By David McKnight

Allen & Unwin

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is the most powerful media organisation in the world.

Murdoch’s commercial success is obvious, but less well understood is his successful pursuit of political goals, using News Corp as his vehicle. David McKnight uncovers Murdoch’s crusade for his unique brand of conservatism over three decades.

Drawing on extensive original research, McKnight tracks NewsCorp’s pursuit of conservative ideas, from Reagan and Thatcher to the Tea Party and its war on Barack Obama.

He shows how Murdoch’s political connections underpinned the scandal of phone hacking in Britain and thwarted investigation.

He examines the secretive corporate culture of News Corporation: its private political seminars for editors, its sponsorship of think tanks and its recurring editorial campaigns around the world. Its success is reflected in the fact that the campaigns are familiar to us all: small government and market deregulation, skepticism on climate change, support for neo-conservative adventures such as Iraq and relentless criticism of all things liberal.

For all its power and influence, News Corporation is now in a profound crisis. The mobile phone hacking scandal has irreparably tarnished its reputation.

Its ability to use its news media to bully politicians may be fatally weakened. In the longer term its confident free market ideology is no longer the orthodoxy since the arrival of Obama and the global financial crisis.

His unwavering support for the invasion of Iraq has backfired and his flip-flopping on climate change has discredited him.

News Corporation faces an uncertain future as digital technology eats into his newspaper empire which has been the basis of Murdoch’s political power.