Shafer: Every Time Rupert Murdoch Opens His Mouth He Lies

“If Murdoch bothers to say something, it’s almost an even bet that he’s lying.”

- Jack Shafer, in the aftermath of Rupe’s declaration that he’s banning the Google, reflects upon Rupert Murdoch’s tendency to behave like a politician when it comes to his media businesses.

Some further examples of Rupe’s tendency to say one thing and do another, courtesy of Shafer:

• Upon taking over the New York Post in 1976 from Dorothy Schiff, he assured all that “the political policies [of the Post] will stay unchanged.” We all know where that one went.
• He claimed that a “special committee” would maintain the Wall Street Journal’s “editorial independence” but then ignored it to drive out the old editor and install a new one.
• As evidence that Murdoch doesn’t really think he’d win a fair-use suit against search engines for displaying snippets of his newspaper copy, consider the fact that he hasn’t filed one. (I’ll bet that Murdoch’s lawyers have advised him against filing a fair-use lawsuit against the search engines because it could backfire, expanding fair-use rights rather than limiting them.)

Really, the most amazing thing about this decades-long trend is not only that we all continue to jump on every contradictory edict to be issued from the mouth of Rupe, but also that at some point along the way Murdoch hasn’t opted to use this talent for “jawboning” in a run for some sort of political office.

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