Murdoch: I Won't Put the 'Times' Out of Business

Excerpting his upcoming book in Vanity Fair this month, Michael Wolff claims that Rupert Murdoch has become embarrassed of Fox News, and, in particular, of its biggest star, Bill O'Reilly. But it sure doesn't seem that way in a lengthy Q&A Esquire conducted with the 77-year-old News Corp. chairman for its October issue.

"Fox News is a core asset in every sense," Murdoch told Esquire. (Sorry, the story's not online yet.) He continued,

In terms of its popularity and of its profit. But the thing that I am proudest of is that it is very, very fair. What people don't like is Bill O'Reilly, for instance, because they think he imposes his views. But he has people on from both sides. I think the senior Democrats make a big mistake in not trying to go on, because he would be very welcoming.

As for O'Reilly's chief rival, Murdoch says,

Keith Olbermann is trying to make a business out of destroying Bill O'Reilly. He's done certain things to Bill O'Reilly that I believe were way over the line. I think that's bad behavior. But it's okay for him to criticize Bill. And Bill shouldn't be so sensitive. He should ignore that.

More Murdoch:

-"It's bullshit to say we're going to dumb down The Wall Street Journal. We didn't dumb down the London Times -- we made the London Times. The Sunday Times, too. Are they a little more popular than they were? Yes. They are populist papers. You've got to listen to readers."

-"I don't think for a minute that we're going to put The New York Times out of business. I think they have a future, too. But there's certainly room for an alternative."

-"I think that [Times publisher] Arthur Sulzberger, over the years, has made it very clear that he wants a very liberal paper, and that he wants a staff that reflects that community. For five years, he didn't want any white, heterosexual men hired. He was sending a clear message."

-"It's a libel to say that I use my newspapers to support my other business interests. The fact is, I haven't got any other business interests."

Comments

[notsosmart:]

if he did put the times out of business-so what. the world will survive.i havent bothered with the times since they backed castro in the eisenhower years.i survived.

2008 Sep 11 10:56 AM

[swaps:]

I have seen other anecdotal evidence in other fields that white heterosexual men are being barred from upper tier schools and professional training, and this is being done by people who clearly have an agenda of emasculating the white heterosexual male in the U. S. culture.

The gatekeepers accomplishing this seem to be ethnic posers like Sulzberger who want to establish their own pre-eminence in alliance with non-white puppets.

Theprevoiuos poster makes a point. Just as Fox News is a joke for objective news reporting because of its subservience to neocon (code for phoney Jewish conservative) agenda, so is the Times a joke for objective news reporting, as evidenced by its doublespeak description of Castro as a harmless agrarian reformer.

Maybe we need non Mongo-Turk hetersexual males in charge of Fox and the Times, as long as they are not also British.

2008 Sep 11 04:23 PM