How the horror of Gallipoli gave rise to the Murdoch empire

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/09/gallipoli-rupert-murdoch-empire-churchill

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The forthcoming centenary is being marked by a number of events. There’s a new Russell Crowe film called The Water Diviner, about an Australian farmer trying to find his sons’ graves on the Gallipoli battlefield, where around 10,000 Australian and New Zealand troops perished in 1915, during the Allies’ catastrophic attempt to attack the Ottoman empire from the Dardanelles strait and capture Constantinople. There’s also been an elegant Germaine Greer essay in the New Statesman, deconstructing Gallipoli and Australian nationhood.

But there’s another reason people over here should note the Anzac Day anniversary of 25 April: it marked the birth of the Murdoch media empire. The tough, resourceful young Australian newsman Keith Murdoch sent his famous letter to the Australian prime minister Andrew Fisher expressing his view of the military fiasco, passionately praising the Australian troops at Gallipoli and condemning incompetent officer-class Brits. The letter was widely circulated; it helped deal a humiliating blow to the political career of Winston Churchill, the author of the Dardanelles campaign.

It gave a rocket-fuelled boost to Keith’s own rather Churchillian career in public life and was the foundation stone of the newspaper business that he was to bequeath to his son Rupert. And it was Gallipoli which implanted that persistent sense of underdog anti-establishment righteousness in Rupert’s mind which has never been eradicated no matter how much of an establishment overdog he has become. Rupert Murdoch may not hold the political sway in Britain that he once did, but Anzac Day is a moment to brood about his imperial origins in the Great War.

Kew, what a scorcher

Every weekend, every bank holiday, it’s the same. A family trip to some zoo, some museum, some stately home, and there’s Britain’s newest passive-aggressive phenomenon: the “suggested donation” built into the admission charge. You see the hefty price on the wall where tickets are sold and then, underneath, and in a smaller font, something cheaper. Basically, the onus is on you to “suggest” you want the lower price.

That’s if you realise there is a choice. I remember the days when you went to an art gallery and the place for “suggested donations” was a big scuffed perspex box in the foyer, containing coins and notes – with some exotic US dollar bills and Japanese yen. Now the charge is semi-visibly built in. So I have become a curmudgeon: a suggested donation refusenik. At Kew Gardens recently I said quietly: “Could I have my tickets without the suggested donation?” The person in the ticket window instantly looked as if I’d said: “Could I have a can of paraffin and a box of matches? I feel like seeing if the tropical plants are flammable.”

Unsung nerd champion

The film business is now at the very beginning of its annual cycle of publicity and prize-giving: a process that begins just before Cannes will culminate in Los Angeles next February. If anyone wants to change the way those baubles are dished out, the time to start would be now. And it could be a moment to reawaken the debate: should there be an Oscar/Bafta/Golden Globe for best casting director? My eyes have been opened by a superb New Yorker profile of the Hollywood casting director Allison Jones, who has personally discovered or nurtured dozens of breakout stars including Jason Segel, James Franco and Jonah Hill. She is the person who amasses the talent seedcorn, but without the praise or, indeed, the big bucks showered on the actors and directors.

Casting directors are the people who find the faces we all come to love (or loathe) in the cinema, and Jones has a real claim to have helped invent the kind of nerdy or fratboy comedy that has become a huge industry on its own. The best casting director award is a tradition that needs to be invented.