Starring Rupert Murdoch: the crusader returns

A new film about a notorious miscarriage of justice in the Australian Outback in the 1950s casts the media mogul Rupert Murdoch in the unlikely role of a crusader for the rights of the underdog.

The Australian-British co-production, Black and White, is based on the case of Max Stuart, an Aboriginal fairground attendant sentenced to hang for the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl, Mary Hattam, near the South Australia town of Ceduna in 1958.

The only evidence against the illiterate Stuart was a confession couched in well-educated English, which he later claimed was fabricated by police. His lawyer, David O'Sullivan, found an unexpected ally in the young Murdoch, who had just inherited the Adelaide News, the provincial newspaper on which he subsequently built his global publishing empire.

The fledgling media baron used the News to wage a robust campaign for justice for Stuart, setting himself on a collision course with Adelaide's upper-crust establishment, which he derides at one point in the film as "more English than the English".

Mr Stuart's conviction was upheld at two appeals, but his execution was postponed six times and the newspaper helped to force the establishment of a royal commission, which ordered that the death sentence be commuted. Mr Stuart was, however, never pardoned.

When Black and White had its premiere in Sydney recently, the audience sniggered at the portrayal of Murdoch, who is played by a young Australian actor, Ben Mendelsohn. However, the film's producer, Helen Leake, said it was scrupulously true to life.

"Rupert had just taken over the News after his father's death," she said. "He was an idealistic and ambitious young man, and he was above all else a risk-taker." The Adelaide-born Mr Murdoch was 27 at the time of the Stuart case, which divided his compatriots and led to reform of judicial procedures. He had studied at Oxford University where, inconceivable as it now seems, he had a reputation as a left-winger.

Those convinced that he was passionately committed to social justice in those days include Stuart himself, who was released from jail in 1972 and became a respected tribal elder.

Mr Stuart, who welcomed the Queen to Alice Springs two years ago, is certain that Mr Murdoch saved him from the gallows. He said he remembered seeing him in the courtroom.

"My lawyer told me it was him," he said. "He wanted the truth." Astonishingly, the two men are still in contact. Ken Inglis, author of a book about the case, said that Mr Murdoch, now 71, recently sent a message inquiring after the welfare of 72-year-old Mr Stuart.

The film, which also stars Robert Carlyle and Charles Dance, will be screened at the London Film Festival in November. According to Ms Leake, it has been well received by the Murdoch family. She sent the script to Mr Murdoch's daughter, Elisabeth, who liked it and sent it on to her father in New York.

The response was that "if Fox [the film production studio owned by Mr Murdoch] had put any money into it, it might be seen as almost propaganda." The young Rupert's efforts on behalf of the condemned man included funding a trip to London by his lawyers, who tried without success to persuade the Privy Council to hear an appeal.

He was even charged with seditious libel after writing a headline that accused the royal commissioners of bias, but was acquitted. After the royal commission, however, with Max Stuart still in jail, Mr Murdoch suddenly dropped the campaign. It had become too dangerous politically.

He never took up another crusade – and the rest, as they say, is history.

On screen: model of a media mogul

By Jane Picken

"Caesar had his legions, Napoleon had his armies, and I have my divisions – TV, newspapers ..." Thus says the evil Elliot Carver, played by Jonathan Pryce (above right) in the Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies, who plans a nuclear war to generate content for his news outlets.

If Black and White is the first time Murdoch has been the subject of a movie, he is seen as the model for a number of fictional media barons. Witness, for instance, David Hare's Lambert Le Roux, the ruthless newspaper proprietor in his play Pravda. Although Hare made him South African rather than Australian, no one was misled.

Murdoch also voiced his own appearance in The Simpsons (above left), when Homer and co are assailed by the mogul's minders for invading his Superbowl hospitality suite.