‘Murdoch is a force for the greater good ... and a man of the people’

RUPERT Murdoch’s daughter has defended the ageing media mogul as a man of “the people” and a force for “greater good”.

Delivering the MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival last night, Elisabeth Murdoch insisted her “dad”, who earlier this year was described by MPs as “not a fit person” to run a major international company, “had the vision, the will and the sense of purpose to challenge the old world order on behalf of the people”.

She also used the keynote speech to defend the freedom of the press against statutory regulation, insisting the media required only “light-touch” regulation in the wake of the Leveson Inquiry.

And unlike her father and brother, who both criticised the BBC while delivering the MacTaggart in previous years, she defended both public broadcasting and the licence fee.

Ms Murdoch, 44, had been set to join the board of News Corps but stepped back when it was swamped by allegations of phone-hacking, the closure of the News of the World and the Leveson inquiry into press standards.

Referring to her father’s dominance of the media industry, she said: “My dad had the vision, the will and the sense of purpose to challenge the old world order on behalf of ‘the people’. He literally bet our house on it. My parents spoke to us vividly over the breakfast table about what this purpose meant, and that we could be obliged to be permanent outsiders and constant nomads.

“But even back then, I understood that we were in pursuit of a greater good – a belief in better.

“A generation on it is time for us all to revisit that purpose, to be in service of the people, and to find the strength of character to put it first again.”

In what was only the fourth MacTaggart Lecture to be delivered by a woman, but the third by a Murdoch, she described writing the lecture as a “welcome distraction from some of the other nightmares much closer to home” – a direct reference to the Leveson Inquiry.

She added: “After the past year of scrutiny into our media standards and the sometimes self-serving relationships between the great institutional pillars of our society be they police, politics, media or banking, we would all do well to remember Voltaire’s – or even Spiderman’s - caution that ‘with great power comes great responsibility’.”

She added: “Let’s see what the Leveson Inquiry recommends, but when there has been such an unsettling dearth of integrity across so many of our institutions, it is very difficult to argue for the right outcome – which must be the fierce protection of a free press and light-touch media regulation.

“Sadly, the greatest threats to our free society are too often from enemies within.”

Three years ago her brother James used the MacTaggart Lecture to make a sustained attack on the BBC and its funding by the licence fee. However, his sister yesterday made a robust defence of public broadcasting, saying she supports the universal licence fee and praising the corporation’s Olympic coverage as “exuberant and unrivalled”.

“Let me put it on the record that I am a current supporter of the BBC’s universal licence fee,” she said. “It’s what mandates its unique purpose – it continues to act as a strategic catalyst to the creative industries in this great country.”