Media Report

Sandra Hall talks with us about her new book Tabloid Man: The Life and Times of Ezra Norton.

Norton was a Titan of the Tabloids back in the first half of the twentieth century. He built up the Truth stable of papers in the 1920s and 30s and established the now defunct Daily Mirro in Sydney in the 1940s.

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

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Antony Funnell: And finally today, let's kick off a new 'irregular' series looking at significant historic figures in the Australian media industry.

Now for those who don't understand media-speak, an 'irregular' series means you've got the first interview ready to go, but you're not quite sure if and when the next instalment will ever come, though you have good intentions.

Anyway, our first guest in this series is Sandra Hall, who many people will know as an author and film critic for The Sydney Morning Herald. Now I'm certain Sandra wouldn't appreciate being described as an historic figure, but the subject of her latest book certainly fits the bill.

The book is called Tabloid Man: The Life and Times of Ezra Norton. Norton was a Titan of the Tabloids back in the first half of the 20th century. He built up The Truth stable of papers in the 1920s and '30s and established the now defunct Daily Mirror in Sydney in the 1940s.

And while, like Hitler, he was polite to women and kind to animals, he wasn't always an easy media baron to work for.

That said, he certainly had a colourful life.

Sandra Hall: I'd just finished a novel when I started thinking about him, and I was curious about him, mainly because of my own beginnings in tabloid journalism; I went straight from school at the age of 16 to work on The Sun, and Ezra had gone by then, and while we knew a lot about the Fairfaxes and the Packers, he was a bit of a sort of mystery. And I don't know whether it was the nature of his very private character, and the fact that his career came to an end just as television was coming in, which means that he didn't go on to have that extra boost the Packers and the Fairfaxes did, you know. The Norton line ended, well it didn't end with him, he had a daughter, but as far as newspapers went, it kind of ended with him, which is one reason I think why he didn't ever get the recognition that he really deserved.

Antony Funnell: It's strange though, in a sense, that he's so private, that he didn't keep letters or didn't write very many letters, didn't give many speeches, considering that his stock-in-trade, or his newspapers' stock-in-trade were the private lives of other people, weren't they?

Sandra Hall: That's right, yes. To understand that I think you have to know about his childhood as the son of the sort of notorious John Norton who was a scandalous figure in Sydney, in Australia really, from the 1890s onwards.

Antony Funnell: Because he was a newspaperman himself, wasn't he?

Sandra Hall: He was. He'd helped launch Truth with two other sort of rowdy political identities of the day, Willis and Crick, who were later involved in the New South Wales land scandals. They'd actually launched Truth and Norton had put some money into it and come to work on it, and become its editor. Then they had this huge tussle for control of it, and in the end Norton came out on top. And they had terrific brawls, which of course were a great source of interest to the other newspapers of the day which were also pretty cheeky.

Antony Funnell: How influential was he on Ezra himself?

Sandra Hall: Hugely I think. He was a fierce alcoholic and this led to violence at home and so on, but he was also extremely articulate and well-educated, spoke fluent French and was a great public speaker. And when he was sober I think he was sort of fulsomely affectionate to his children, and then the next moment he'd be consumed by one of these rages. So it was one of carrot and stick kind of approaches to parenting which does leave an indelible impression, and I don't think Ezra ever reconciled his feelings about his father. Years later, he was defending him as not as bad as people characterised him. So he had that sort of conflicted feeling about his father.

Antony Funnell: Now he took over Truth eventually, and established a very successful media company, but he took over Truth in spite of his father, his father disinherited him.

Sandra Hall: Despite his father. Unlike Robert Clyde Packer, Frank Packer's father, he'd groomed Frank Packer to become his heir and capable successor. John Norton did everything he could to sort of stop Ezra taking over the papers. He disinherited him and Ada his mother. Luckily they had very influential lawyers who lobbied the New South Wales Parliament to introduce a Bill that had been on the books for a while, but they really made it a thing of urgency. This was the Testators Family Maintenance and Education of Infants Bill. And this was rushed through parliament, and after this, Ada and Ezra then got their inheritance. He took over the papers when he was 25.

Antony Funnell: And he built them into a successful enterprise as I said earlier. At the height of his power and influence, how significant were his media holdings?

