I am probably one of the few people in the world who feel sorry for Rupert Murdoch, the infamous news proprietor, though I suspect the plate of shaving cream shoved in his face will buy him more sympathy votes.

The last tycoon's empire is unraveling faster than the spread of malicious gossip and I don't really need to go into the details because, surely, you have been following the plot as closely as I have.

However, in the interest of entertainment and to illustrate the schadenfreude other news organizations are clearly enjoying, I will give a nod to some of the better headlines: "Voldemort was here" (Chicago Sun-Times); "Murdoch most foul" (Huffington Post); "From Tamburlaine to King Lear in a fortnight" (The Guardian).

My first and last contact with The Sun, a Murdoch paper, was as a student on a post-graduate journalism course at Cardiff University in the UK. I had written a real life There Was an Old Lady Who Lived in a Shoe story about a couple from Malta who had something like 14 kids and lived in a two bedroom council house. The words poured out of me like a bleeding heart, full of indignation at the conditions they had to endure. The good news was they got given a larger house; the bad news was the story was picked up by The Sun and was turned into anti-immigration, right wing propaganda.

I didn't collect my check, but undeterred, I made my way to London from Cardiff and picked up a rent boy. As you do. Actually, he was thumbing a lift, I had a car, it was just the two of us and a long journey with nothing to talk about except how he spanked lords, MPs and other well-connected gentlemen, at a club in Mayfair that specialized in this sort of thing.

It was my big story. The problem is, no one would touch it. More than likely the editors of the papers I approached were fans of flagellation, or friends of those who were. On reflection, the only paper I didn't approach, that may have printed the story, would have been the now defunct News of the World. The point is, I had a great story about power and the abuse (literally) of privilege and the papers wouldn't touch it. Clearly, the people in control of the media, the government and police were in bed together.

Murdoch got away with printing sensational stories in the UK partly because he was an outsider, originally from Australia, more recently flying the flag of American convenience. So, I'm not sure whether I was more surprised when the Murdoch phone hacking story blew up, that it didn't happen sooner, or happened at all.

I suspect all the enemies that Murdoch made on his way to the top were waiting for him to slip up at an advanced age so they could bump him off, or just spoil his retirement. Either that or his son and heir just doesn't have the wile of his foxy father and it's one of those "riches to rags in three generations" stories. It's certainly a classic tale of mythological depths and perhaps a pity that the papers in England that would have covered it best actually can't do so because they're in the pocket of the major character (The Guardian excepted, it broke the story after all).

From a China point of view, I guess, this all means very little. Murdoch's bluster and bullying never won him many fans or much influence here, though it has been argued that he went so far as to marry a China-born woman just to get a handle on the market. The saying "an old fool and his money are easily parted" also comes to mind.

The reason I feel sorry for Murdoch is that for 60 years he has been digging up dirt (hence his nickname, the "Dirty Digger"), encouraged by the police (who took his coin) and politicians (who received glowing reports) and was encouraged to believe this was OK. Only now that he's been caught everyone is everyone washing their hands of him and in doing so hope to look clean themselves. Once again, he's exposed the establishment, even if it is at his own expense.

(China Daily 07/21/2011 page18)