Citizens 141
Media Moguls and Citizen Caine
Throughout this book, we have considered various means by which big
tech has been extremely disruptive in terms of reconfiguring both journalism and the public sphere, typically reorganising the distribution of
information in order to maximise profits away from the producers of
content and towards themselves. Bezos’s acquisition of The Washington
Post, however, seems to follow a more traditional pathway. After the
purchase, there were plenty of articles comparing him to Charles Foster
Kane as played by Orson Welles, with titles such as “If anyone can save
the Washington Post it’s Jeff Bezos” or “Amazon’s Jeff Bezos: A 21
st
Century Citizen Kane”.
64
Less mythical – and generally less flattering although perhaps more accurate – comparisons lie with the media moguls
of the 1960s to the 1990s, a period when areas such as journalism were
frequently dominated by a number of colourful and powerful personalities. Tunstall and Palmer provided a classic analysis of such figures in
their 1991 book, Media Moguls, detailing the rise of a range of disparate
corporate owners such as Robert Maxwell, Rupert Murdoch, and Silvio
Berlusconi, some of whom like Bezos began business outside the media
before establishing powerful conglomerates. The transformation that lay
ahead in the 1990s, the authors noted, was the prospect of emerging
global media markets. This would occur at the time when an apparent American-Japanese media alliance dominated in music and film, by
means of which six companies could dominate production. Associated
with this was European–US hegemony in news with flows controlled by
AP, Reuters, and AFP, with increasing consolidation that, in turn, led
to ever more cautious attitudes and a decline of the more flamboyant
behaviours of an earlier generation of moguls.
65
Not necessarily flamboyant, but certainly indicative of an earlier age
of businessman-publisher (and it always was a businessman), while being a more accurate role model for Bezos than figures such as Berlusconi
and Maxwell, was Roy Thomson. Born in Toronto in 1894, Thomson
had engaged in a number of failed occupations, including being a farmer
and selling radios, before buying his first newspaper, the Timmins Daily
Press in 1934. By the 1950s, his business consortia included various
manufacturing industries as well as 19 newspapers; at the end of the
decade, he purchased the Kemsley group of newspapers, which included
The Sunday Times, and to these he added The Times in 1966.
66
His
Thomson Organisation became a multinational holding company for
his interests in publishing, television, and travel, and his final major engagement was to join with J. Paul Getty to explore for oil in the North
Sea. The comparison with Bezos should not be stretched too far – while
his commercial interests were more diverse than those of Murdoch, who
bought The Times and The Sunday Times in 1979, they remained much
more closely tied to core activities in the publishing sector than Bezos (as
Media Moguls and Citizen Caine
Throughout this book, we have considered various means by which big
tech has been extremely disruptive in terms of reconfiguring both journalism and the public sphere, typically reorganising the distribution of
information in order to maximise profits away from the producers of
content and towards themselves. Bezos’s acquisition of The Washington
Post, however, seems to follow a more traditional pathway. After the
purchase, there were plenty of articles comparing him to Charles Foster
Kane as played by Orson Welles, with titles such as “If anyone can save
the Washington Post it’s Jeff Bezos” or “Amazon’s Jeff Bezos: A 21
st
Century Citizen Kane”.
64
Less mythical – and generally less flattering although perhaps more accurate – comparisons lie with the media moguls
of the 1960s to the 1990s, a period when areas such as journalism were
frequently dominated by a number of colourful and powerful personalities. Tunstall and Palmer provided a classic analysis of such figures in
their 1991 book, Media Moguls, detailing the rise of a range of disparate
corporate owners such as Robert Maxwell, Rupert Murdoch, and Silvio
Berlusconi, some of whom like Bezos began business outside the media
before establishing powerful conglomerates. The transformation that lay
ahead in the 1990s, the authors noted, was the prospect of emerging
global media markets. This would occur at the time when an apparent American-Japanese media alliance dominated in music and film, by
means of which six companies could dominate production. Associated
with this was European–US hegemony in news with flows controlled by
AP, Reuters, and AFP, with increasing consolidation that, in turn, led
to ever more cautious attitudes and a decline of the more flamboyant
behaviours of an earlier generation of moguls.
65
Not necessarily flamboyant, but certainly indicative of an earlier age
of businessman-publisher (and it always was a businessman), while being a more accurate role model for Bezos than figures such as Berlusconi
and Maxwell, was Roy Thomson. Born in Toronto in 1894, Thomson
had engaged in a number of failed occupations, including being a farmer
and selling radios, before buying his first newspaper, the Timmins Daily
Press in 1934. By the 1950s, his business consortia included various
manufacturing industries as well as 19 newspapers; at the end of the
decade, he purchased the Kemsley group of newspapers, which included
The Sunday Times, and to these he added The Times in 1966.
66
His
Thomson Organisation became a multinational holding company for
his interests in publishing, television, and travel, and his final major engagement was to join with J. Paul Getty to explore for oil in the North
Sea. The comparison with Bezos should not be stretched too far – while
his commercial interests were more diverse than those of Murdoch, who
bought The Times and The Sunday Times in 1979, they remained much
more closely tied to core activities in the publishing sector than Bezos (as