In America, Murdoch's Fox News fiercely defies the liberalism of the establishment broadcasters, CBS, NBC and CNN. Unlike them, Fox includes conservative American voices on its opinion programmes. The liberal broadcasters fell in love with Obama — Fox was always sceptical. So now are the mass of American voters who turned against Obama in the mid-term elections. 

In 2007, he bought the new jewel in his crown, the Wall Street Journal. He has greatly improved its arts and local coverage and its conservative opinion pages. Overtaking the liberal New York Times, the WSJ now has the biggest circulation in the US.

Also in New York, Murdoch indulges a passionate interest in education. He has invested millions of dollars in and is a director of Harlem Village Academies, a charter school akin to Michael Gove's academies. It is free to students from disadvantaged backgrounds — and they are gaining better grades than the averages obtained in New York's public system. He is now considering funding an academy near Wapping. The boys and girls on the Guardian are not amused and have written of the "alarm" of his critics.

Murdoch has always been a passionate defender of the Jews and Israel. In a recent speech in New York he said: "My own perspective is simple: we live in a world where there is an ongoing war against the Jews." Leaders of European opinion, he argues, seek "to make Israel a pariah" and he thinks that Obama's offhand treatment of Israel only encourages those, like the vicious dictatorship in Iran, who want to kill all Jews. He is right.

He is also correct that the internet poses an existential threat to newspapers. The BBC's licence-fee-funded website, draining readers from newspapers, is a much greater threat to pluralism than BSkyB. Murdoch has erected a paywall around Times Newspapers and the WSJ in the hope of persuading readers to pay for online content. His British competitors may huff and puff but if they really want pluralism to survive, then this restless, visionary iconoclast, now aged 79 but still going very strong, has to make the paywall work. Everyone who values newspapers must hope he succeeds.