Rupert Murdoch: myth, memory and imagination

[malaise]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/25/rupert-murdoch-leveson-myth-memory-imagination
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The version of history told by Rupert Murdoch at the Leveson inquiry bears no relation to what actually happened

And thus, children, was how Mr KR Murdoch honoured the promises of editorial independence that enabled him to avoid the Monopolies and Mergers Commission over his bid for Times Newspapers in 1981. As the editor in question, I am not able to compete with Murdoch in fabrication – he has had a lifetime of experience – but I do happen to have retained my memory of the year editing the Times, made notes, kept documents and even had the effrontery to write a whole bestselling book about it in 1983, called Good Times, Bad Times.

There is a pattern to the Murdoch sagas. He responds to serious criticism by a biting wisecrack or diversionary personal attack. What is denied most sharply invariably turns out to be irrefutably true. As with the hacking saga, so with my charges.

Murdoch is unlucky that his poor memory has been overtaken by documentation. On 16 March 2012, the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge released two discomfiting documents from the Margaret Thatcher Foundation. They give the lie to the official history of the Times from 1981–2002. The historian engaged by the Times, Graham Stewart, wrote that Murdoch and Thatcher "had no communication whatsoever during the period in which the Times bid and referral was up for discussion".

On the contrary, the documents reveal that on 4 January 1981, the prime minister and Murdoch had an extraordinary secret lunch at Chequers. The record of the "salient points" of the meeting by No 10's press officer, Bernard Ingham, testifies that, in accordance with Mrs Thatcher's wishes, he would not let his report go outside No 10, which is to say ministers would not be briefed on the meeting.
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So how different are the lies and coverups across the pond - remember that Ailes document