Newsgate: ‘I knew nothing’. But we learnt something …

It was billed as the most important day of his career, a make-or-break moment that, if he screwed up, would cost him the chairmanship of News Corporation, the worldwide media conglomerate that he created.

But in the end, it was more farce than forensic inquiry as an activist from the agit-prop protest group UK Uncut (Watch HERE) bundled a foam pie into Rupert Murdoch’s face as the four-hour session drew to a close.

So what did we learn from the first, and probably last appearance of of the world’s most famous media mogul before a parliamentary select committee in Britain?

It was a Wizard of Oz moment. Looking more than the sum of his 80 years, Murdoch senior stumbled under sustained questioning from MPs, most notably the Labour rottweiler Tom Watson.

He paused before answers, asked for questioned to be repeated, and had to be rescued on more than one occasion by his son, James. Here are my top ten takeaways from Tuesday’s session.

1. Murdoch calls the editor of the Sunday Times in London “almost every Saturday” – but only to see what stories were being lined up for the next day’s edition, not, perish the thought, to influence the paper’s editorial direction. That would be contrary to the legal undertakings he gave when he bought the paper in 1981.

2. Murdoch would speak to the editor of the News of the World about only once a month. When asked what he would say, Murdoch replied: “What’s doing?”

3. The editor he sees most is Robert Thomson, the editor of the Wall Street Journal, with whom he shares an office building in New York.

4. He works 10 to 12 hours a day.

5. When visiting prime ministers at Downing Street, he goes in by the “back door” to avoid photographers. “I do what I’m told,” he said, claiming the arrangement was at the behest of No 10.

6. Murdoch’s young children by his second wife, Wendi Deng, played with the offspring of Gordon and Sarah Brown. He “very much hopes” that he will be friends with the Browns again.

7. He has a habit of knocking the table when making important points, to the irritation of his son James, who asked him to “stop gesticulating”.

8. Murdoch didn’t close the News of the World for commercial reasons; instead he shut the title down because it had lost the trust of its readers.

9. He wears a vest under his shirt.

10. Tuesday 19 July 2011 was the most humble day of his life.

The Guardian HERE
Read the transcript, watch UnCut’s attack HERE

Follow this extraordinary story:
• ABC News 24
• The Guardian
• New York Times
• Financial Times: Shares rally but questions remain for Murdochs

WATCH: Hackgate, The Movie

Tess Lawrence: Murdoch most foul:

DOES it really matter if Rupert used Saw Palmetto to increase his libido to service his young wife?

Does it really matter that despite industrial strength botox and other wrinkle spakfillers Rupert Murdoch still looks like a pantomime Dame and decades older than his Mother ?

You can’t blame him for wanting to be Peter Pan for his Wendi.

Here’s the headline. Came to me in a flash. “Linga Longa Denga” Gotcha!

Does it really matter that the late Professor John Avieson, who wrote a still unpublished and not entirely flattering biography of Sir Keith Murdoch, was warned by Dame Elisabeth Murdoch at a social gathering that the book would never see the light of day as long as she lived?

Does it really matter if Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal in 2007 as marital insurance for his ‘China Doll’ (a more polite employee nickname than Chairman’s Mao) to call her own in the event of his premature death or ejaculation as Chairman or in the event of clan ructions or corporate infarction?

Well yes, brothers and sisters. It matters. And it matters mightily.

Okay, the WSJ might not be the Taj Mahal, but it’s up there in media mogul terms of journalistic prestige. Or was. Maybe now it will get its mojo back.

Of course, Rupert might have bought it for the former Deng Wen Ge (thank you Eric Ellis) to get back at the Bancroft family who’d owned it for 100 years, because just seven years earlier, the Journal published an article about Wendi he didn’t like.

You know, like the obverse of the famous ad—he hated the company so much he bought it.

He has a reputation as a man who cradles grudges and who never forgets a slight.

But intercorporate rutting is a boardroom artform. I believe the Bancroft family is still represented on the Board.

This stuff is right up the rectal columns of stabloids like The Sun and The News of the World and the Murdoch media in general. Why shouldn’t it be? What’s good for the goose is good for the propaganda.

Tess Lawrence: Read the full article with full links, Vids, HERE