Crouching Tiger, Slapping Wendi

All hail, Wendi Deng. It took her a split second to attack the guy hurling a pie at Rupert Murdoch, slapping so hard that the sound was picked up by the cameras. According to the BBC’s Nick Robinson she then started shouting “I got him, I got him.” First tiger mums, now tiger wives. “Mr Murdoch, your wife has a good left hook,” said Tom Watson afterwards. Better than his, at any rate. For all the hype, it was a strikingly uninformative session. About ten minutes into this Trial of Rupert Murdoch, it was pretty clear the committee was not going to get a “you can’t handle the truth!” moment out the Dirty Digger. He is a man of very few words (I’d say fewer than 17 per sentence, the ideal tabloid length), and at times it seemed hard to goad him into giving a response, far less into anger. This was not so much a piece of political theatre, but more a Victorian curiosity show: come and see the most boring interlocutors in Britain clash with the least talkative media mogul in the world. Murdoch was very playing the crouching tiger.

This was meant to last an hour, but lasted almost three. I had expected Watson, at least, to put a bit of spunk into the day. Not so. “Murdoch senior, good day sir,” he said. Not a word to Mr Murdoch Jr. His strategy seemed to be to ask detailed questions of Murdoch about the investigation, and demonstrate that the Dirty Digger does not know the answer. And why not? Because he doesn’t run News International, he pays other people to do that. Murdoch told Watson that News of the World represented 1 per cent of his global business, and that James – based in London – knew the answers and could give them. I suspect they’d prepped it that way, because in Select Committee meetings MPs don’t normally specify who answers. But Watson didn’t want answers, he wanted (it seemed) to ask detailed questions and reveal that Murdoch did not know. “Why did you not dismiss Neville Thurbeck?” asks Watson. “Because I hadn’t heard of him,” replied Rupert. Nor had he heard about the bribery allegation against Thurbeck. Of course, he really should have. I suspect that Murdoch considers himself guilty of negligence. To a Brit, who imagines that Murdoch actively runs his British papers, it would have seemed as if he didn’t know what was going on in his own company. And while he can’t be expected to know that many of the names or the details that Watson asked of him, you would think he’d know that Taylor had been paid £600,000. The session gave Murdoch’s corporate critics in New York enough to argue that the CEO has lost grip of the company. Rupert wrongly said that Colin Myler, formed editor of the News of the World, was involved in the now-notorious  Harbottle and Lewis legal review. Strikingly, Myler denied this through a spokesman almost instantly.

Rupert Murdoch opened saying that this was “the most humble day” of his life, but at times he risked giving the opposite impression. For example, when Watson asked him if he had read his committee’s last report, Murdoch almost laughed as if to say “as if!”. I can sympathise, but he shouldn’t have given that impression. When Jim Sherridan said how Blair “went halfway round the world” to visit him at the now–famous trip to a News Corporation conference  in Australia, Murdoch couldn’t even remember it. Events that are totemic in Westminster folklore seem utterly irrelevant to Murdoch. And the reverse: he spoke about his father’s role in exposing  Gallipoli, something not many in that room knew or care about. If Murdoch Snr will be remembered for anything from today’s hearing (other than taking ten minutes to fully recover from a shaving foam pie strike) it will be those facial gestures.The puzzlement, bemusement, the shrug, those hand gestures that kept being picked up by the microphone. But nothing he said will be remembered – save for his line about being humbled. 

James Murdoch was very impressive, I thought, and will have been a surprise to News International’s many critics. And those who loathe Rupert would find it hard to hate James: clean-cut, polite and without a trace of the pantomime villain, his knowledge of the saga was wide-ranging, and he was also honest about what he didn’t know. He didn’t look shifty, or evasive. When he spoke about the News of the World, he seemed quite sincere in saying that its fate, while important, was less so than the fact that it had violated the trust of its readers. When he spoke about his “anger” at the hacking, it was also credible.

And the upshot?  A Tory MP (who is sympathetic to Murdoch) texted me to say that he was disappointed: he had expected an evil genius. Instead, the curtain was pulled back – and there was a kindly old man running this  Emerald City. “I wanted to see a wizard,” complained my MP. Many will have tuned in wanting to see the devil. Many more will have turned in wanting to see the historic showdown promised. Unless I missed it, there was nothing that will make a YouTube moment. Unless they make a slow-mo version of the Wendi slap.

PS: To declare an interest, I worked for News International for two five-year periods: for The Times and as an outside columnist for the News of the World. I also briefly worked for Paul Farrelly, the Labour MP, for whom I made coffee so delicious that he kindly gave me my first byline in national journalism on the Independent on Sunday. And to declare another interest: while the hacking scandal is sickening and News International’s response to it almost suicidally inept, I believe that Murdoch has been a tremendous sponsor of quality British journalism.