[applause] booktv is on facebook. Likes to enter act with booktv guests and viewers. Watch videos. Facebook. Com become tv. And now on booktv, npr media correspondent David Folkenflik talk about the rice and near fall of rue bert Murdoch News Corp and how mr. Murdoch was able to survive the recent bribery and phone hacking scandal in england. This is a little over an hour. [applause] thank you. Thank you for coming. Just turn the lights up. You have to make noise every now and then and well know youre there. Right now we cant tell. I get to introduce david so let me just bear with me a minute while i read what they wrote for me. Did you write it for me . David folkenflik has been nprs media correspondent since 2004. He previously covered media and politics for the Baltimore Sun and edited the 2011 book page one, inside the New York Times and the future of journalism. He was covered murdoch extensively and has been a protect commentator in the hacking scandal. His new book murdochs world. Last of the old media empires. Good to have you. Back in my home. Before we try to answer the questions, did Rupert Murdoch save journalist thats before you try answer the question thats why youre here journalism hash tag. You covered the media for ten plus years before npr and Baltimore Sun, and covering the u. S. Media means covering Rupert Murdoch. Rupert murdoch and company did not cooperate in this book project. How far did they go to stop you, if at all . Nothing rev reprehensible, they took a few months and decided not to participate. I asked to speak tore mr. Murdoch and his family members members and they said no thanks. That cited a number of proceedings. Criminal proceedings in london that are real and some of their top former lieutenants there. Which we can get into. A book in which they offered great access to a magazine writer michaelwolf, and they felt burned by the extend to which they revealed. Thes to him. And they were concern what would look like in the hacking scandal. So there were a number of executives at various arms and outlets in the larger murdoch realm said, wed love to talk to you, we cant. The word from the big dog. I set up to talk with minute of the most Senior Executives within the corporation, and within 24 hours of our longplanned interview, he got a call from one of murdochs top aides and said you cannot do this. Luckily, having walk this beat for a while, not only had a reservoir of knowledge and interviews banked and i also persevere evidence with senior figures and people from the reporter level up to the Top Executive ranks and was able to get them to talk to me and rather patiently walk me through key moments, your pets are still alive and all of that. Yes. Thats always good a sign. You make the case in the book that Rupert Murdochs impact on media almost cant be overstated. Most people here are familiar but what is the short version . I think that murdoch is pretty unquestionably, at the moment, and for the last several decades, been the most influential and Important Media figure in the English Speaking world. You have a guy who whose holding decision its a publicly traded company that he has run and yet he runs it like a family concern, with reason. He structured it in such a way where he and his children essentially control almost a pure majority of votes in such a way where its impossible to hold them in check. But they have holdings that span six continents. The Company Controls 65 to 70 of major newspaper circulation his native australia. Until the scandal they controlled 40 of National Newspaper circumstance nation the uk, which is a National Newspaper market. That is now down to 3638 , but still in american minds quite astonishing. The most powerful private broadcaster in the uk, and what is called sky or fox news here, fx, the simpsons this list goes on and on. Wall street journal New York Post. He shapes politics and Public Perception at both a high and low level. Mass market tab tabloids that reflect his pop list center right, reagan democrat sensibility, and the way in which he reaches elites and decisionmakers and thoughtinfluencers through papers like the wall street journal and the times of london. So he is trying to influence Public Policy to show the connection he has to keep making money by influencing people in powerful positions to help hem on his more lucrative sides, the foxes and skies of the world. You had some colorful characters to work with. He is bigger than any one country. He has citizen ship here so he can get involved in television here. And he is mad at the world but still kind of motivated a lot by past and present allegiances to family. I think he is his own man. But i would say this family is important. Humanly important to him. He hugely important. In some ways beyond borders. He is a creator. Saw these weaker television stations and took them and trunk them together at a time when people thought they w. Valuable, into a network that became the most popular in the country for many years. He did a similar thing in britain where he wasnt aired awarded one of the first early satellite channels for britain, so he beamed up to a different satellite and got people inexpensive satellite dishes and britts blue their mind. Said we didnt say you could do that and he said, i dont care. So he innovates through sir culp venges, and itsed a the fine observe yapses of the law is not his strong suit. Likes to tweak authority. Need the elites. Where does that come from . You mentioned family and that has to be right. His father was respected political journalist in australia. And he was the guy who revealed that you recall the movie gallipoli when you were allowed to like mel gibson movies, about this terrible illfated campaign in world war i where british commanders