This book by Eric Beecher is long -or it seems long – and it may not tell us much that is new – but we should read it.  I may have missed it, but the subtitle could be the aphorism ‘Power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot through the ages.’

We get all the moguls.  They are devoid or style and humanity.  They are in it for power – bought with money.  The main villain is of course Rupert Murdoch – and the book makes it clear that he could not give a bugger. 

It also makes it clear that things could get worse under the presently nominated successor, Lachlan Murdoch.  If his action against Crikey is any indication, Lachlan has no judgment at all.  In a lifetime in the law, much of it involving the press, I have never seen anything like it.

His sad case raises another point.  None of these moguls shows any sign of contentment.  If life involves the pursuit of happiness, each is a pathetic failure.  And that goes for those who kowtow to them.  I have no idea what it may have been like to work in an Ottoman harem, or Oriental knock shop under the Red Guards, but that is how the well-paid tributaries of Rupert and Sons look to me. 

Rupert is just frankly vicious.  He knows no other way.  And he doesn’t even look like leaving us soon.  He may have time to claim the record of Henry VIII as a retail terminator of his wives – although not even Harry – what an awful rock to build a church on – could do so by email.  When Rupert goes, there will be a massive funeral, but not one mourner.  The damage he has wrought to the governance of Australia and the U S is beyond assessment.

As is the damage he has done to the profession of journalism – that he has devoted his life to perverting.  People in a profession do so as a vocation that serves a public purpose.  The public need for the functions of journalists is as clear as that for doctors and lawyers.  All of them have to put food on the table, but when money becomes paramount, as it does in the Murdoch world, professionalism goes clean out the window, and you are left with tits, lies, and downright hit jobs.

One chapter is called ‘Give ‘em what they want.’  There is a remarkable resemblance between the moguls and people like Trump, Boris, Farage, and now Musk.  They know how to fish the gutter – the contents of which they regard with contempt.  And the people so hooked think it is Christmas – so that the working people of the U S thought they may be better off under a government of billionaire egomaniacs.

All this is so cold that Michael Corleone could have blushed when he replayed the primal sin of murdering a brother.  Rupert sacked the guy who published the Hitler diaries after he, Rupert, had personally ordered their publication – the sort of thing Hitler avoided – and as the truth came out, said ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained – after all, we are in the entertainment business.’  (The German victim at Stern said ‘I couldn’t believe that anyone would have gone to the trouble of forging something so banal.’  That brought to mind Hannah Arendt, and my reaction to scammers posing as bankers – they were so banal, they had to be real.)

And when Rupert said ‘this is the most humble day of my life’, he butchered the language, but he was humiliated because he was caught with his hands in the till.  As was everyone at Fox when they were caught despising Trump.

And in the course of my legal practice, I have seen with my own eyes people very high up in the Melbourne community quail at the prospect of Rupert coming after them.

Mr Beecher quotes a remark of Edmund Burke I could not recall- ‘the world is governed by go-betweens’.  That is so true – and so many wheedling ratbags.  And the press is forever in danger of joining the swill.  It is very sad, because public trust is evaporating in almost every aspect of our communal life. 

Possibly the most potent quote comes at the start – from Janet Malcolm, who is about as respectable as you can get on this subject.

Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows what he is doing is morally indefensible.  He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust, and betraying them without remorse. 

Mr Beecham says: Journalism is by nature an exercise in manipulation. 

Well, so in some ways are those who practise medicine or the law.  But the problem for journalists is that they have to spend so much time in dealing with people in politicsor business who are on the make.  And manipulators work on manipulators and whole industries evolve to murder the very idea of truth and to salute evasion.  And they do for lucre, the potential pollutant of every profession.

And then along came AI.  Can anyone trust anyone now?  Mr Beecher concludes by saying that ‘he never imagined that the intervention of machines, controlled by another group of human beings behaving badly, could usurp the moguls and make things worse.’

Perhaps I should insert a form of disclaimer.  In my time in the law I acted for and against the press and have a settled view on where the power lies, but in dealing with journalists on a daily basis about issues I was involved in, I had hardly ever any complaint about dealing with them in confidence.  Which is more than I could say for my lot.

Finally.  I have very much enjoyed many summer schools at Oxford and Cambridge, but those drongoes at Oxford who established the Rupert Murdoch Chair in Communications should be utterly ashamed of themselves.  Alan Bennett said: ‘If the University thinks it’s appropriate to take Rupert Murdoch’s money, perhaps they ought to approach Saddam Hussein to found a chair in peace studies.’ 

Or they could cross the channel to see the sluts in white boots at Pigalle.