Overview

Man Bites Murdoch is Bruce Guthrie's explosive account of almost 40 years in the news business, his brutal dismissal from Australia's biggest selling paper, the celebrated court case that exposed the inner workings of the world's biggest media company and the treachery of its most senior executives. Guthrie survived tuberculosis, Melbourne's gritty northern suburbs and a boss who twice tried to sack him in his first six months in newspapers, to become a foreign correspondent and then one of Australia's feistiest and most controversial editors. His CV boasts editorships of The Age, The Sunday Age, Herald Sun, Who Weekly, The Weekend Australian Magazine, even a stint at America's celeb-news bible, People. Then, just as he claimed one of the industry's most glittering prizes, he fell foul of Rupert Murdoch and his henchmen, who promptly dispensed with his services. What would any self-respecting Broadmeadows boy do in such circumstances? Sue them, of course. Man Bites Murdoch exposes the back rooms of Australian business, politics and media and offers a front-row seat at the many seismic events that played out over the last 20 years, including Murdoch's

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[A] juicy account of how Guthrie was boned by News and successfully (and rather lucratively) sued for unfair dismissal. --Crikey.com

Chris writes: Man Bites Murdoch is an engaging insight into the workings of the upper echelons of Australia's major newspaper empires from a man who knows - a former Age, Herald-Sun, Who Weekly, Weekend Australian Magazine and People magazine editor. But it's also a very personal account of a man trying to maintain his sense of journalistic integrity amidst a profit-obsessed media machine and a conniving workplace culture. It's a first-person account of what happened to newspapers over the last 20 years - from newspaper dominance to relative decline. In particular, it's an account of the tension between newspaper journalists and newspapers' marketing and commercial arms - a tension heightened by circulation slumps. Despite boosting Herald Sun sales and winning the 2008 Editor of the Year award, Guthrie fell out of favour with Rupert Murdoch and Herald Sun's top brass - and had Guthrie fired. Guthrie sued for unfair dismissal and, in David and Goliath fashion, won. This is not an anti-Murdoch rant. It's a considered, often funny, engaging and personal account of a man who, over 40 years, has witnessed the most turbulent years of change in the newspaper industry from the belly of the beast. There's always tension between the marketing and commercial arms of newspapers, but the sales come under increasing pressure and the line that protects public interests from corporate interests is becoming more and more blurred.

Author Information

Bruce Guthrie began his media career as a copyboy at The Herald in Melbourne in 1971. After completing a cadetship, he worked in a variety of reporting roles for the paper until 1985, when he was appointed the Herald and Weekly Times Los Angeles correspondent.

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