sent australian and new zealand troops to slaughter, and his father wrote this missive saying what would happen if the australians were betrayed in this helped forge a sense of identity as australia worked towards independence and nationhood. He got some of the details wrong, as he later acknowledged, but propelled his father to fame, and murdoch many years later formed a Production Company to make sure that movie was made in a way to september meant his fathers reputation. He had the sense his father was never given the credit he was due felt his fair had been screwed out of his Holdings Just before his fathers death, and murdoch made his way. His father was a knight and his mother philadelphia a huge estate, but he had to make his way by being given only a daily parent in adelaide, a forgotten city on the coast of australia, and he was sort of nurtured in the sense that the elites, the powers that be behind closed doors were screwing him and his family over and this drove him, propelled him to show he understood newspapers better, the command australian better. He connected with them. Wasnt going to be elitist about what they should be reading. As long as they wanted to read michigan in the newspaper it was a Public Service to provide it. And he used that sense of grievance and that sense of section with what he felt was the common man and his gut instinct. The sense of being motivated by the feeling of being disrespected runs throughout the book. You say that murdoch and i guess more the executives in the Company Defined themselves by who they think their enemies are, whether its the bbc or unions or whatever. Its a distinctive culture for this company. Comes from him. Its a strong sense of kind of australians first. The australians throughout top positions. I think david hill, fox sports and helping to really lead this new fox sports 1 competitor to espn out here in l. A. He is an australian, paul allen, the head of the New York Post is an australian Robert Thompson the head and ceo of news corp, the slimmed down newspaper branch of the familys holdings, who was before that the top editor the wall street journal. He is australian, and you have some brits in as well and its an interesting mix. I sort of talk about this under the makeship, an australian notion of fraternity that transcends anything at college. Where you look out for your mate. If your fight is in a brawl, you help. Built on things like experiences during world war ii and prison camps where australian guys risked their own lives to save one another. And. Also defined on his inside the circle and who is outside the circle and you can see that in britain, murdoch turn failing newspapers, the news of the world and the sun, into very successful brawling combative, center right publications and they called him the dirty digger and a way of diminishing him as being an australian, a tabloid scandal monger, even though there were other tabloids there. And he thought these guys are locking me out. This guy went to oxford him father was a knight. A newspaper proprietor, forces his way into the top ranks by buying the times of london, which has never made him a cent, and the sunday times, but still somehow even though Prime Ministers are coming to meet him halfway across the world and he goes and dine with World Leaders all the time, he thinks the elites are against him and its a crucial thing, not exactly a rose bud moment but a crucial thing from very early on where he feels that he and his fellow australians are never going to get the time of day. Are they right about that . I dont think thats correct at all. If you look at the way in which power has bent to him, he has essentially seep that the establishment is against him but he created his own establish. If has the former head of spain on his corporate board. He has the former assistant torn general under president bush on his board, and joel cline, former assistant attorney general anywhere president clinton is one of his Top Executives in educational division. He meets with michael bloomberg, centrist liberal republican mogul, another billionaire to talk about immigration preform and Charter School reform. This is not a guy who is shut out off things. Its fascinating to watch. Human gestures mean so much. 1995, tony blair, flies to a small island off the coast of australia and theres a corporate retreat there for news corp, and he flies there, the opposition leader, wants to throw out the conservatives and the elections that going happen two years later, and he makes no promises but instead of meeting murdoch at a property in london, he flies ten thousand miles to say im going to be able to do business with you, and murdochs genius with his papers is that unlike, say, the tell gravel for the wall street journal or New York Times you dont know where theyll end up. They toggle betweenster left politicians, centrist, not pure liberals, centrist figures of the left and conservative figures on the right, and by toggling back and forth, politics hope they just might get that support, and he supported Hillary Clinton when she ran for senate in 2000, centrist bran of democrat he felt he cuckoo business with. Theres five myths we all have about Rupert Murdoch, and one of them is that. He is really not a personage of the far right. He is much less conservative than the most strident voices on fox news and less conservative tom roger ails and the wall street journal editorial page prior those acquiring the journal. Reporters at the journal say we got a break on this whole Mainstreet Miami ya is left wing bus the page is so conservative it gives us cover. He, for example in 2007, announced he would make news corp Carbon Neutral and he would have a fiveyear deadline to do that and they beat the deadline. On the