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Les Miserables Murdochs

Wendi & Rupert at last night's premiere

Rupert and Wendi Murdoch graced the red carpet at last night's Sydney State Theatre premiere of Les Miserables joining local actors and the two male stars of the film Hugh Jackman and Russel Crowe.


The Murdochs were in Melbourne last week to attend the memorial service for the late Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, Rupert's much admired mother who died at the grand age of 103.

The Shuttle attended many parties at the home of Matt Handbury and his then wife Fiona at their harbour side mansion Altona (currently being rented by the Jackman clan). Fiona, who has since divorced Matt often spoke of the animosity between the Handburys and Murdochs. Matt inherited his mother Helen Handbury's  magazine empire which she as Rupert's sister inherited from Sir Keith Murdoch.

Now a Murdoch family insider Rodney E.Lever who assisted Murdoch in the creation of his media empire has penned a series of articles for the political website Independent Australia telling of the strained relationship that now bedevils the Murdochs : Rupert is estranged from his oldest son Lachlan and daughter Elisabeth who is married to Britain's ace PR consultant Mathew Freud.
While Matt Handbury attended Dame Elisabeth's service in Melbourne as did Lachlan and his wife Sarah Murdoch (Fiona has since become the Countess of Dartmouth), the Murdochs all went their separate ways and declined to attend the refreshments afterwards or to mingle with the other 1000 guests.

Hopefully in 3D-Murdoch The Movie

A film script on the life of Rupert Murdoch is being hawked around Hollywood.

This news comes courtesy of Franklin Leonard's annual Black List. Leonard is regarded as 'Hollywood's most important soothsayer" according to the LA Times with his list each year of unmade film projects. 

He compiles the list by talking to LA's most influential agents and studio bosses and any script that gets 5 mentions is included  with the added bonus it generates so much industry chat that the inclusion is regarded as a lifeline for ailing screenplays.

'Murdoch' was commissioned by the UK's Channel 4 and written by respected TV script writer Jesse Armstrong but 4 decided against making it. It's now being handled by a top agency Creative Artist's Agency who are looking for a producer and backer.

The script blurb reads : "As his family gathers for his birthday party, Rupert Murdoch tries to convince his elder children to alter the family trust so that his two youngest children by his newest wife will have voting rights in the company."

Ouch ! A little close to home. 

When Rupert divorced his second wife Anna Murdoch Mann , the mother of children Lachlan, James and Elisabeth, Anna went in tough with heavy New York lawyers and  secured a very profitable trust which she controls that holds huge swathes of News Corp shares in her children's names although  she was forced off the News board in the process. 

And she had rather unkind words to say about Rupert in a 2001 interview where she described him as "hard, ruthless and determined".

No-one quite knows what size of inheritance Wendi Murdoch's 2 daughters Chloe and Grace may be in for. With  News Corp  headquartered in Delaware with it's secretive corporate laws, the outside world doesn't really know quite what the media empire or Murdoch is worth although it will be in the billions of dollars.

 Long before Wendi appeared on the scene Murdoch also made a famous faux pas in 1997 when he referred to "my 3 children " while talking about succession in a press conference that drew the ire of his daughter Prudence Murdoch MacLeod, his first child from marriage to Patricia Booker. Never shy, Prudence got a public apology out of her father.

So it's all there-plenty of meat for Murdoch the film !

Rupert ?

Who would play the roles in this gripping drama where the clan get-together to discuss high finance?.

As the media baron Rupert Murdoch  step forward Barry Humphries who played Rupert in the 1983 film Selling Hitler: The Story of the Hitler Diaries. Humphries has aged nicely with the same crumpled look as Rupert.

Matt Damon is a cinch for the role of the American accented Lachlan Murdoch and surely  Sarah Murdoch with thespian ambitions could play herself. New actor Leighton Meester could do a good Elisabeth Murdoch. Hayden Christensen with specs could play James Murdoch.

That leaves roles for the two who are bound to play  a leading part in the carve-up of Murdoch's billions-Wendi Murdoch and Mathew Freud. Answers on a postcard please.

