I don’t like Rupert Murdoch solely due to the following ill-fated, pro-war words, taken from this 2003 The Guardian article:
Most revealing of all was Murdoch’s reference to the rationale for going to war, blatantly using the o-word. Politicians in the United States and Britain have strenuously denied the significance of oil, but Murdoch wasn’t so reticent. He believes that deposing the Iraqi leader would lead to cheaper oil. “The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy…would be $20 a barrel for oil. That’s bigger than any tax cut in any country.”
He went even further down this road in an interview the week before with America’s Fortune magazine by forecasting a postwar economic boom. “Once it [Iraq] is behind us, the whole world will benefit from cheaper oil which will be a bigger stimulus than anything else.”
On the one hand, I’d say that unlike world leaders and the hypocritical mainstream media, he spoke his mind… but tell that to the 500,000 people who died as a result of it.
But… apart from that, I can’t help but respect everything he has done on the business front. Sure, his father set up the platform, but man Murdoch ran with it.
Should the [News Corp./Dow Jones] deal close as expected, Murdoch — the ultimate outsider, the ink-stained interloper who started in 1953 with a single paper in Adelaide, Australia — would add capitalism’s daily chronicle to an empire that now comprises the Fox movie studio and television network, satellite TV systems in Europe and Asia, more than 100 newspapers and a fast-growing Internet division that includes MySpace, the massively popular social networking site. Two years ago, Murdoch’s archrival, Sumner Redstone of Viacom, thought he had a deal for MySpace, but News Corp. swooped in and snatched it, bidding $580 million, $30 million more than Redstone and far more than anyone else thought it was worth. Then the site grew from 20 million members to almost 200 million, Google paid $900 million for the right to advertise on the site, and suddenly Murdoch’s price looked cheap — and Murdoch looked like an Internet visionary. “I love being called that,” he says, “but the truth is, I’m just lucky and nimble.” He generates his own good fortune by being perhaps the most gifted opportunist in media, a man whose nose for a deal makes him the last of the true media moguls, the one who’s still building — grabbing Dow Jones, dreaming about trading MySpace for a big chunk of Yahoo!, trying to launch a Polish TV network. News Corp.’s voting stock, of which the Murdoch family owns 31%, has gone up 18% in the past year, making him worth $9 billion.
Read the rest on Time. Fantastic article… it’s true that the mere suggestion of MySpace for 25% of Yahoo! was legendary.
Related:
- Should Print Go Free?
- Is NewCo. worth $1B?
- MySpace: #1 Web M&A deal of all time
- Why the Bancrofts Should Reject Murdoch’s Offer
- Did Google overpay for FIM’s Search?
- Murdoch’s ballsy Yahoo! Offer
- Is FIM worth more separate than combined?
- FIM should spin off IGN
Disclaimer: Rupert Murdoch was my indirect boss from October to December 2005 and some of his staffers are big fans of WatchMojo.com. Few men can claim to have beaten Mr. Murdoch… but… well, we won’t go there.
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