"Fat Boy" vs. "the Dirty Digger"

It had the makings of a lurid tabloid tale (as indeed it was), and it cried out to be told in screaming headlines: KILLER AMENDMENT ATTACKS PAPERS. At the heart of the drama was Rupert Murdoch, the saucy conservative press baron known to his critics as "the Dirty Digger," tangling with Ted Kennedy, the controversial liberal Senator tagged "the Fat Boy" in the opinion pages of Murdoch's Boston Herald. Co-stars included three equally colorful New York politicians, who look upon Murdoch's New York Post with a mixture of fear and favor: Daniel Moynihan, the professorial Senator up for re-election; Alfonse D'Amato, his scrappy colleague; and Ed Koch, the loquacious mayor who is ever eager to jump into a fray. The issues: truth, justice and the American Way. And power.

The lines were drawn after the discovery of the Kennedy-backed rider to the budget bill that ordered the FCC to enforce strictly its rule against a person's owning both a newspaper and a broadcast station in the same city. That turned out to be a pistol aimed directly at Murdoch, the only publisher who holds temporary waivers of the cross-ownership restriction.

KENNEDY'S VENDETTA screamed the headline of a biting front-page editorial in the Herald. "Was it something I said, Fat Boy?" asked Herald Columnist Howie Carr. IT'S WAR ON POST BUSTERS, added the Post. Underscoring the gravity of the controversy, Murdoch suspended his usual practice of shunning the limelight and went on Cable News Network's Crossfire program to make his case personally. "We're keeping the Boston Herald in spite of Senator Kennedy," he said, vowing that he would sell his small Boston TV station if necessary. Murdoch is not, however, willing to give up his New York station, which serves as a flagship for his fledgling Fox network. If he cannot find a buyer for the money-losing Post or overturn the ban on extending waivers, he will be forced to shut down the paper by March 6.

Koch, a perennial Post favorite, led the charge against Kennedy. Saying that the Senator's action revealed a "character flaw," the mayor added in a veiled reference to Chappaquiddick, "In the dead of night, and then by the way not to immediately own up to it. We've seen that before."

Kennedy struck back at both Murdoch and his defenders. In a statement, he attacked Koch as a "Murdoch mouthpiece" and noted that the "best and quickest solution to this whole problem would be for Donald Trump to buy the New York Post." Trump, a real estate developer, has a flair for promotion and for getting under Koch's skin. Kennedy insists that his anti-Murdoch measure was designed to prevent the FCC from unilaterally repealing the cross- ownership rule the way it recently abolished the "fairness doctrine" requiring broadcasters to air opposing viewpoints. Murdoch had the "fix in" with the FCC, claims Kennedy. Now "he can keep his newspaper or he can keep his broadcasting station. But he can't keep them both. That's the law."

Ironically, in 1957, Kennedy's father was instrumental in persuading the FCC to award a lucrative TV station to the former owners of the Herald. For his part, Murdoch bought the New York station in 1986 and the Boston station last year knowing that the law prohibited him from owning them as well as local newspapers in those cities. Before Kennedy intervened, Murdoch was seeking a way to win a permanent exemption from that rule.

Now he thinks he may have found it. Murdoch, who became an American citizen so he could be eligible to buy TV stations in the U.S., is exploring various legal challenges to the Kennedy amendment. But first he hopes an outraged Congress will overturn the amendment when it reconvenes at the end of the month. "It's not easy, but it's possible," Murdoch told TIME. Having learned a valuable lesson from his adversary in Massachusetts, he adds, "Congress can do anything in 24 hours -- if it really wants to."