# you can download Leonard's Black List here and see other scripts 'Murdoch' is competing with. The Shuttle's favourite : Abraham Lincoln : Vampire Hunter. The future president's mother is killed by a vampire and Abe spends the rest of his life hunting down the killers !

News Corp Watch



Rupert today !

Possibly the most pleasing thing at last night's gala dinner was the fact Rupert Murdoch has abandoned that dark hair dye and returned his locks to a respectable grey.

The occasion was the News Awards at the Museum of Contemporary Art and a swag of Murdoch children attended : James Prudence, Elisabeth, and Lachlan. Missing was wife Wendi and his 2 youngest daughters.

 Son-in -law Mathew Freud ( married to Elisabeth) was also spotted.

Rupert's all time favourite publication The Australian received a Newspaper of The Year award presented by the great man himself.

News chairman John Hartigan presented his Chairman's Award to the editor of Adelaide's The Advertiser, Mel Mansell, while journalist Anthony Klan won the major prize for his investigation and features on the "waste and mismanagement in the $16.2 billion schools stimulus package".

The Oz says today :" While the BER story was largely ignored by other media outlets, The Australian published more than 200 articles about the program, shifting public opinion and forcing the federal government to launch a $14 million inquiry into the scheme by businessman Brad Orgill."

That inquiry found the whole thing was a major beat-up- possibly a complete waste of the $14M cost but hey-it nearly help deliver the reins of government into the hands of the Coalition and Tony Abbott, something the News Corp media would have desired.

Associate editor Cameron Stewart received the award for the Scoop of the Year for his " expose of counter-terrorism raids by Victorian and Australian Federal Police in Melbourne last year on"

A scoop indeed !

Especially when the tale of the raids was published in The Australian several hours before they actually took place.

Following a Victorian Office of Police Integrity investigation, a  Federal Policeman was charged with misconduct in public office , unauthorised disclosure of information and attempting to mislead the Director of the Office of Police Integrity. Maybe Rupert will pay his legal bill.



Rupert last year !

 You can read more on these in-house awards here where Rupert is quoted saying :

"quality journalism doesn't just happen".

"It takes a company committed to bringing the public the stories that no one else will do - and the talented men and women like you who are willing to do them."

"In contrast to the doom-and-gloomers who are always telling us that our industry is dying, we believe the public is hungry for high-quality news and opinion."

Let's hope this purveyor of quality journalism doesn't come across the website of his top tabloid the Daily Telegraph with it's headline today :

Drunken Cop : jailed 17 years ! 

That's a pretty stiff sentence for being in the grip of the grape, even for a walloper. The sentence the hapless policeman received was in fact, 17 months.

Murdoch's manipulated snap

Phones have been running hot since tSS attended Graeme Goldberg's Dee Bee's party in Double Bay on Tuesday night.

Media outlets are desperate to lay their hands on a photograph of cricketing great Glenn McGrath and his new girlfriend, Italian Sara Leonardi who were sitting quietly chatting at the restaurant.

The Daily Telegraph has run a front page snap today that is photoshopped to place the 2 closer together (right). The original is on the left.

Woman's Day is already spruiking a story for the next issue on their website but showing a much more honest version of the pair as they were seated on opposite sides of the table (below).
Where does that leave Murdoch son-in-law Mathew Freud who made the recent bizarre claim in the New York Times that he and several Murdoch family members were "appalled" by Rupert's Fox News in the USA ?.

Freud, a spin doctor for products like Kentucky Fried Chicken, Birdseye Peas and Nike says this on his Freud Communication's website :

"We get frustrated by our industry’s reputation. Ever been over-promised & underwhelmed? Thought so. We have a unique solution to the problem. TELL CLIENTS THE TRUTH. Is honesty always easy? No, but we believe that in the long-term you’ll respect us for it. We’ll get to make one kind of promise, the kind that doesn’t get broken…We believe that honesty earns trust."

