Known for being private, the media boss is offering unrestrained commentary on everything from Mitt Romney to British royals – and it could land him in trouble

From the day Rupert Murdoch joined Twitter, the media mogul has been spreading alarm among his enemies and supporters in equal measure. One of his earliest posts on the social network, three years and three major elections on as many continents ago, Murdoch gloated that his “friends [are] frightened what I may really say”. Another dripping tweet managed to insult an entire nation on an official day of rest: “Maybe Brits have too many holidays for broke country!”

Ever since, Murdoch’s Twitter feed has developed from that spontaneous splurge of random outbursts into a phenomenon that nobody dreamed would ever exist: a public window into the private and politically sensitive thoughts of one of the most influential men on earth.

In the past few days alone, Murdoch has used his 140 characters to intervene in the early but already heated race for a Republican US presidential candidate, decry endemic corruption, tell the prime minister of Australia how to run his government, and implicitly call for the removal of the British monarchy.

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For Murdoch’s inner circle, such open political expression is a thing of wonder. Before the age of social media, he kept himself firmly in the background, careful not to expose his own public views while actively seeking to sway elections through the editorial endorsements in his many newspapers across the globe.

“He made clear to his editors which politicians deserved support and those that didn’t,” said a former News Corporation executive. “But unless it was time for an endorsement, those conversations remained private.”

The former executive added: “Now with his Twitter feed, the world can see how he is thinking all the time. Which is unusual for Rupert, who liked to keep his own counsel. It has surprised many of us to see him go so public.”

The interplay between the political power of traditional newsprint and modern Murdoch’s mouthing-off has been highly visible this week, as he turned his attention from the UK to his stance on a possible repeat presidential run by the 2012 Republican nominee, Mitt Romney. On Twitter, Murdoch left nothing to the imagination.

“Let’s be clear,” he tweeted on Tuesday. “Know and like Mitt Romney as a very nice person. But he had his chance and seemed to lack big vision for this country.”

In the traditional world of print media, Murdoch’s most prestigious US title, the Wall Street Journal, has been making similar hostile noises about a potential Romney run, even as the two-time candidate begins taking direct shots at Hillary Clinton. In what Politico described as a “brutal” indictment last week, the paper’s editorial board – considered a must-read for the very kind of conservative voters and donors Romney would seek – expressed precisely the same denigrating assessment of Romney as Murdoch’s tweet did, albeit in more highfalutin language. “Romney is a man of admirable personal character, but his political profile is, well, protean,” the editorial read.

When a front-page New York Times article this week pointed to the confluence of Twitter remarks and Wall Street Journal editorial policy, implying it was no coincidence, Murdoch attempted to play an old card – deniability. Back on Twitter, he shot back: “NYTimes wrong as usual about me, Romney, etc. I have as much influence over WSJournal edits as Sulzberger over Times. i.e. None!”

Such dissembling raised a wry smile for close observers of Murdoch, and for that matter of Arthur Sulzberger Jr, publisher of the New York Times. “Arthur doesn’t come to every meeting or get involved in every editorial,” said David Firestone, a former member of the Times’s editorial board. “But on major policy statements or on endorsements of candidates, he knows what the paper is going to say and is frequently consulted – that’s how it should be.”

Firestone added: “I don’t know of any publisher who pays no attention to the editorial board on the papers they own. It’s disingenuous of Rupert Murdoch to say otherwise.”

Murdoch watchers see the dual-track emoting of his Twitter feed and the editorial pages of his newspapers as symbiotic. The social media site does not only provide the media magnate a direct channel to vent his opinions – it also acts as a prompt for Murdoch’s editors, they say.

David Folkenflik, who is NPR’s media correspondent and the author of Murdoch’s World: The Last of the Old Media Empires, said that “Twitter has changed the ball-game. Every Murdoch editor around the world will be monitoring that feed very closely – they check it repeatedly – to see whether he’s expressed himself again.”

As the power of newspapers has waned amid the fragmentation of digital discourse, the relationship between Murdoch and his newspapers has arguably turned upside-down. Before the proliferation of other news sites, he used his newspapers to amplify his personal political views; today, with the News Corp empire bigger than ever, he uses his personal Twitter feed to amplify the influence of his newspapers.

As the former News Corp executive put it: “As newspaper endorsements become less and less important, this is one way for him to maintain a high political profile.”

That trend remains visible in the UK, where Murdoch pushed the power of newspaper endorsements to the limit with the Sun’s famous 1992 front page on the day after the Conservative party’s general election victory: “It’s the Sun Wot Won It”. Today, the Sun has to work that much harder to have the same impact – this week it launched the endorsement process for the UK’s May general election, 100 days before the event. It dubbed the paper’s campaign the “Sunifesto” and flagged it as “100 days to save Britain”.

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Murdoch no doubt continues to see the UK as his fiefdom and his role in it as something of a kingmaker. Last September, he put the cat among the pigeons by having a private meeting in Manhattan with Nigel Farage of the anti-European Union Ukip party. They had a “good chat”, Farage said, which is the kind of signal that would put the spooks up David Cameron and the governing Tory party that has until recently regarded itself as the natural home of Murdoch’s beneficence.

No matter where he wields or conceals his political influence, Murdoch enjoys deniability. But it may not have been coincidence that two months later, Farage was being feted by Murdoch’s the Times, which dubbed the controversial leader “Man of the Moment”.

In Australia, where Murdoch inherited the Adelaide News from his father in 1952, he continues to play an active interventionist role. But the waning potency of newspaper endorsements in the age of digital media is particularly noticeable in his native country.

“For years it’s been assumed you cannot form a government without the backing of Murdoch’s newspapers, but now that’s being questioned as their influence is declining,” said Margaret Simons, director of the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne.

Many voices on Twitter have attempted to fly into the void of newsprint’s declining global political power. This week, Murdoch outdid himself – even by his own standards.

On Monday, he posted a tweet that ridiculed the Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott’s decision to bestow a knighthood upon Prince Philip as the first recipient of a new honours system to be introduced in Australia. Murdoch called the move a “joke and embarrassment”, adding that it was “time to scrap all honours everywhere, including UK”.

The following day, Murdoch went further, telling his 558,000 Twitter followers that it was time for the prime minister’s chief of staff, Peta Credlin, either to be sacked or to resign. “She must do her patriotic duty,” he wrote.

In an echo of the symbiosis of Murdoch’s hostility toward Romney as expressed on Twitter and in the Wall Street Journal, a similar derisive take on Abbott’s government appeared on Wednesday’s front page of the Murdoch tabloid, the Courier Mail. The paper carried a picture of the Australian prime minister dressed as a court jester, with a simple headline: “THE WRONG TONE”.

For one of the world’s pre-eminent media owners, a man who has become used to getting his own way for decades – on front pages, on election day, and everywhere in between – the interplay between Twitter and his newspapers must surely be appealing. But it carries potential dangers.

“Twitter has been very bad for him,” Simons concluded. “It has revealed something that those closest to him have always known: that his personal politics, and the way he intervenes in politics, are quite crude. It’s there for everyone to see now: Rupert Murdoch is not the world’s deepest thinker.”