Can Harry and Meghan Bring Down Rupert?

Is Crime Essential to the Media Baron's Journalism?

Newsstand, New York City. Marjory Collins/FSA, 1943.

Around the time I got my first job in New York's publishing world, two interesting titans arrived in the industry - Robert Maxwell, a Czech who made his life mainly in England, and Rupert Murdoch, an Australian who eventually became an American citizen. Neither one of them struck me as a particularly good influence. 

Maxwell came to a relatively early end, going over the side of his yacht in 1991, but not before he had looted the pension funds of many of his employees. His empire had been crashing, and after his death it collapsed. 

Maxwell was apparently very fond of his yacht, called the Lady Ghislaine, and quite a few of his employees liked to refer to him as Captain Bob. After he drowned and was recovered from the waters off the Canary Islands, those same people started calling him Captain Bob, bob, bob.

I met one of his sons when I sold him the remains of a magazine that I had to fold during the Reagan recession of the early 1980s. Impeccably groomed.  His daughter Ghislaine has of course gone on to fame in the Jeffrey Epstein case, and currently resides in a federal jail in Brooklyn. 

I actually worked for Murdoch. I never met him, but his office was only a few floors above my cubicle. I was editing a small business magazine, and occasionally chatted with people who worked for the tabloid Star, which had its offices a few floors below ours.

I didn't particularly dislike Murdoch, but I knew a lot of people who did. When he bought the New York Post, an acquaintance who worked there said he initially thought that things couldn't get worse than they had been under Dorothy Schiff; very soon he discovered that he had been wrong. 

But there never seemed to be a chink in Murdoch's armor. He did seem to have a consistent talent for making money, and of course with money comes power. I certainly didn't like what he did with his power - essentially debasing our public discourse with Fox News - but I came to feel that he would never fall.

Now I'm not so sure. I read an interesting article in the Times the other day, It appears that Rupert's English tabloid the Sun is in trouble. The trouble involves the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. It appears that a private investigator who was digging up information on Meghan violated the law in the course of his researches.  

There was a previous scandal over illegal prying, back in 2011. Rupert had to shut down the offending tabloid, the News of the World, and his bid to take over a television service, BSkyB, fizzled. But then it appeared that the ship righted itself and sailed on.

Until now. The Sussexes are very unhappy, and they are suing. Harry hasn't been happy with the British tabloids since his mother, Princess Diana, died, so I think this feud has staying power.

I'm not sure what might happen next. And I don't know if the British have a law comparable to the American RICO statute (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act). But if the Sun, Murdoch's offending newspaper, has been breaking the law as a basic part of its business plan, I do think things could get very bad for Rupert. I won't shed a tear if they do.

Newsstand, Minneapolis. John Vachon/FSA, 1939.

See also The 800-Pound Gorilla in the Oval Office.