Perhaps Mathew can have a quiet word with his wife's father and remind him of the Australian Journalists Association Code of Ethics and in particular this one:
9. Present pictures and sound which are true and accurate. Any manipulation likely to mislead should be disclosed.
Clearly a case for the PhotoshopDisasters blogspot.

a friendly Freudian slip

    That's how writer Mandy Miami described the diminutive Mathew Freud in a British magazine many years ago, long before he became the "most influential public relations executive in Britain"  according to PR Week magazine. Freud is boss of Freud Communications: motto:  "Sometimes we upset people.."

   But what is this statement all about in the New York Times ?. According to the newspaper Freud says:

 “I am by no means alone within the family or the company in being ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes’s horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder and every other global media business aspires to,”

       Oh really ?. Shurley shome mishtake as the English satirical magazine Private Eye would say. Freud is referring to the boss of the US cable network Fox News, Roger Ailes.

      Rupert Murdoch had just heaped praise upon Ailes and his skilled management of Fox News and it's capture of every right-wing ratbag US viewer and it's slavish devotion to Republican Evangelism.
       Mathew Freud is also married to Rupert Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth.

       But what about his dad-in-law's UK publications The Sun or the News of The World which have been dragging journalistic standards down to gutter level  for over 2 decades ?. Not that they had far to fall.

       A little too close to home perhaps.

        Murdoch's British rags dole out tosh by the tonne each week but who could forget some shining moments like the 'Gotcha' headline of The Sun front page in 1982, celebrating the horrible death of 323 young Argentinian sailors in a useless war for the sheep-shagging Falklands Islands begun by the Murdoch adored Margaret Thatcher.

     And let's not even go near the once respectable Sunday Times which reached it's lowest point in 1983 when it published the hilarious Hitler Diaries which contained nonsense like ""Eva gave a glorious supper party tonight at the Bergdorf with boiled veggies. Hermann G. doped to the eyeballs as usual. Heinrich H. reports excellent results with Zyclon B (wife Margarete still an old cow).Tomorrow we take Poland. Dinner after with the Thyssens " or words to that effect.

        Despite being informed the diaries were a hoax, Murdoch published anyway declaring "we're in the entertainment business".

    Which is just what Fox News is. Entertaining to a point but with rather serious consequences. Along with Murdoch's worldwide media outlets it was a major drum beater for the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions.

     Where was Freud at that time ?. Probably hosting wonderful PR events at his Notting Hill house with guests like Prime Minister Tony Blair who was declaring that Saddam Hussein's (non-existent) WMDs were "45 minutes from London", a line fed to him by perhaps the former most influential public relations executive in Britain, Alastair Campbell and possibly dreamed up by a gossiping London taxi driver according to the newspaper of alleged repute, the Times (which previously promoted the bogus "45 minute" claim without question-owner: R.Murdoch)

     What is happening here ?.

      Fox News is horrendous, as can be seen just recently in one small example when a group of Los Angeles fire fighters who had travelled to Haiti under their own steam and expense were pictured dragging a 70 year old lady from the earthquake rubble on one TV network while at the same time the atrocious pill popping lard bucket and radio host Rush Limbaugh was interviewed on Fox telling Americans not to donate to the various Haitian relief funds as a solemn Sean Hannity nodded in agreement.

      The Sydney Morning Herald (article removed) speculates that Freud's statement is some sort of power ploy within the Murdoch family: "Authorised by the committee"as Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff puts it.. The committee being Lachlan Murdoch, Elisabeth and possibly presumptive heir James Murdoch. Or against James by the others. Wolff speculates that the statement has been released deliberately.

Mathew's great grand-dad Sigmund

 Perhaps Mathew Freud has dreams of taking over the News Corp empire with wife Elisabeth's help when Rupert kicks the bucket. After all with clients like Kentucky Fried Chicken and Nike (both still ripping off workers) the world would be Mathew's oyster with a global media empire to play with.

       Forget it Mathew. News Corp is a teetering financial dinosaur riddled with cancer and when Rupert is called to account before his maker it will crumble like the deck of cards it is, currently superbly juggled with a magician's skill and sleight of hand that has bedazzled bankers and money lenders worldwide. Settle just for the News of The World, it's more your style.

(Roger Ailes suggested Freud see a psychiatrist ! )