President Ronald Reagan meets with Charles Douglas Home, editor of London Times, and its publisher Rupert Murdoch in the Oval Office on July 7, 1983.
(Image by (Photo credit: Reagan presidential library)) Details DMCA
(Image by (Photo credit: Reagan presidential library)) Details DMCA
In a memo to Clark, Raymond said the project would involve a comprehensive approach aimed at persuading a majority of Americans to back Reagan's Central American policies. "We must move out into the middle sector of the American public and draw them into the 'support' column," Raymond wrote. "A second package of proposals deal with means to market the issue, largely considering steps utilizing public relations specialists -- or similar professionals -- to help transmit the message."
To improve the project's chances for success, Raymond wrote, "we recommended funding via Freedom House or some other structure that has credibility in the political center. Wick, via Murdoch, may be able to draw down added funds for this effort." Raymond included similar information in a separate memo to Wick in which Raymond noted that "via Murdock [sic] may be able to draw down added funds" to support the initiative. (Raymond later told me that he was referring to Rupert Murdoch.)
In a March 7, 1984 memo about the "'Private Funders' Project," Raymond referred to Murdoch again in discussing a request for money from longtime CIA-connected journalist Brian Crozier, who was "looking for private sector funding to work on the question of 'anti-Americanism' overseas."
Raymond wrote: "I am pursuaded [sic] it is a significant long term problem. It is also the kind of thing that Ruppert [sic] and Jimmy might respond positively to. Please look over the stack [of papers from Crozier] and lets [sic] discuss if and when there might be further discussion with our friends."
Murdoch's News Corp. has not responded to several requests for comment about the Reagan-era documents.
Murdoch's Rise
With these close ties to Reagan's White House and Thatcher's 10 Downing Street, Murdoch's media empire continued to grow. To meet a regulatory requirement that U.S. TV stations must be owned by Americans, Murdoch became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1985. Murdoch also benefited from the Reagan administration's relaxation of media ownership rules which enabled him to buy more TV stations, which he then molded into the Fox Broadcasting Company, which was founded on Oct. 9, 1986.
In 1987, the "Fairness Doctrine," which required political balance in broadcasting, was eliminated, which let Murdoch pioneer a more aggressive conservatism on his TV network. In the mid-1990s, Murdoch expanded his political reach by founding the neoconservative Weekly Standard in 1995 and Fox News on cable in 1996. At Fox News, Murdoch hired scores of prominent politicians, mostly Republicans, putting them on his payroll as commentators.
Last decade, Murdoch continued to expand his reach into U.S. mass media, acquiring DirecTV and the financial news giant Dow Jones, which included The Wall Street Journal, America's leading business news journal.
As his empire grew, Murdoch parlayed his extraordinary media power into the ability to make or break political leaders, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom. In December 2014, the UK's Independent reported that Ed Richards, the retiring head of the British media regulatory agency Ofcom, accused British government representatives of showing favoritism to Murdoch's companies.
Richards said he was "surprised" by the informality, closeness and frequency of contact between executives and ministers during the failed bid by Murdoch's News Corp. for the satellite network BSkyB in 2011. The deal was abandoned when it was discovered that journalists at Murdoch's News of the World tabloid had hacked the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler and others.
"What surprised everyone about it -- not just me -- was quite how close it was and the informality of it," Richards said, confirming what had been widely reported regarding Murdoch's access to powerful British politicians dating back at least to the reign of Prime Minister Thatcher in the 1980s. The Reagan documents suggest that Murdoch built similarly close ties to leading U.S. politicians in the same era.
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