Murdoch Mayhem: Media, Markets and Morals.

Or, On the market as an arbitrator of ethical practice.

An empire crumbles. A week or two of headline news, trumping other seemingly more disastrous and immediate problems - famine, debt crises, NHS privatisation carried out with an invisible cloaking device. No time for that, with a scandal that deepens every day. The police, the free press, the Government - who in their right might could believe that these humble institutions, with only our interests at heart, could be corrupt??

Murdoch and his worldwide organisation have taken a blow. Many hope

it is the start of a complete downfall of News Corp. Others hope it will herald a shift in journalistic practice in the UK; toward a better, cleaner, free press. A free press which has no questionable links to police or politicians. A new start for all!

But before we invent a new calendar, counting year Zero from now - the year democracy became clean - perhaps we should look at some of the reasons as to why these curious relationships developed in the first place, and what it is that has caused us all to finally become awakened to it.

Rightly so, it has been describes as a scandal which cuts through the entirety of the UK's power bloc. The esteemed Professor Effra from the University for Strategic Optimism has outlined a selection of reasons as to why this scandal highlights the inadequacy of the 'political-social-economic-juridical' structure, in the hope that taken with the crisis of the Eurozone, the collapse of consent in parliament, and crises in the Crown Prosecution Service and the Met, the News Corp scandal may open a gap into which the recent momentum of dissent may gain an extra, crucially more widespread, burst. Effra's polemic is ultimately directed at David Cameron; this collapse of consent will see his head roll next, perhaps. But it's a bittersweet optimism, for as Effra knows, some new crony would take his place pretty quick.

On Newsnight a few days ago Carl Bernstein, a big player in the exposure of the Watergate scandal (Dustin Hoffman in All the President's Men), remarked on how appalling it is that we, the British public, had allowed the institution to get like this. Erm, as opposed to the righteous 'free press', and economic elite in the US? Obviously not: Bernstein himself reported in 1977 that over 400 journalists were employed at the CIA. Thirty years later, who's surprised to learn that the Met is no different?

So we call for transparency in Government, we call for a police service with a clean conscience. And lastly, a press that regulates itself responsibly. Because the notion of free press is fundamental to our way of life. But can we really equate corporate agendas and political populism with free speech? I am less sure. Laura Charlotte, on her blog, writes about the abandonment of News Corp's BSkyB bid, noting that it seems that Murdoch jumped before being pushed and that the concentration of power became too much and burst. She concludes that public outcry was too great for News Corp to plough on with the BSkyB takeover, and that the British public will not accept this concentration of power. But what is this public? What was this outcry? Has there not been campaigns against Murdoch since he moved to Wapping? Was there not controversy after the Sun's reporting on the Hillsborough disaster and the sinking of the Belgrano? Were we unaware of the political campaigns and the cosy relationships with the governments from Thatcher onwards? We knew what News Corp was all about, but a bigger player was at hand, sustaining their crusade: it was the belief that this unstoppable force was an unstoppable force. And then one day, a couple of weeks ago, this belief just stopped. Suddenly everyone just realised.

Charlie Brooker was on to something with his bumbling metaphor. Murdoch was God, he owned the sun. He wanted the sky too. Cue the 'tornado ripping through an orphanage' of the hacking scandal and "What kind of a God would allow such a thing?" But who are these followers who suddenly doubt this media God?

We all know in what terms Žižek would explain this: the (Lacanian) big Other's belief in the power of Murdoch could no longer be sustained. It wasn't that some revelation had changed our mind about Murdoch, but that the fragile illusion surrounding Murdoch had finally collapsed. Somewhere, Žižek recounts the useful tale of an executive of a jewellery company: everyone new the jewellery was crap, but it wasn't until the executive made a joke about the shoddiness of his own jewels at a company party that the whole lot became worthless. Until that moment everyone could go along with the charade, as if no one really knew. But once the truth was out there, bam! This newly found knowledge by the big Other needs to be accounted for, so in step the financial markets, the ethereal life of capital, to consider how best to respond.

So are we to thereby conclude that the virtuous market is an arbitrator of ethical behaviour? For here we have Murdoch put in his place, 'humbled', if you will, by the market, right? Ultimately it was not the appalled public who acted to stop Murdoch's continuing expansion of power, nor the withdrawal of customers who buy the News of the World. I bet a whole heap of people in this country just don't care about Murdoch's goons and their unethical antics. No, it was the media attention, endowing an evermore glistening gleam of controversy around the issue; the politicians seeing the opportunity to point out all the things that are wrong with media, in hope that they will deflect some of the controversy away from themselves; and the advertisers who pulled out of the News of the World, in an attempt to prove that their business ethics are superior to that of News Corp's. In short, it was the impression generated by an industry of representation that seemed to suggest that the News Corp brand was toxic. The actual level of toxicity is irrelevant. These occurrences, playing out on news bulletins and continuous updates induced a reaction by the market that forced News Corp to focus all their energy on the only card they had left to play: PR. Cue apologies in the newspapers and a few hours of theatre before a committee. Sure enough, the company's shares rose after the hearing.

Thus the direction of change seems to link directly to the West's dependence and infatuation with representation and public relations - the committed assurance that everything will appear to be doing OK. For is this not the same logic which ensures the prosperity and continuing of global dominance of the Western Powers, specifically the USA? Blind belief in the system will ensure the system's survival; and the system works for those who believe, i.e., those with the capital. This logic, with its heart in Wall Street, has been intensified and trotted out around the world since the 70's. With Thatcher lapping it up then, and with no one since having enough power and/or balls to make drastic changes, it is no wonder that the Government is in cahoots with big business, and moreover with big business which has the power to widely influence public opinion. It is also no wonder that such a large proportion of the Met's press office staff are ex-News of the World journalists. For, as the logic beholds, the appearance of a smooth running police force is half way to ensuring the smooth running of it. But we shouldn't be asking ourselves where these press office workers used to work, but why the police invest so heavily in public relation.