Sandra Hall: They were quite significant. Truth had about 400,000 circulation; it was published all over the country. And The Daily Mirror which he started against great opposition in 1941 during the war when newsprint was being rationed and all the other proprietors ganged up against him to try and stop him getting enough newsprint to be able to produce The Mirror, that really flourished from the very beginning, and started this great sort of afternoon newspaper war with The Sun, which carried on for 20 years really. It wasn't until the dawn of television that his star began to fade.

Antony Funnell: And he never really took to television, did he? He didn't see it as the way forward in the way that, say, Frank Packer saw it as a way forward?

Sandra Hall: No, he didn't. Whether he didn't see it, or whether he didn't have much faith in the thought that he'd be able to get a licence I'm not sure. He certainly didn't put much energy into trying to get a licence. And he maybe just didn't have the feel for television, either. So after that I think he saw the writing on the wall I guess, and he wasn't terribly well anyway. And I think he just wanted to secure the future for his wife and daughter, and Fairfax bought his papers. When they bought the Norton papers, they kept themselves at arm's length by setting up a shelf company which ran the papers for a year, and then of course at the end of that year, they sold out to Rupert Murdoch, gave him is foothold in Sydney.

Antony Funnell: So the end of in a sense, Ezra Norton's career really helped spark Murdoch's career.

Sandra Hall: It did. Very much so. And I think you can see the Norton tradition still in Murdoch's tabloids. Especially the London ones. I mean there was always that sort of anti-colonialism agin the establishment feeling to the Norton papers, which went right back to Norton's kind of feelings about the British royal family and Britain in general. He was a fierce Republican, and I think that feeling still prevails in Murdoch's, certainly in his British papers.

Antony Funnell: Now one of his other contemporaries, you mentioned before was Frank Packer, Kerry Packer's father and James's grandfather. From reading you book their relationship at first was one of cautious co-operation, but they quickly fell out didn't it?

Sandra Hall: They did, yes, I think they just kind of were temperamentally at odds with one another. I think Ezra would have found Frank a bit of a grandstander, and show-off, and very much not his sort of style. And they took to sniping at one another in their papers. It was wartime, and Packer got quite an important job managing Manpower, and this didn't sit too well with some of the other people in Sydney, you know, they thought they were favouring sort of bookmakers and Bellevue Hill types, in keeping them out of the army and so on. And Packer himself was in uniform, but he'd appear at the races and this would be duly recorded in Truth, you know, they'd snipe again at Lieutenant Packer being seen at the races when he should have been training at Puckapunyal and so on. So this went on for quite a long time.

Antony Funnell: And they came to blows at the races.

Sandra Hall: And they came to blows at the races at Randwick, yes. No-one quite knows how it started, but later on Ezra told somebody that Packer had poked him in the arm with his finger, and that was enough, and he'd swung a punch, he got so irritated, and he of course had been accompanied by his chauffer and I think it was an ex-boxer who often accompanied him around town and they then got into the fight, and one version says they were helping Ezra, the other says that they were just trying to separate the two. Anyway, Frank came off the worse for wear, and they were both given a dressing down before the stewards at Randwick. But it didn't diminish their ill-feeling at all. The feud continued.

Antony Funnell: Now in reading about Ezra Norton and his relationship with his own employees, and looking at his paper, the style of his various papers, by all accounts, he was a racist, he was a bigot, a self-confessed bastard, but I know you believe that he had some redeeming features. What were they?

Sandra Hall: (laughs) I do, yes. Well he had impulses of great generosity. He certainly knew how to provoke loyalty in those who worked closest to him. As you say he was very nice to women and animals. (laughs) And he was passionate about cruelty to animals in fact, if there was a stray dog around he was likely to bring it into the office and make sure it got a home. And he used to donate anonymously to various charities. He was very patriotic at heart. He had these sort of working-class kind of campaigns that he used to pursue from time to time. I mean it's hard to tell whether he was being pragmatic or passionate, but he certainly knew his readership and he made sure that Truth and Mirror reflected the interests of the readers.

Antony Funnell: Sandra Hall. And Sandra's book Tabloid Man: The Life and Times of Ezra Norton is published by Fourth Estate Harper Collins.

Thanks to producer Andrew Davies and technical producer, Peter McMurray. I'm Antony Funnell.

Guests

Sandra Hall
Author and film reviewer

Publications

Title: Tabloid Man: The Life and Times of Ezra Norton
Author: Sandra Hall
Publisher: Fourth Estate - Harper Collins

Presenter

Antony Funnell

Producer

Andrew Davies

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