The Murdoch Archipelago by Bruce Page

Hats off to Rupert Murdoch. Well, he can't be all bad and in any case every reader of this newspaper owes him a debt of gratitude. For by corrupting The Times and smashing the print unions, he established the moral and economic climate in which The Independent could be created. It was able to exploit the new electronic technology and to espouse a journalism based on editorial freedom, which would not be impugned by the owner, by advertisers, by politicians or by outside business interests. This was the antithesis, says Bruce Page, of anything to be found inside Murdoch's "bordello of papers" - as The Sunday Times called it before he became its proprietor.

Page must feel a grim satisfaction about the Murdoch press's pandering to Tony Blair during his prolonged agony over Iraq. For its orchestrated support for the Government provides a marvellous unwritten conclusion to his book and a lurid illustration of the truth of its central argument. This is that throughout his career Murdoch has traded sympathetic coverage for political favours, which have in turn enabled him to expand his international communications network.

By paying court to Murdoch at Hayman Island in 1995, Blair publicly acknowledged that he was prepared to deal with him as Margaret Thatcher had done. Page cites the head of a Whitehall department who confirmed in 1999 that the requirements of 10 Downing Street had been made quite plain: "Nothing was to be done which might upset Rupert Murdoch." On the contrary, in key areas legislation would be passed specifically to benefit him. Thus the 2002 Media Bill appeared with a clause permitting the foreign ownership of commercial television companies.

Page makes the point that politicians are actually damaged by association with "the Dirty Digger" - he finds the Private Eye nickname apt. For example, only a tiny percentage of Sun readers believe anything it says, so its endorsement of Blair helps to undermine trust in him. Yet he went to a party in honour of Rebekah Wade, whose rabid campaign of "naming and shaming" paedophiles in the News of the World (condemned by the police but not by the Government) provoked outbreaks of vigilantism. Doubtless Alastair Campbell urged his attendance. For he believes that tabloid backing is vital since broadsheets and broadcasters don't reflect the "gut instincts" of "real people".

Enough politicians have shared that view to enable Murdoch, following in his father's footsteps, to profit from their alliance. Page cites a piquant early instance, revealed under the 30-year-rule. In 1968 Murdoch assisted Australia's Deputy Prime Minister "Black Jack" McEwen to discredit a political rival by linking him with an "agent of foreign interests". The story was completely spurious since these interests were nothing more than a Japanese trading organisation. But The Australian printed it uncritically and McEwen subsequently got Murdoch the foreign exchange approval he needed to buy the News of the World.

Other politicians Down Under were less amenable. Sir Robert Menzies apparently said that he would not give Murdoch the steam off his piss. And Gough Whitlam refused his request to become Australian High Commissioner in London. Murdoch denied having asked. But he later assisted in the dubiously constitutional ousting of Whitlam, incidentally provoking a strike among journalists on The Australian for ethically unacceptable bias. Its proprietor was scathing about the "bleeding-heart attitudes" of his employees, who wanted to see "the country turned over to the blacks". He thought "pissing liberals" were probably also "poofters", especially if they wore suede shoes.

As Page shows, Murdoch was able to use his growing power and global scope to win tax advantages and bend regulations. He obtained a television licence in Sydney by promising to remain an Australian and acquired Fox in Hollywood by becoming an American citizen. Intent on "making the world a better place", Murdoch claimed, he lost millions of dollars on the New York Post, which the Columbia Journalism Review plausibly described as "a force for evil". Of course, the influence it brought him was priceless. For Murdoch to sell the Post, said Alexander Cockburn, "would be like Dracula selling his coffin".

Time and again Murdoch stressed the high purpose of journalism in maintaining the free flow of information, the oxygen of democracy. Time and again he vowed to do his part in keeping the sources of knowledge pure by not interfering in editorial content. Time and again he broke his word. When reminded by its chairman that he had promised (because of cross-media ownership) not to meddle with the programmes of London Weekend Television, in which he had just acquired a stake, Murdoch replied: "Yes, but that was before I came." Similarly he gave solemn guarantees to Harold Evans on The Times and later acknowledged, "They're not worth the paper they're written on."

Murdoch's newspapers are equally prone to fraud and in some moods he doesn't seem to care. He famously said after The Sunday Times's publication of the fake Hitler diaries: "After all, we are in the entertainment business." His organs are ever strong upon the stronger side, libertarian in America, authoritarian in China, elsewhere as fickle as the Vicar of Bray. He peddles chauvinism, populism and sensationalism in equal measure. He still sees nothing wrong with The Sun's brutal, witless and illiterate headline "GOTCHA". Although a born-again Christian, he deals in near-pornography - "LEPER RAPES VIRGIN". As the US columnist Mike Royko remarked, no self-respecting dead fish would want to be wrapped in one of Murdoch's newspapers.

All this and much more Page relates with gusto, proving that his heart is in the right place. Yet his book is a disappointment. He is by training an investigative journalist and might have produced a searing and salutary exposé of his subject. Instead he has penned a philosophical-cum-historical disquisition, a voyage round the Digger, assisted by Plato, Machiavelli, Adorno and others - the kind of thing that Murdoch himself would dismiss as "intellectual bullshit".

Moreover the writing is clotted, the deviations are tedious and the index is a mess. Finally, Page labours under a historical misapprehension. He states that newspapers enjoy freedom on the assumption that they will use it and not enter into "profitable alliances with the powerful". Actually the assumption is that the press, which has invariably forged such alliances, will abuse its freedom but that media diversity will ensure that truth prevails.

In some ways Murdoch is no worse than his predecessors - he is less evil than Beaverbrook, less fascist than Hearst, less crazed than Northcliffe. But he represents a greater danger because the sun never sets on his empire. Perhaps, to paraphrase his own oft-repeated joke, God doesn't trust him in the dark.