(Newser Summary) – Rupert Murdoch isn't what you've been told, Michael Wolff writes in Vanity Fair. He's not a destroyer of journalism—he is perhaps the last great lover of newspapers. And he’s actually turning liberal. Yes, he’s still a free-marketeer, but Murdoch has been seduced by his second wife’s liberal social circle, and "the angry outsider, the anti-elitist" is becoming one of them. Which explains why he overpaid for the Wall Street Journal and fantasizes obsessively about buying the New York Times.
Murdoch hosted a secret meeting with Barack Obama this summer, including a face-to-face with Fox chief Roger Ailes, which started acrimoniously but ended in a “tentative truce," writes Wolff. After spending 9 months interviewing the mogul for an upcoming book, Wolff finds him the opposite of the corporate man—"maybe the last troublemaker in the holier-than-thou, ethically straitjacketed news business." But he thinks Murdoch is actually becoming embarrassed by Fox, his former alter ego. Source: Vanity Fair
He’s a troublemaker—maybe the last troublemaker in the holier-than-thou, ethically straitjacketed news business. - Michael Wolff, Vanity Fair
Fox has been his alter ego. And yet now the embarrassment can’t be missed—he mumbles even more than usual when called on to justify it. - Michael Wolff, Vanity Fair
I was warned about his charm by many other journalists—warned not to fall victim to it. So the surprise was his lack of it. - Michael Wolff, Vanity Fair
The angry outsider, the anti-elitist, has become part of the achieving, glamorous, clever, socially promiscuous set. Davos, Cannes, Sun Valley, Barry Diller’s yacht—this is now Rupert Murdoch’s world. -
