord Rothermere’s wife, the flamboyant society lady nicknamed Bubbles who had recently died in what some said were mysterious circumstances. The documents and pictures detailed her strange obsession with a so-called “mystic” who lived in a council house in Peckham. It was claimed that she consulted this woman on everything and it was said she was one of the last people Bubbles communicated with before her sad and premature death.It was an intriguing tale. But “The society lady and council-house mystic” seemed to belong more in The Sun than The Sunday Times I passed the dossier to the then editor, Kelvin MacKenzie But nothing appeared. I learned later that Murdoch had given instructions not to publish the story: proprietor did not eat proprietor.Murdoch did not have to wait for Ms Deng to come along to reap his reward.