Murdoch’s rise to power took off in Sydney in 1964, when he acquired an afternoon tabloid, the Daily Mirror. On March 12, the Mirror front paged a report on “promiscuity” among the pupils of a city high school, which was based on the contents of a young girl’s diary. The resulting uproar led to the diarist and a fellow student being expelled from school. A job well done.
12 March 1964 was one single day after Rupert Murdoch’s 33rd birthday.
A headline story of a major newspaper was about a 14 year old girl & diary entries she had made which named at least one 13 year old boy.
The headline was SCHOOL SEX!, the school was named as the J.J.Cahill Memorial High School, Mascot, and we claimed that parents were angry at widespread fornication among the pupils. We stated that already a thirteen year old boy and a fourteen year old girl had been suspended from school.
Three 13 year old boys from the school, travelled into the city, rode up the elevator of the newspaper Rupert Murdoch was running, no doubt in the hope they could confront him. Instead a couple of lower level grade reporters, Gerald Stone & Daniel Bowen had the front of building desks when the boys exited the elevator.
Three thirteen year old boys appeared, and Stone was deputed to listen to them. When he had sent them off, he murmured to me that it took guts for kids of that age to come into the city, and ride up in Murdoch’s lifts. Later, as I left the building, kids were shouting, “We think your paper stinks!”
The boy who was named in the diary later that evening committed suicide.
He was found by his mother, hanging from the rotary clothes line.
A copy of the newspaper’s front page was found in his pocket.
Rupert, his name was Digby Bamford
A 33 year old newspaper proprietor’s publication caused a boy 20 years his junior enough pain & mental anguish due to malicious reporting, he took his own life.
Charles Stokes, who had bought this story to his editor, Zell Rabin (who’d instructed him to “Give it a Beat Up”)...“said it was the parents’ fault. They lacked understanding.”
The Editor who instructed his journalist to make this diary tale of 13 & 14 year olds having sex into a beat up, Zell Rabin, goes out to the family home to visit the grieving Mother. He returns with his intepretation of the story, the one Rupert publishes, where he claimed the Mother told him, that her son :
“had been watching the awful violence they have on TV, cowboys, gangsters, etc, then lo and behold, she went and found him hanging from the rotary clothes hoist”…
”No names, no address, and it looks quite a moral little story.”
That’s right, nothing to do with the article & the newspaper Rupert runs.
Yet other newspapers which Rupert is responsible for in other states run a different story than the Sydney one :
But we also have Sunday papers in other state capitals. At least our Perth paper, the Sunday Times, runs quite a different story that is sent out, by a bungle I should hope. It is also a moral story. It says that a boy in Sydney, aged thirteen, who had been suspended from school for sexual misbehaviour hanged himself as a result. Name and address are supplied.
So in Sydney, where the details from a 14 year old girls diary made front page news & the boy from her diary hangs himself, the story of his death fails to mention this as a possible contributor to his suicide.
Yet in other markets where Rupert operates, all of the details are published, with the exception that the Sydney newspaper initial story was overlooked. Bungle indeed.
Further, the papers around Sydney go into lock down on the story on behalf of Rupert Murdoch’s publication.
This news was “cordoned off” from public consumption. Even rival papers kept the secret, until a disgruntled Murdoch journalist tipped off an independent magazine.
The girl who authored the “school sex” diary naming the boy, was later examined by a doctor and found to be a virgin.
There was a coroners inquest, where no photos & no reports were allowed. There was speculation amongst journalists at the time that Rupert Murdoch had paid off the coroner to place these bans on reporting the events of the inquest.
There were no repercussions for any of the journalists directly involved, Rupert Murdoch, nor his newspaper.
And yet despite this heartbreaking affair in 1964, history appears to repeat itself in 1971. The only thing different though appears to be the city. As with many things in Rupert’s life, patterns emerge including how he uses his media platforms.
During an interview years later, I reminded Murdoch of this event and his reaction was sharp: “Don’t you ever make mistakes?” Of course I do. Many.
After acquiring the News of the World in London in 1971, Rupert discovered another diary, while he was campaigning against a popular BBC TV show, Top of the Pops. His paper accused its stars of “promiscuity” with young dancers in the audience. One of these was Samantha MacAlpine, aged 15, whose “leatherette bound book”, according Murdoch’s news desk, “could well blow wide open the scandal at the BBC”.
The day after this report, Samantha MacAlpine committed suicide.
As is the Murdoch style, the evidence from the inquest was kept from the readers.
Also suppressed was the statement of the forensic pathologist, that in his opinion, Samantha had died a virgin.
Rupert Murdoch, through ruthless use of his media empire, has been arguably the single greatest influence on modern Western Democracies over the past 40+ years — in the US, UK, Australia. Politicians listen to this man and his outlets to determine policy. Policy is formed with the underlying requirement that it won’t upset Rupert & set his media empire against them. These events described above showed his ‘journalists’, the people working for him the measure of the man they called boss.
The first story above was in 1964, 54 years ago.
If this was what Rupert was like 54 years ago, with only a couple of newspapers, exhibiting behaviour like this, for the life of me I can’t see what makes anyone think that his media outlets care about them. How anyone could believe that anything operated by Rupert Murdoch would ever seek to offer the reader, the viewer the truth. When by these accounts Rupert appeared to cover up his publications role in the death of 13 year old boy in one market, whilst using this tragedy to sell papers in another. And almost verbatim the exact same tragic events occur again not 7 years later followed by the same downplaying of his paper’s role. Deja-Vu cover-up.
Rupert, his name was Digby Bamford, hers was Samantha MacAlpine