12.22.2003
Conrad Black and the press
[Posted 6:12 PM by Roger Kimball]
One of the more distasteful aspects of the media’s recent feeding
frenzy at the expense of Conrad Black is the panoply of
wounded self-righteousness it has elicited from the brethren
of the press. You, dear reader, of course know about Conrad
Black, Lord Black of Crossharbour, the embattled chairman of
Hollinger International, which owns a passel of important
newspapers and magazines including the London Daily and
Sunday Telegraph, The Spectator, and The
Chicago Sun Times. You would have had to be living in a
spider hole to have missed news of his troubles with
shareholders of Hollinger and, lately, the SEC. Newspapers
across the land have delighted in retailing
stories of his alleged misdeeds and speculating on further
misadventures that may await him. The New York
Post–which incidentally, or perhaps not so incidentally,
is owned by Rupert Murdoch, one of Lord Black’s
competitors–has established what amounts to a Conrad Watch
column just to pillory him, always from the highest possible
principles, of course.
About the rights and wrongs of Lord Black’s dealings, I know
exactly nothing. In that respect, anyway, my ignorance is
like that of the hand-wringing journalists reporting on his
woes. The aroma of shocked virtue that accompanies most of
the stories about Lord Black is partly comic, like the
“shocked, shocked” of Claude Raines’s character in
Casablanca. It’s also partly nauseating, as blatant
displays of Schadenfreude laced with hypocrisy tend
to be.
Consider, to take the latest example among many (and
hardly the most egregious): Today, The New York Times
runs a long piece, beginning on its front page, under the
title
“Friendship
and Business Blur in the World of a Media Baron.”
Friendship and business blurring? Imagine that! What an
unprecedented, or at any rate egregious, event. The
reporters for the Times are aghast that Lord Black’s
biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt should carry blurbs
from–his friends. What depravity! It is almost too shocking
to contemplate that Henry Kissinger, George Will, and
William F. Buckley, Jr., actually stooped to praise a
book by someone they like and admire.
“What the blurbs did not mention,” the reporters went on
to reveal,
was that each man was praising the work of a sometime boss.
During the 1990’s, Lord Black had appointed all three to an
informal international board of advisers of Hollinger
International . . . . For showing up once a
year with Lord Black to debate the world’s problems, each
was typically paid about $25,000 annually (until the board
was disbanded in 2001).
Now what should we think of this revelation? In the first
place, it is a misuse of language to describe Lord Black as
the “boss” of any of these men. “Associate,” perhaps, or
“colleague,” but not “boss.” All three–like other members
of that advisory board–are busy men, much in demand, and if
Lord Black wished them to participate on a board of
advisors and was able to pay them, so what? Is $25,000 a
handsome honorarium? You bet. Do Messrs. Kissinger, Will,
and Buckley often receive handsome honoraria? You bet. So,
for example, does Margart Thatcher (another member of that board).
Call their agents and see.
The Times ominously tells its readers that
“The advisory board was one example of how friendships with
the rich and often politically influential overlapped with
business in Lord Black’s world.” Thank God nothing like that
happens in, for example, the world of Arthur “Pinch”
Sulzburger. We know that the publisher of The New York
Times, though rich, never allows business and friendship
to overlap, especially with anyone of political influence.
The Times reporter took Mr. Will to task for
publishing a syndicated column in which he defended Lord
Black’s support of President Bush’s policy with respect to
Iraq. “Asked in the interview if he should have told his readers of
the payments he had received from Hollinger, Mr. Will said
he saw no reason to do so.” And quite right, too. The idea
that George Will’s good opinion could be bought for a
place on an advisory board is risible.
The notion that friendship and business should not mix is a
dangerous fantasy. It is a fantasy because they always have
and always will. It is dangerous because stringent efforts
to keep them apart will stifle business instead of purifying
it. Mr. Will liked and admired Lord Black: his newspapers,
his positions on issues of public moment, his company. Lord
Black liked and admired what Mr. Will wrote. He understood
that Mr. Will’s column reached millions. So he asked him to
be on an advisory panel and paid him a fee commensurate with
his standing. I know that I am supposed to be outraged by
that: The New York Times, our paper of record, our
arbiter of journalistic ethics, tells me so. The more I
think about it, however, the more I think it is a matter of sour
grapes. That and a bit of ideological score-settling on the
side. Strangely, though, the Times didn’t disclose
that aspect of their interest in the case.