Murdochgate = Watergate?

The Guardian's John Harris has written an article looking at how Murdochgate has unmasked the UK's political elite and how it will affect civil society in the future. I highly recommend you read this.

As the title implies I want to look at his allusion to Watergate at the end impacts things. First of all I want to direct you to a piece Noam Chomsky wrote in 1973, when admittedly the Watergate scandal had been running a bit longer (but then again info moves much faster now) but it is still very much a contemporary assessment. While Chomsky doesn't specifically predict the moral majority and Reagan, which Harris highlights as a key outcome of Watergate, he does accurately predict an increase and entrenchment of executive power over other branches of the US government.

There are also strong elements of Chomsky's main criticism, that Nixon was punished not for wrongdoing but for breaking the rules. For upsetting the cosy elite. In a similar sense Murdoch is receiving so much criticism because he used his influence to sway the political parties to do his will. This is not right, the press exists to influence the masses, to manufacture consent on issues the elite have already agreed upon. Even then it was only the revelations such as those about Milly Dowler that gave politicians enough cover to act in their own interests and take down Murdoch. Indeed Murdoch's strong connections to the elite before the past two weeks and even now is not a particularly large issue, other media groups seem to tacitly accept that influence and connection to the rich and powerful is a good thing, they were more jealous that they didn't hold as much power as Murdoch than worried about such close links between power and the fourth estate.

Finally to quote a paragraph of Chomsky's:

"Still more cynical is the current enthusiasm [from the media] over the health of the American political system, as shown by the curbing of Nixon and his subordinates, or by the civilized compromise that permitted Nixon and Kissinger to kill Cambodians and destroy their land only until August 15, truly a model of how a democracy should function, with no disorder or ugly disruption."

We are seeing a similar compartmentalisation of Murdoch's wrongdoing here, it is a British problem, it is a problem only with his papers, the TV arms of News Corporation in the UK and US is seperate and shouldn't be blamed. Close ties to a media oligarch by politicians in both main parties are seen as a sign of shame but not an indictment of the British political system as a whole.

The myth is still being maintained that this is a scandal that can be dealt with by the political class even though it is the creation of the political class. Removing Murdoch's influence removes an especially egregious symptom but it certainly does not cure the disease.