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By Kate Holton and Matt Falloon

LONDON (Reuters) - British leaders are forced to court powerful press barons such as Rupert Murdoch or risk savage media attacks which render them unable to govern effectively, former Prime Minister Tony Blair told an inquiry on Monday.

Interrupted by a heckler who accused him of being a war criminal for supporting the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Blair paused briefly before continuing to justify his ties to Murdoch with whom he said he developed a close friendship.

Blair cast himself as a politician facing the choice between being torn apart by what he once described as the media's "feral beasts" and getting his policies implemented.

But Blair, whose reputation for obsessive media management brought him so close to Murdoch that the tycoon could joke about flirting, said he became increasingly concerned about the unhealthy relationship between the media and politicians.

"With any of these big media groups, you fall out with them and you watch out, because it is literally relentless and unremitting once that happens," Blair, looking tanned and smart in a navy suit and white shirt, told the Leveson inquiry.

"My view is that that is what creates this situation in which these media people get a power in the system that is unhealthy and which I felt, throughout my time, uncomfortable with. I took the strategic decision to manage this and not confront it but the power of it is indisputable."

Blair is the most senior politician to date to appear before Leveson, an inquiry that has tarnished the British elite by showing the collusion between senior politicians, media tycoons and police.

"If you fall out with the controlling element of the Daily Mail, you are then going to be subject to a huge and sustained attack," said Blair, who governed Britain from 1997 to 2007 after rebranding the Labour Party.

"Managing these forces was a major part of what you had to do and was difficult," said Blair.

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Blair says feared fight with Britain's media barons

It doesn't seem as if Tony Blair's media instincts have changed much since he was British prime minister.

There he was, in a courtroom in central London today, testifying in the ongoing British judicial inquiry into media ethics after the uncovering of phone hacking at Murdoch's News of the World, when an antiwar protestor barged into the room from a supposedly secure hallway and screamed that Blair should be arrested for war crimes.

"J.P. Morgan paid him off for the Iraq War!" shouted David Lawley-Wakelin, a filmmaker, who has heckled Blair in the past on the same topic. "The man is a war criminal!"

As the judge stood up in alarm and four security guards wrestled Lawley-Wakelin to the ground -- he delivered that last line from the floor -- Blair sat with his jaw on his left knuckle and did not flinch. He did not move an inch.

When the judge, Lord Justice Brian Leveson, apologized to Blair and told him he did not have to respond, Blair knew better. He knew the media would focus on that moment rather than on his other four hours of testimony.

In his experience, he said, "if you had 1,000 people in an event and somebody got up and shouted something, then it's as if the other 999 needn't have bothered showing up."

And so he denied the allegations.

But looking at those other four hours of testimony, it might be noticed that Blair argued he had essentially done the same thing when in power, from 1997 to 2007: Since he believed he could not "confront" the media, he did his best to try to "manage" it.

That puts some distance between him and current Prime Minister David Cameron, whose culture secretary Jeremy Hunt will appear in the same courtroom on Thursday to testify following an accusation that he essentially stacked the deck during a controversial bid for more media control by Rupert Murdoch and his son, James.

Blair argued today that his relationship with Murdoch was entirely professional when he was in office. Now, that is debatable. Blair's former press officer Lance Price once described Murdoch as the "24th member of cabinet." After Blair left office, he became godfather to Murdoch's child. Blair admitted he spoke with Murdoch three times in the two weeks leading to the Iraq War. And Blair himself admitted he was too close to Murdoch.

Originally posted here:
Ex PM Tony Blair Testifies in Media Inquiry, Protestor Arrested

By Kate Holton and Guy Faulconbridge

LONDON (Reuters) - Tony Blair said on Monday he decided to court the media in Britain rather than risk the wrath of powerful media tycoons during his decade as prime minister.

Blair, the most powerful British prime minister since Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, said that even he was not willing to risk offending the major media groups.

"If you're a political leader and you've got very powerful media groups and you fall out with one of those groups, the consequences is such that you... are effectively blocked from getting across your message," Blair told the inquiry under oath at the Royal Courts of Justice in London.

