Did Twitter slay Murdoch’s News of the World?

Afsan Chowdhury
Published : 16 July 2011, 04:32 PM
Updated : 16 July 2011, 04:32 PM

Rupert Murdoch, the world's most powerful media tycoon is himself making news — news he could do without. A man whose style of business has made him a very rich, powerful and much despised, he is now fighting for the survival of his empire. Because of the fallout of News of the World phone hacking scandal which has forced him to shut it down and back away from buying the whole BSkyB, his leading UK money maker, Murdoch is in a state of high adversity.

But is it just his ways of doing things that has caught up with him or is he facing the realities of a system that has birthed social media power which seems to balance the power of the giants with the clout of the millions?

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Murdoch owns outlets in many parts of the world but is primarily known for his ownership of the now demised News of the World, the Sun, the Times group, his main profit maker, the satellite broadcaster BSkyB  and many cable and internet providers in the UK. In the US, he has the NY Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Fox Television, the 20th century Fox Studio amongst endless other money spinners. He is considered the 13th most powerful person in the world by the Forbes magazine and cultivated by every political leader that matters.

Disliked by journalists and human rights activists as well as people who consider themselves 'decent human beings', Murdoch has shown single-minded commitment to money making at any cost. The tactics used by the News of the World to gather scoops had been under scrutiny for long and reached a tipping point when it transpired that NoW journalists had hacked the telephone of Milly Dowler, the school girl murdered by a serial killer.

This event has damaged Murdoch more than anything else — but unscrupulousness has been a way of life for him since he began and he has always gotten away with it.

So what has changed this time?

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Team Murdoch had been doing whatever is required to get scoops and sensationalise them for profit for long. Everyone, from the royals to victims of violence including children experienced the Murdoch touch. Every invasive act was carried out to get news and then sell it to an audience addicted to such fare. Nothing came of complaints, partly because Murdoch was very powerful so politicians preferred keeping him happy and not listen to public complaints.

Ordinary people didn't matter to Murdoch so whether they were child victims of serial killers like Milly Dowler, the incident which outraged everyone and contributed to the paper's closure, or families of soldiers killed in Iraq, it was a 'fair game'. People of privilege didn't have to be afraid of him as long as they went along which they duly did. Gordon Brown, ex-British PM whose son's diagnosis of a major disability was splashed on its pages and who called the episode shameful and criminal is now being accused of actually cooperating with the paper till he was hurt.

What protected Murdoch so far was a culture of immunity generated by access to powerful people and the near impossibility of fighting Murdoch and his empire due to the many obstacles including impossible legal costs. The UK establishment was in favour of Murdoch but what changed the situation after it became known that Milly Dowler's phone was hacked and messages deleted by Murdoch's journalists was the universal public outrage which forced politicians to take note. What actually changed the situation was the translation of that outrage into action through social media in the hands of ordinary people.

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It has now been recognised that "a popular uprising, largely through online social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, led to the demise of the newspaper," also says news.gather.com, a site focused on social media and general media. Times media columnists, owned by Murdoch has written that the supposedly 'Mumsnet' — a  network of mothers who were against the paper for doing front-page sex scandal stories — inspired a Twitter campaign against NoW advertisers and was responsible for the death of the paper.

BBC technology website has done a detailed story on the campaign. Rory Cellan-Jones, its technology correspondent writes that a group of Facebook and Twitter users decided to get to the advertisers after the hacking story was exposed and became a critical anti-Murdoch force.

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"I don't know how you'd locate News of the World readers," explains Melissa Harrison, "but anyone can see the advertisers". She was the first to tweet on the topic asking fellow tweeters to target the advertisers. Another person re-tweeting was Andy Dawson, who goes under the soubriquet @profanityswan. "I sourced some more advertisers from Sunday's News of the World and urged my Twitter followers to copy and paste the tweets if they felt strongly about the hacking story. Within about 90 minutes, it had started to snowball and my timeline was filled with people tweeting at various companies."

Several others soon followed with more pages, sites and access to databases. The idea was to allow people to take the database and mail all the CEOs at once. "I didn't want to make a great statement," he said, "just to make people aware of what had been going on. And we had to do it fast or the impetus would be lost". There were 40,000 views in 24 hours. It ballooned and created huge pressure on the advertisers.

Writes Rory Cellan-Jones, "It does however look as though a random collection of loosely organised people with no one leader have come together to deal a blow to the finances of a powerful media organization. Such an outcome, delivered at such speed, would not have been possible five years ago and is another measure of the growing power of the social media phenomenon."

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Since the closure of the paper, things have gotten worse for team Murdoch. He has been forced to withdraw his bid to buy BSkyB, he with his son, and Rebecca Brooks, the Editor when the hacking occurred, have been forced to appear before the House of Commons, his staff have been arrested, investigating committees have been set up and the matter has spilled over into the States where he is head-quartered. US Congressmen have asked for reviews of his activities and FBI will now look into allegations that Murdoch may have hacked into 9/11 victim phones. All this may not mean the end of the Murdoch era yet but it will certainly be a much diminished one even if he survives.

The days of deal making between people of power ignoring ordinary people appears to be heading towards an end.

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No matter what the final outcome is, the world of power has changed and technology has become a key factor with social media providing the muscle. Neither Murdoch nor the politicians control let alone own social media which make it something the old guard don't know how to deal with. You can neither bully nor buy social media. It is immune to blackmail, muscle flexing, bullying or corruption and that makes it a dreadfully powerful adversary of the Murdochs of the world. It is this somewhat chaotic, unpredictable force of civil society that is increasingly displaying its power against the forces of privilege, corruption, deal making and politics.

No matter if Murdoch or others like him survive, social media has changed the world. It is good news for the ordinary powerless people united by the internet as the system itself has created dragons but now quickly deliver dragon-slayers by the millions.

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Afsan Chowdhury is a journalist and researcher.