I am as pathetic a writer as any. That’s why I was hoping for a good review of my book in the New York Times today—in spite of the fact that the book, The Man Who Owns the News, a biography of Rupert Murdoch, is also implicitly about the failures of the Times and its publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.
Janet Maslin, the Times’ daily book critic, spends most of her review of the book quoting me. Practically speaking, I do her heavy lifting, filling her review with juicy Murdoch stories. But her ultimate judgment is that, when it comes to Murdoch (and the observations and anecdotes she quotes so extensively) my face, she says, is pressed to the glass.
I think she means I am covetous, but I am not sure, because in almost every other instance of writing a biography, being up-close, wanting to see inside the subject’s world, would be a virtue.
Biographers identify—is that a surprise?
But in this instance, it’s a problem because the subject is Rupert Murdoch. His biographer must, Maslin implies, see him from a cool distance so as to more fastidiously observe his evilness. Maslin herself views Murdoch with contempt, if not downright nausea.
There is no aspect of his singular success or peculiar character that she finds compelling. He’s just loathsome—not least of all, it’s fair to assume, because Murdoch is the most likely buyer of the beleaguered Times. She sourly notes my dissection of Sulzberger (Murdoch finds Sulzberger howlingly incompetent), but does not acknowledge her own self-interest here, or, indeed, her own personal relationship with Sulzberger.
To Maslin and to many people at the Times, Murdoch is simply an unworthy subject. Whereas my view is that, for better or worse, Murdoch will be seen, as much as the Sulzberger family itself, as having left an indelible mark on news and on newspapers.
Maslin’s review seems to be so much more about the terrible dread that has enveloped the Times as it awaits its fate—quite probably Murdoch himself—than it is about my portrait of the man.