"I'm being open about the fact that frankly I decided as a political leader, and this was a strategic decision, that I was going to manage that and not confront it. And we can get on to whether that was right or wrong at a later stage, but that was the decision I took," he said.

Blair's relationship with the press, and Rupert Murdoch in particular, came under scrutiny at the inquiry which has broadened out to examine the close ties between politicians, the press and police after initially looking at a phone hacking scandal at a mass-selling tabloid.

Blair said the close relationship between politicians and the media was inevitable but that it became unhealthy when media groups tried to use their newspapers as instruments of political power.

The inquiry has so far focused on the conduct of the media and the close ties between Murdoch's empire and serving ministers, helping the opposition Labour Party leader Ed Miliband consolidate his position with attacks on the current British Prime Minister David Cameron.

But the grilling of Blair, who was renowned for trying to control the media agenda by "spinning" the news to gain the most favourable coverage, could undermine Miliband's attempt to portray Labour under his leadership as a party above courting media tycoons.

LABOUR AND MURDOCH

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Blair says feared provoking British media wrath

By Janeman Latul and Fathiya Dahrul

JAKARTA | Sun May 27, 2012 10:07pm BST

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian billionaire Hary Tanoesoedibjo already has over a third of the country's TV viewers in his pocket. Now he wants the same share of votes in a general election, enough to clinch power for the political party he helps lead.

Tanoesoedibjo has built a $7.2 billion business empire in Indonesia in just 14 years, targeting the speedy growth in consumer demand among an emerging middle class in the world's fourth-most populous nation.

But business isn't the only thing on Tanoesoedibjo's mind. While he insists he has no personal political ambitions, he says the reforms carried out in Southeast Asia's biggest economy since the ouster of strongman President Suharto in 1998 have been too slow and his party could make a difference.

"The majority of people want a change," said Tanoesoedibjo, 46, in an interview.

To answer that demand, push for legal and political reform and fight corruption, he says he took up a new role last November as chairman of the board of experts in the newly-formed Nasional Demokrat Party (Nasdem), one of the senior-most positions in the party.

Tanoesoedibjo, Indonesia's 13th richest man according to Forbes, is not alone in using business as a base for a leap into politics.

Coal magnate Aburizal Bakrie, whose family controls a conglomerate, is now vying for the Golkar Party's presidential nomination ahead of elections in 2014. Indonesia also holds parliamentary elections that year.

Tanoesoedibjo, however, is a controversial figure. He has been involved in a series of legal tussles over his business dealings, including one with Suharto's eldest daughter over one of his TV units. Some investors say some of his businesses lack transparency.

Read more from the original source:
Indonesian media mogul makes leap into politics

Media House on Spencer Street.

FAIRFAX'S Media House has won the 'gold logie' of the property industry, the Australian Development of the Year Award, at the 2012 Property Council of Australia/Rider Levett Bucknall Innovation and Excellence Awards.

The five-star Green Star development, located at the edge of Melbourne's Docklands, houses The Age newspaper, The Australian Financial Review and 3AW and was completed in 2009. It is owned by Commonwealth Property Office Fund and was nominated by Grocon.

Media House, which beat 101 contenders from around the country to claim the main award, also won the Colliers International Award for Best Office Development and the Project Control Group Award for Best Workplace Project.

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Grocon's Pixel building.

Other Victorian winners include Stable Group's Triptych, the Village Building Award for Best Residential Development; Lend Lease's Martha's Point, the Gadens Lawyers Award for Retirement Living Development; Pixel by Grocon, the Nepean Award for Innovation; and Davis Langdon's Michael Skelton took out the Judd Farris Award for Future Leader.

Property Council of Australia chief operating officer Ken Morrison said Media House was an outstanding showcase of what Australia's property industry could produce, achieving benchmarks in innovation and sustainability.

Media House's project team included Bates Smart, Fulcrum Town Planners, Norman Disney & Young, RLB, and emerystudio.

Triptych's Green Wall.

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Media House a winner from all angles