01 May 1998

A cartoon in The New Yorker recently showed a man and a woman at a cocktail party. The woman looked quizzically at the man and asked: "One question: If this is the Information Age, then how come nobody knows anything?"

The cartoon is funny. But it also points to a very serious conflict.

Sure, there is a lot of information available. God knows if you've ever sat on the end of a high-speed T-1 phone line you can download a heck of a lot of stuff from the Internet at a heck of a breakneck speed. Where there were a few TV channels, there are now dozens and dozens, and thanks to satellite and cable TV and digital technology more are on the way.

But the traditional business of the media - to keep a sharp eye on those running the big businesses and the governments - has begun to be (some say has been) subsumed into a new logic: the media as business.

Edmund Burke purportedly called the reporters' gallery in the English Parliament "a Fourth Estate more important by far" than the other three estates of Parliament - the peers, bishops, and commons. Burke and many others after him weren't always sure that the power of the press was a good thing (just ask Bill Clinton), but the idea of the press as watchdog, as the independent voice underpinning democratic states, this role increasingly is playing second fiddle to another tune, that of making money.

Of course there have been press barons before now. But as the media consolidates globally into fewer and fewer hands, just whose hands becomes more and more important.

In the last few weeks the ambitions and the willingness of Rupert Murdoch to put business above all else has made headlines (again) and not just in the anti-Murdoch press. Of course The Independent newspaper in the UK gets the prize for directness: "Rupert Murdoch is an agent of moral debilitation" it screamed.

The recent furore was over Rupert Murdoch's personal involvement in the decision by his publishing company Harper Collins to try to "tone down" the autobiography of Hong Kong's last governor Chris Patten so that the story would not offend Beijing and thereby impede Murdoch's business ambitions in China. In the fallout the Harper Collins editor in charge of Patten's book came out the hero when he resigned. Patten himself moved his book to a new publisher.

Then there was the recent 'Prodi call' scandal. Murdoch's Italian media ambitions - through a multi-billion pound deal for the TV interests of former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's Mediaset - derailed even after an alleged endorsement call was made by UK prime minister Tony Blair to his opposite number Romano Prodi. As the story goes, Tony owes Rupert after News Corp-owned The Sun - the UK's largest-selling daily - endorsed Blair's Labour Party eight weeks before the last election.

For those not familiar with the British media scene, The Sun's endorsement of Labour marked an about-face for the traditionally Conservative tabloid.

Rupert Murdoch is the ultimate pragmatist. His self-serving appearance in Birmingham last month at the European Audiovisual Conference is another case in point. Over lunch the owner of the UK's most powerful satellite broadcaster BSkyB and of enough British press to give him 20 per cent of the market, defended his empire in Europe. He complained that News Corp's influence is relatively small when compared to public broadcasters. "If unhealthy concentration does exist today, it exists not in the private sector but with state broadcasting," lamented Murdoch.

Murdoch's toughest words were for the BBC. The irony is that some of what Murdoch says about the Beeb is right: why should a broadcaster which runs thanks to a mandatory TV tax be allowed to launch a news channel and then give it away to cable operators free, pitting it against fee-requiring services like BSkyB's Sky News? But it's a question of balance.

An executive from France's TV5 told me, Murdoch is fascinating because he is so aggressive and successful, but you have to remember that there are priorities beyond the market and making money.

Murdoch's other message in Birmingham was to EU regulatory and political folk. He carefully praised work to accelerate the "free flow of capital, labour and talent among member states" in Europe. But as a British TV executive told me later, "Murdoch may not be pro-EMU (European monetary integration) but he clearly likes the idea of a Europe-wide audiovisual law."

The problem with Murdoch is that he has no scruples beyond winning. Or if he does, they lie well-hidden under his business decisions. It has been said that Murdoch doesn't like the topless girls that always adorn page three of The Sun. But they sell papers, so in they go. In Birmingham Murdoch said he sees "no sign" of viewers worrying about who produces the media, "as long as they are priced right and easy to get."

So, is that it? And what about content and the role of the media to inform, educate and keep tabs on those with power? Is the media just infotainment and advertorial and a shill for the owner's ambitions in business? I sincerely hope not.