Paul Holmes: You just wouldn't read about it

Rupert Murdoch has been one of the great pioneering figures of the news media. In Britain, his toughness in that massive stand-up with the print unions in the late 1970s revolutionised the newspaper industry. (Who was this preposterous Australian? An Australian buying the Times? Surely not!)

I was in Britain then. I loved the way he rode into town and frightened the hell out of the preposterously comfortable British establishment.

Well, that was then and this is now. His newspapers have been vicious. And Rupert became a megalomaniac. Rupert, it seemed, wanted to control the world as Master of the Universe. He told a House of Commons select committee that the News of the World represented only 1 per cent of his global business.

So politicians in Canberra, Washington and London agonised for years over how to make him like them and endorse them. And suddenly the incredible has happened. His entire empire has been shaken to the core because of the filthy and cynical way his reporters got their stories, the intimate ones about people of prominence. The newspaper that loved to throw the s*** at people turned out to be more immoral, more crooked and corrupt than many of the people
it dumped on.

It is incredible this week to see Murdoch. The great media baron looks like a silly, foolish and probably nasty old man. Suddenly the crowd senses it. Suddenly no one is frightened of Rupert Murdoch.

Politicians who went through agonies trying to appease him now don't take his calls. The nasty, bullying witch Rebekah Brooks, purveyor of vicious, malicious gossip, is finished. She ruled Fleet St for years, scouring through the rubbish bins of anyone with any kind of fame or celebrity, and, we now know, tapping their phone messages as well. Even the messages of the dead. These were very nasty people and Brooks is one nasty piece of work.

I'm loving seeing Murdoch getting the same hysterical, destructive attention his newspapers' victims endured through the years, the flashing cameras, the hectoring reporters all over him as the great and powerful man is forced to weave his way between them.

It is as if the pack itself has turned on him, as if they are loving giving back to him what he encouraged them to do for years.

But of course, Rupert knew nothing. Oh please. James knew nothing either, precious little rich boy. Oh please. James told the British MPs he didn't know why he authorised the payment of a million pounds to several parties. It was a million pounds paid out in cover-up money. James didn't know that, apparently. And Rupert knew nothing about it. Oh please!

One thing I've learnt about rich people. They know where their money is. And if they've made it themselves, they're likely to know where every pound is.

Murdoch and his son went to that select committee and denied any knowledge until now of a phone hacking practice that in Britain is universally understood to be normal practice. Their protestations defied credibility. As someone remarked on a British newspaper website this week, Murdoch is a cynical sociopathic mobster. As Carl Bernstein remarked on one of the news channels, even if Murdoch didn't know of the phone hacking, he certainly established the culture
that made it happen.

A colleague of mine years back got a job on Britain's Sunday Times, owned, of course, by Murdoch. My colleague struggled to find the number of a fellow he wanted to speak to in connection with a story he was covering. He told his editor he had drawn a blank. "Don't worry," said the boss, "we've got a bloke on account over at British Telecom." Simple as that. So much for graft.

Murdoch also reminded the select committee of his newspaper pedigree. His very own father, he told them, had exposed the Gallipoli tragedy. Yes, someone remarked, and he probably also planted the evidence.

But what a dirty web is now exposed now. The links between the British police, the politicians and the Murdoch press are unbelievable. Cops on the take. Cops love cultivating the news media, despite what they avow publicly to be their attitude to the news media, especially, I suppose, if there's dough in it.

So in the UK they're dropping like flies. The whistleblower, the show business reporter whom the News of the World bosses expected to drink and take drugs with rock stars, is dead. Rebekah Brooks, the woman Murdoch flew in to save, is professionally dead. This vicious, power-hungry, power-broking witch who promoted David Cameron to Murdoch, this woman who spent a weekend at Chequers, this woman with whom Cameron went horse-riding. As good as dead.

James Murdoch is finished. So probably, in terms of the power he built and loved, is Rupert Murdoch himself. He probably doesn't have enough time left for revenge. But you never know with Rupert. Rupert might have his billions but it's the power that matters. If the money meant anything, he would have retired by now.

Most ludicrous remark of the week? When the senior Scotland Yard man Assistant Commissioner John Yates resigned, he denounced self-righteously the "huge amount of inaccurate, ill-informed ... downright malicious gossip" surrounding this whole affair. Was the creep for real? It was the same 'downright malicious gossip' Murdoch's people and Scotland Yard between them have enjoyed trading in for years.

John Roughan is on leave.