James Murdoch’s very public confrontation last week with Simon Kelner, boss of the London newspaper, the Independent, over the paper’s attack on the Murdoch organization’s coverage of the British election, apparently hasn’t helped his cause with his father.
James, and his number two in London, Rebekah Brooks - a key confidant of the Murdoch children who was also involved in the confrontation with Kelner - had convinced the elder Murdoch, long sympathetic to Labour Party leader, Gordon Brown, to let them endorse the conservative leader, David Cameron, in the race. Alarmed by Cameron’s fall in the polls, the two have pressured their papers to pull out all the stops in an effort to aid the Conservatives and undermine Labour and the Lib-Dems.
“It is my job to see that Cameron ******* well gets into Downing Street,” proclaimed Tom Newton Dunn, political editor of the Sun, to a group of journalists from rival papers, recently.
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James Murdoch, in his heated exchange with Kelner, threatened to investigate Evgeny Lebedev, the son of the Independent’s new owner, Russian businessman, Alexander Lebedev (also the owner of the Evening Standard). Murdoch Sr. - long of the view that it is ill-advised to personally attack other publishers, lest there be a ricochet effect - is said to have remonstrated that it is especially out of bounds to threaten family members.