other hand on twitter he makes clear he has no patience for Government Intervention to force certain kinds of taxation or other policies that would mandate reductions, but he believes in it. Violent swing necessary climate in australia you cant simply ascribe to chance. And yet his news organizations, if you read his australian papers, they absolutely bludgeoned the centrist but left of center labor government for taking some steps to do more than just sort of embrace corporate volunteer tear action. There were car been emission policies that were sense as sensible, taxation, similar to how we dealt with acid raid under president george w. Bush president george h. W. Bush but you can see equivalents talking about Climate Change casting doubt, and the scientific community, as most people know by now, that knowledge is shaped very much by what we see in the mainstream press. Theres fundamental agreement that it is occurring and theres real disagreement how thats going to play out and what it means means and thats not the debate in murdoch produce and fox news. His evolution on that is interesting. I want to ask about the other myths. One of them was that he only cares about profits, and you say thats not the case. Well, he doesnt only care about profits. The times of london has never made him a cent. The New York Post which he has owned since 1977, has never made him a cent. He create a little bit like one of the other myths that things turn to gold. He created the daily, tablet only experiment and a lot of people who really understand Digital Media and how people consume media, thought this was a mistake, and that there were mistakes how they approached it and at the same time i thought, look, its like bell labs. He is trying something. Even as he has print products hes trying a daily newspaper only available on tablet. Give him credit for that. That was something he lost many tens of millions of dollars and finally shut it down as a gesture to shareholders that he understood that he cooperate just do everything he wanted. Why do you think the daily didnt work . I think they ultimately when youre doing that and it happens to occur at an incredible crash in advertising and print ask digital, thats a problem. The recession was a problem. He had to figure out how to do things. They ultimately werent able to figure out whether they wanted it a completely Walled Garden that would be really like a magazine you cooperate do much more than physically hand it to somebody else or be a ware to share it online to try to draw people in. They didnt really want to do that because murdoch is off the belief youre going to charge somebody you need to charge them for it, and very confused presence to me. I didnt know whether i could read it or not. Thats the problem. And the people inside were desperate to figure out a way to create a mirror site that you could share on twitter and do other things and you would see tweets seeing, theres this really cool thing that my boyfriend wrote on the daily and, sorry, you cant read it here. And thats not actually a great advertising pitch. So. One of the other myths, people tag him with the idea he has been bad for journalism, and you say he doesnt destroy Good Journalism or hasnt. These were myths. Had to construct them in a way so it seemed as though you were destroying sacred cows. I wouldnt say he uniform hill destroys Good Journalism. I if you look at the wall street journal its not clear to me i think something in the order of seven hundred to 800 journalists on the editorial side, and i dont think that had the bank crofts controlled dow jones, you could have that many journalists there i think he sustained the journal. It has a sophisticated and Smart International report that is more ambitious that what preceded him. I think he is more interested in politics. The headlines are purposeyer and graphics more engaging and use of photographs the journal was charming but something of a holdout, an archaic look and he brought it along. That said, even as the journal, found several dozen instances where the two top several dozen. Well, these were offered to me as representative samples rather than the full catalogue of the best hits, but there are instances in which reporters said, gosh, he is pulling two top editors and one theyre pulling us to the right each time on these stories by raising questions, and some of the questions are smart oneses but theyre never doing it ever pulling at the left. Pulling the democrat up higher in the story. Never asking the question about whether there are ties with the republican to industry. Its always in one direction, and a certain point it felt to a large number of the reporters and editors, many of whom still work there, their report was being pulled to the right, and whether that meant they were in the center, they always said they were, or actually ended up being on the right, is a matter of dispute between the editors, the top editorsed and theyre reporting staff. Lets shift over across the bond a little bit. The opening theme in the book, murdoch in a luxury hotel room, apologizing, and claiming this is he is humbly apologizes to the Parent Office milly dower, a murder victim. 13yearold. Apologizing for his journalists hacking into her phone messagings and reracing some of them before the police could see them. How you start the book. I thought it was a Pivotal Moment for a variety of reasons. Gets the question of family, and ill explain why gets the question of this was the thing that he testified, the most humble day of my life, and he was essentially apologizing to the nation and the parliament during the testimony, in this private moment with people in the room involved, himself anded an adviser, will lewis, mark lewis no relation, the lawyer for th