The many ways that Rupert Murdoch pays political figures

This is the sixth instalment in a new series, The Murdoch Century, examining the legacy of News Corp and Rupert Murdoch.

When you’ve been in charge of public companies for longer than most people in history, it’s not hard to come up with claims about Rupert Murdoch being the world’s biggest individual something.

Isn’t he the world’s biggest commercial consumer of trees, for instance, through all that newsprint purchased over 70 years? Does that also make him the world’s biggest source of litter? Surely a long-serving chairman of the Coca-Cola Company or some giant plastics manufacturer would take that title.

What about the world’s biggest recipient of public company salaries? Surely yes if you include his sons and take a family view; the tally has now reached $1.74 billion since 1998-99.

Since the queen died, Murdoch is arguably the most famously connected living person on the planet at the moment, with the possible exception of Henry Kissinger. Who else has met every US president since (and including) Harry Truman, let alone recently sat in a private corporate box at the World Cup with Elon Musk or married supermodel Jerry Hall?

There’s also probably no-one else alive directly responsible for such vast sums of public company revenue, and when we say responsible we’re talking about being the CEO or chairman. Remember that Warren Buffett took control of Berkshire Hathaway only in the mid-1960s. And he hasn’t done nearly as many major commercial control transactions as this list delivered by Murdoch over the past 70 years.

But there’s another less auspicious title which he deserves — undisputed king when it comes to paying current and former politicians. There have been dozens of examples since he first flew into Adelaide in September 1953, but not all the details are publicly known.

As this developing list shows, there have been many and varied ways that Murdoch has delivered payments to political figures (none of whom, it should be emphasised, are suggested to have done anything wrong in accepting such payments).

First up, he’s paid plenty when they’ve sued, whether it be for defamation or phone hacking. Examples include Bob Hawke, Chris Patten, Chris Bryant, George Galloway, David Blunkett, John Prescott and Tessa Jowell.

Then there is his favourite tactic — hiring political figures to provide journalistic or commentary services after they’ve left office. The Sky News crew in Australia alone includes Stephen Conroy, Cory Bernardi, Gary Hardgrave, Peter Beattie, Kristina Keneally, Tony Abbott, Ross Cameron, Mark Latham, Campbell Newman, Graham Richardson, Peter Reith, Amanda Stoker and Adam Giles.

Then there are the often undisclosed advances for book deals, which can be timed for before, during or after a political career. (As a pissant suburban councillor at this point I should disclose that HarperCollins, owned by Murdoch, paid me $10,000 of a $20,000 advance in 2006 for a memoir that was never delivered. They let me keep the $10,000, which helped fund a trip to Murdoch’s next AGM in New York.)

John Howard negotiated his reported $400,000 HarperCollins memoir advance directly, without the need of an agent. Other notable book deal examples include:

Newt Gingrich: the former Republican House Speaker landed a US$4.5 million book deal with HarperCollins, just as Congress was looking to redraw media ownership laws. Murdoch fired the editor responsible for the deal, saying it was uneconomical, but Gingrich was later hired as a Fox News contributor.

Chuck Hagel: the former US defence secretary was paid by HarperCollins to write America: Our Next Chapter.

Senator Kay Hutchison spent 20 years as a Republican senator and HarperCollins published her book, American Heroines, in 2006 when the Texas senator was sitting on one of the key committees that monitored the media.

Cheryl Kernot: HarperCollins published her memoir Speaking For Myself Again in 2002, which famously came under attack from Laurie Oakes for omitting the former senator’s affair with Gareth Evans.

Senator Trent Lott: according to Keith Olbermann, the Mississippi Republican’s book deal to write Herding Cats: A Life in Politics happened just months before he backed down on a Congressional effort to limit media ownership to 35% of American homes, settling on 39% instead; the exact number of houses Murdoch’s TV interests reached at the time.

Arlen Specter served as a US Republican senator from Pennsylvania from 1981 to 2011, albeit defecting to the Democrats in 2009. He ran for president in 1996 and chaired the House Judiciary Committee for a couple of years, which was influential on media matters. Wrote multiple books, at least one of which was published by HarperCollins.

Mike Pompeo: HarperCollins published Donald Trump’s former secretary of state’s 2023 book, Never Give an Inch.

The next category is former politicians who are trusted with a seat on public company boards controlled by Murdoch. The three most notable examples are:

Paul Ryan: Republican house speaker until his retirement in January 2019, after which he was appointed to the slimmed-down seven-person Fox Corp board two months later once the $90 billion Disney sale had completed.

José María Aznar was the long-serving president of Spain who backed the Iraq invasion in 2003 but suffered a crushing electoral defeat in March 2004. He was appointed to the News Corp board in June 2006, where he has remained for the past 17 years, pocketing more than $4 million, including US$352,204 in 2021-22 (see page 23 of proxy statement).

Kelly Ayotte: in the US Senate for six years until 2017 and was chosen by John McCain to do a Bible reading at his 2018 memorial service. Appointed to the News Corp board just three months after being narrowly defeated by her Democrat rival in the 2016 Trump election.

Similar to all those political talking heads on Sky News, Murdoch and his minions have also dished out numerous lucrative columnist or contributor deals elsewhere in the empire. Here are seven more notable examples:

Peter Costello: Howard-era treasurer who was paid to write columns for the Murdoch tabloids before giving them up when he joined the Nine board in 2013.

Michael Gove: the former senior Tory cabinet minister returned to The Times as a book reviewer and columnist, and even invited Murdoch into the room when he interviewed Donald Trump in 2017.

William Hague: proving that Murdoch was happy to invest heavily in serving politicians, former Tory leader Hague disclosed that he was earning almost £200,000 a year for his News of the World columns after his failed four-year stint as opposition leader during the Blair government. When Hague later became David Cameron’s foreign secretary and subsequently house speaker, he served with the knowledge that Murdoch had handsomely rewarded his earlier journalistic services.

Mike Huckabee: the former Baptist pastor, Arkansas governor and two-time candidate for the Republican presidential nomination has chalked up seven years on the Fox News payroll, pocketing millions along the way.

Jeff Kennett: the former Victorian Liberal Party premier has received hundreds of thousands for his many Herald Sun columns since leaving Parliament in 1999. He even appears on the paper’s website in the “Our Journalists” section.

Stephen Loosley: the former senator and national president of the ALP has been a paid columnist for The Sunday Telegraph and The Australian, along with a News Corp strategic adviser.

Richard Marles: current defence minister who co-hosted Pyne & Marles on Sky News when in opposition. Also a Herald Sun columnist when working for the ACTU.

Sarah Palin: Republican vice-presidential candidate in 2008 who was a paid Fox contributor from January 2010 until June 2015, earning up to US$1 million a year, as reported in the Los Angeles Times.

I’ve only ever raised relationships with individual politicians at one Murdoch-chaired public company AGM and it was in Los Angeles in 2014, a year after all these media reports first emerged about Wendi Deng having an affair with Blair.

The exchange went something like this:

Tony Blair has long been considered a friend of the company, supported the Iraq invasion and all of that. There’s been media reports of some sort of major falling-out. What happened?

Rupert paused for a few seconds and said:

Mr Blair has never been on the payroll and I think it’s best if I leave it at that.

Reading through the full list of Murdoch political payees, Blair must be asking himself why he missed out.