Murdoch's World: The Last of the Old Media Empires
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., Folkenflik—writing in the midst of the disclosures of hacking and the ensuing scandal, bloodletting, and criminal charges—portrays 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. --Mark Levine