Murdoch backs a winner

Rupert Murdoch's The Sun's annouced their endorsement of Labour this week.

Among journalists it's de rigueur to express some respect, however grudging, for the Sun – either its ingenious way with punny headlines or its unerring knack for self-publicity. It's part of a professional reverse snobbery that often sees our "lowest" callings as the highest display of craft.

So it was time again for smiles and admiring headshakes and headlines when the British tabloid cleverly announced its endorsement of Labour by allowing red smoke to emerge from a makeshift chimney over its editorial "conclave". The gimmick was duly mistaken for "news" and other media rushed to report it, complete with hoary references to the notorious "It was the Sun wot won it" headline of 1992.

Only the wilfully inane, however, could have regarded the endorsement as anything other than predictable. The Sun, as a Rupert Murdoch paper, is not in the business of backing losers, and with the polls clearly indicating a Labour victory the editors had no choice but to support Rupert's friend Tony over Rupert's friend Michael.

As we've seen in Ireland, Murdochism is much more about cultivating friendly relations with governments that might be in a position to do deals than it is about pushing a specific right-wing agenda. Alexander Cockburn, summarising Bruce Page's critical biography of the mogul, puts it cogently: "Murdoch offers his target governments a privatised version of a state propaganda service, manipulated without scruple and with no regard for truth. His price takes the form of vast government favors such as tax breaks, regulatory relief, monopoly markets and so forth." Tony Blair, like George Bush and the Chinese "Communists", has paid Murdoch's price and bought his continuing support.

In this context, the loyalty of Britain's genuine Tory papers is almost admirable. All the same, it's led them in some funny directions. After months when it was the left-leaning London Independent that kept banging on about the illegality of the Iraq war, suddenly the Mail on Sunday was splashing the story across its latest page one.

God forbid, however, that all the talk about "Iraq" should actually stray into what has been happening to that country and its people for the past two years. For all we know, this sad fate does actually concern British voters, but for most of the media "Iraq" is now simply convenient shorthand for "Is Tony Blair a liar?" When possible, indeed, British journalists have been dropping the word "Iraq", with its awkward redolence of an actual place, and replacing it with the abstract noun "trust".

So Blair, it seems, isn't in trouble because he collaborated dishonestly in an imperial venture that has killed more than 100,000 people. He's wobbling because folks aren't sure if they can trust him like they used to.

Interviewed by Victoria Derbyshire on BBC Radio 5 Live, Blair was asked not about his specific lies in regard to Iraq, but about how he felt about being called a liar. The station, which treats the election much like it does, say, a World Cup – only with less analytical depth – continued for some days to make the story "is that a nice word to use?" rather than "here's why it might apply".

The BBC, of course, won't be endorsing anyone, but they continue to play it very careful with Blair. The best radio election story was about the infant who mistakenly got a voting card, leading to much studio repartee: "Is she a floating voter?" "Only when she's in the bath…"; "What's her stand on the NHS?" "She can't stand at all…" etc ad nauseum.

John Bruton just got a rude reminder of the electoral power of the press when he had to receive his NUI honorary degree beside Vincent Doyle, currently enjoying a long goodbye as editor of the Irish Independent. Doyle's Indo, you will recall, helped drive Bruton from the taoiseach's office in 1997 with its unusual front-page editorial attacking his government and endorsing the opposition. (That endorsement, of course, had as little to do with Tony O'Reilly's business interests as the Sun's has to do with Rupert Murdoch's.)

There was a further reminder of the paper's high ethical and editorial standards under Doyle when the Indo reported on the degree-giving with a long paean of praise to her editor from a de-fanged Miriam Lord.

That bit of looking-after-our-own at least had sentimental value. Did the ethical watchdogs at The Irish Times bark at the long Property-section plug for her own home (guide €1.4 million) by the charming Kate McMorrow, half-disguised as an account of its renovations: "It deserved its makeover and some lucky new family are going to reap the benefits."

We should all be so lucky.