The Devil’s Newspaper: How Rupert Murdoch’s Tabloid Alchemy Birthed Our Post-Truth World
Let’s get one thing straight: Rupert Murdoch isn’t a media mogul. He’s a cultural chemist who distilled democracy into a combustible cocktail of titillation, outrage, and half-truths. Danny Boyle’s Ink promises to dramatize the birth of The Sun in 1969, but what it’s really doing is holding up a funhouse mirror to our modern media abyss. Jack O’Connell and Claire Foy might be the film’s marquee attractions, but Guy Pearce’s Murdoch is the black hole at the center of this story—a gravitational force pulling journalism into its sleaziest, most addictive orbit.
Sensationalism as a Weapon of Mass Distraction
Here’s the dirty secret no one wants to admit: The Sun didn’t just reflect the zeitgeist of 1969 Britain. It manufactured it. By weaponizing Page 3 nudity, lurid headlines, and a faux-rebellious tone, Murdoch and editor Larry Lamb didn’t just sell newspapers—they sold a narcotic. Personally, I think we underestimate how much their playbook influenced everything from Fox News to TikTok trends. The idea that ‘giving the people what they want’ could double as a business model and a moral evasion? That’s the original sin of modern media.
What makes this particularly fascinating is how Boyle—a director known for Trainspotting’s nihilistic energy and Slumdog Millionaire’s chaotic optimism—frames this origin story. If the trailer’s ‘chaotic pacing’ and ‘visual flair’ mirror the tabloid’s frenetic energy, he’s not just documenting history. He’s implicating us in it. We’re all addicts now, mainlining headlines and hot takes, but who mixed the first batch?
The 1969 Revolution That Out-Mooned the Moon Landing
Boyle calls 1969 ‘the year we first walked on the moon.’ Cute. But he’s right to suggest The Sun’s launch had more immediate cultural impact than Apollo 11. While astronauts were planting flags in lunar dust, Murdoch’s rag was planting seeds of a different kind: distrust in institutions, obsession with celebrity, and the normalization of ‘truthiness’ over truth. From my perspective, this wasn’t just a media shift—it was a psychological coup. Suddenly, facts were optional. Personality became policy.
A detail that I find especially interesting? The film’s source material—a Tony-nominated play by James Graham. Theater, not journalism, becomes the lens to dissect this media revolution. Why? Because what Murdoch built wasn’t news. It was reality TV before the genre existed—a daily soap opera where politicians and celebrities played themselves, but with better ratings.
The Sun’s Legacy: From Fleet Street to QAnon
Let’s connect the dots Murdoch wouldn’t dare draw himself. The same tactics that made The Sun the UK’s top seller—aggressive simplification, emotional manipulation, and a cult of personality—are now baked into every algorithm on your phone. Facebook’s ‘engagement’ metrics? Just Page 3 for the digital age. Twitter’s hot takes? Merely headlines with character limits. What many people don’t realize is that Murdoch’s tabloid wasn’t a relic of the ‘70s. It was a prototype.
And yet, there’s a paradox here. Boyle frames The Sun’s rise as a kind of rebellious triumph against the establishment. But whose side are we supposed to be on? The misfits who ‘remade our world’ or the society they destabilized? This raises a deeper question: Can any medium truly critique the sensationalism it inherently profits from? Even this film, premiering at Venice and TIFF, is part of the spectacle economy it documents.
Why We Can’t Look Away
I’ll admit it—I binged The Crown’s Murdoch episodes. I’ve scrolled through clickbait I hated myself for clicking. We’re all trapped in the funhouse mirror Murdoch built, where attention is currency and nuance is bankruptcy. Danny Boyle’s Ink might be a period piece, but its real subject is the cracked screen we stare into every morning. When the film hits theaters this fall, don’t expect catharsis. Expect a confession: We are what Murdoch made. And we’re still buying it.
