Harold Evans on Rupert Murdoch 'the stiletto'

Describing media ownership rivalry between Murdoch and Robert Maxwell, one-time owner of Mirror Group Newspapers, Evans writes: “Maxwell was the meat axe, a muddler, a volatile sentimentalist, a bully and a crook. Murdoch is the stiletto, a man of method, a cold-eyed manipulator.” Both media barons were directors of Reuters in the 1980s through their British newspaper interests.

Evans is a former editor of The Sunday Times and The Times, then owned by Murdoch who took over Times Newspapers in 1981 from the Thomson Organisation. Thomson was formed in 1978 as a holding company for the publishing, travel and natural resources empire founded by Canadian entrepreneur Roy Thomson, who became a British citizen in order to be ennobled in 1964 as first Baron Thomson of Fleet. The organisation joined Thomson Newspapers to become the Thomson Corporation in 1989. 

Evans writes that he has come to regard the judgments he made in 1981, when Murdoch sought to acquire control of The Times and The Sunday Times, as the worst in his professional career. 

He was appointed Reuters editor-at-large in June. “Editor-at-large means you're free to create as much havoc as they will tolerate,” he said at the time. ■