Rupert Murdoch has caused much misery to many, many people, famous and otherwise.

‘Hutch Told Mum of Bondage Ordeal’ screeched the headline on the front page of News of the World and subsequent Murdoch owned rags around the world, just three months after Michael was found hanging in his Sydney hotel room.

Just imagine for a minute what this headline in your local newspaper -if it were your mother or if you are a mother, would do to you to read this.  I know what it would do to me and I saw for myself what it did to our mother and other family members. 

It is soul destroying. You want people to know that it is a lie, an absolute lie. Of course my mother and Michael had NEVER had such a conversation.  But how do you get people to understand this? Even in denial, you cannot un-ring the bell and you bring more attention to the story.

You might think, ‘okay, but that’s a gossip paper, take it with a grain of salt’.  But what about when it is repeated in say the Sydney Telegraph, the London Sun and other Murdoch holdings and subsequent books written by people who did not know Michael personally but who took anything they could off the internet and out of so called ‘serious’ newspapers?  And that is exactly what has happened since early 1998.

For their part, News of the World, covered themselves by stating that an ‘unnamed friend of the family’ had told them.  A friend?  I very much doubt it would be a friend, in fact I very much doubt it was anything other than a figment of the journalists’ imagination – as was the auto erotic asphyxiation story that the British Journalist made up.

The AEA story was documented in Derek Hands’ book, Investigating Sudden Death as being made up.  Mr Hand was the coroner who did the autopsy on Michael. He wrote that a journalist had admitted that at the time he heard of Michael’s suicide, he (the journo) had been reading a fictional story about AEA and he thought, ‘why not? It will make a good headline’.  We all know what happened to that story.

IS THIS JOURNALISM?
Is this what we want from the people who give us the news and therefore shape our world? I expect there are some, not many, I’m afraid, journalists who are dedicated to the truth. But if Rupert Murdoch and his family continue to own so much of the press, how can we be sure that we are getting the unbiased truth. Rupert  Murdoch has the power to decide who our leaders are because politicians are afraid of his power.

 “Mum, you just don’t know how they’re going to use these pictures.”
This is what Michael said the day they took that photograph they used for their despicable lies.  It was taken during Christmas, 1993 at a happy time when our whole family along with Helena Christenson’s parents, and model Gail Elliot and her husband were together and the photojournalists were relentless. Mother and Ross had all of these wonderful outings organized and we couldn’t enjoy half of them because the photographers were looking for us.

“I just can’t take it anymore” was Michael’s mantra for the last two years of his life.

Below are some of the quotes from interviews, with Michael referring to the press.
“In my position the situation is that you either do exactly what you want and accept they’ll take photos and write bullshit, or you try and change your lifestyle completely. I tried to balance the two approaches and it didn’t always work.”
“It’s a drag and an infringement, but they’re never going to report on your true private life. How can they?”
“Your (English) tabloids are just immoral, they’re wrong. I read something the other day which said, ‘Michael Hutchence who has just won his battle with booze....’ followed by some quote which I never would have said. I wish someone had told me before about my battle with booze, because I didn’t know.”
 “But then, I read those tabloids and I shock myself because I’ll see something and think, What a load of crap, then on the next page it’s ‘oh boy, look what’s happened to so and so” that’s the beauty of gossip – it has to be slightly unbelievable or else it won’t spread.”
“Everywhere Kylie and I go there are suddenly loads of little guys with cameras everywhere who keep on shouting ‘play the game, play the game’ whatever that means.”
Just three months before his death, Michael gave an interview in New York in which the journalist reported the following:
Paparazzi followed Yates and Hutchence everywhere. And still do. They set up camp across the street from the couple’s London home, firing microphones attached to darts into the bricks of their front wall. They have, says Hutchence, purposely tripped up Yates’ daughters, then photographed them crying to the accompanying headline “life with Paula”.
Yates was crucified for leaving Geldof, and as her new love, Hutchence was also tossed on to the bonfire.  “It was worse for Paula than it was for me, and it hasn’t stopped,” he says.

Rupert and James Murdoch were ‘surprised and shocked’!! Shocked I tell you to hear that their employees were getting their stories through, as they put it, “illegal voice mail interception”.  This is a nice way of saying it. I suppose it sounds better than; “ they illegally went into people’s phones and stole their most intimate and personal thoughts and conversations and then on those occasions when they couldn’t find enough information, they deleted messages to make room for more.”

 And James Murdoch said in signing those checks for USD$1M to people who had brought lawsuits against his rags; or as he put it “Legal settlements, I mean, legal fees”...he did not understand what he was signing. You said it first time, LEGAL SETTLEMENTS, for lying in your newspapers.

Was it only I who noted when the camera was straight on to Murdoch and as he continued to on one hand tell us that he was ‘hands on’ working 12 hours a day, but on the other hand ‘unaware’  of any wrong doing; the shirt collar on the man behind him made it appear that he had demon horns protruding from his head! Very appropriate I would say.

Tina Hutchence
Gold Coast, Australia
July 20th 2011