Because it's the same story in Government. Why do we question Cameron's 'judgement' in hiring a probably-corrupt ex-News of the World editor as his advisor without questioning why it is OK to have the Prime Minister, so frequently harping on about his Government's transparency, hiring someone who's expertise revolve around bull-shitting? To convince the public that bad ideas are good, that ideas designed to benefit the few will benefit the many - that was the job of Andy Coulson, as it was for Alastair Campbell before him. Does not the very existence of such a position highlight the absolutely scheming and menacing nature of the political class, their complete commitment to a very narrow and particular vision of the shape of our democracy? This commitment relies on a massive ubiquitous industry of media and public relation, for while this relationship works in favour of the elite, things can just contintue as normal. It reminds one of the Gaddafi situation. Until hell broke loose in Libya, Gaddafi was our pal. He was a business partner. Cameron went on an arms selling binge in spring just as the Arabs were rising. Saddam Hussein was our ally in the Middle-East not long before. In both situations, a bubble of belief was burst and our friends became our enemies, with those back home who are complicit in the problem take the moral highground in an environment devoid of morals, dependent only on business, opportunities, contracts and trade.

So what it all comes back to, it seems to me, is market logic and its pervasive spread beyond the realm of business and finance into the structures of power which run the country, and the alienation that this gloss posits between the ruling and the ruled. This spread has occurred in line with what David Harvey refers to as the 'financialization of everything', whereby the financial condition of an institution is increasingly more economically important that production. Shares supersede sales. This is one aspect of Neoliberal economics, in which all areas of social life can be effectively maintained by the market: the drive towards profits will ensure prosperity, the trickle-down effect will allow a dribble of cash for those at the bottom, and the best things on offer will be naturally selected by the market to prosper. As a result, we have Starbucks, Wall-Mart, Tesco and News Corp. We have monopolies, and goods made cheap by outsourcing (exploiting foreign labour), streamlining (redundancies) and unfair payments to suppliers. We have Corporate Social Responsibility - a pay-off for an unequally weighted distribution of wealth; sponsored good-will gestures. We have a global energy industry where companies (and recipients of tax revenues back home) enjoy the returns of natural resources, instead of those who live alongside those resources. We have Western healthcare increasingly privatised, competition-driven, with sickening results in the US and a hope in the UK to follow in those footsteps. We have McDonalds as an official Olympic restaurant. Irony, anyone? Meanwhile, global trade mechanisms don't make it financially viable to supply medicine and resources to the poorest countries, where people die from diseases which are solved in an afternoon in the 'developed' world. Investment in these places is not deemed viable, as the infrastructure does not bode well for good returns to investors. Back home, government subsidies and tax incentives ensure that poorer countries can't compete with richer ones, so their exports become all but worthless. We have the ties between capital and government becoming increasingly blurred. We have a plutocracy, who in turn take orders from the unelected IMF, the biggest

threat to the democratic principle in the West. Neoliberal logic is pushed, enforced, by the IMF who hold countries to ransom - take Greece, for example - so their interest rates and opportunities to borrow capital are only preferable if it appears to foreign investors that there are opportunities to make good returns on their investment. In other words, Greece's only hope is that others can culturally and economically acquire their country. Only then, will the market act as a friend to Greece. The present UK Government's economic policy is often greatly encouraged as being the correct plan because it has appeased the markets. This means that wealthy organisations around the world see opportunities to make money at our expense. No longer will we fund our own services with our own wealth, instead we will pay wealthy people to employ people with low wages to do the same thing, no better, with great profits for them, and tax incentives to stop them moving away. The recent care-home controversies, privatised prisons, and the money spent on PFI's in healthcare are good examples of companies creaming profits from tax payers without doing a better job. And increasingly so, prosperity is contingent on the ability for companies to appear to have stock worth buying, and wealth remains suspended, always in potential, never quite cashed-in because it's mostly abstract. Even so, policies enacted to drive this abstract wealth has real social implications.

So basically, the market's treatment of Murdoch and his company is analogous to severing an arm infected beyond repair, when all along that arm belonged too a braindead zombie. The zombie is amoral, it is only incidental that this time, in the wake of hacking revelations, the market sought to sever a toxic limb. Chances are, however, that this limb will grow back. The market has become the one thing that can cripple an organisation, and it's the same thing that allows it to thrive should the perception of the organisation remain positive. It is because the Government play the same game that they followed suit in condemning News Corp. That's damage limitation. One casualty, News Corp, to ensure the survival of hegemonic economic discourse, the sweeping financialization of everything, the growth and withering of wealth being dependent on speculations, speculations being dependent on the mediation of fabricated mass opinion, an endemic preoccupation with public relations. Turns out, after all, that these other seemingly more pressing issues - famine, healthcare, EU bail-outs, US arguments on defaults and taxes - they're all hidden somewhere in this Murdoch scandal, all products of a strategy of abstract global wealth.

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interesting things to read...

Richard Peet - Geography of Power for an insight into the economic mechanisms, theories and policies which are becoming more prevalent around the world, and the institutions which act to maintain the dominance of such ideas. Also, a few alternatives.

The work of David Harvey, for effects of neoliberalism in the UK, US and japan, and a look at the restructuring and redefinition of classes since WW2.

Slavoj Žižek's Lacanian twist on Marxist theory, always entertaining. Big Others and symbolic orders - a social psychoanalysis for our contemporary cultural landscape.