Keith Olbermann named News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch "Worst Person in the World" Thursday night for his admission that Fox News decided to "retaliate" against MSNBC after what Mudoch characterized as "abuse."
Earlier this week, on News Corp's earnings call, Murdoch responded to a question about the broken MSNBC-Fox News truce by saying, "We didn't started this abuse, which we thought went way beyond. Finally, we had to allow people to retaliate. When they stop, we'll stop."
Olbermann argued that, in this response, Murdoch admitted that he uses News Corp media outlets to pursue personal vendettas. From the transcript:
Fairly straight-forward sounding statement, until you analyze it a little bit. Murdoch is claiming that his alleged news people at Fox, like Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly, did not decide to do stories about MSNBC or NBC or GE. He did. And he did not decide to do stories about MSNBC or NBC or GE because it was any news value to them. He decided to do them out of personal pique.
When O'Reilly spent hour after hour reporting fabricating stories about GE parts allegedly, possibly, maybe--well, I read some graffiti about it--in roadside bombs, he was not doing so because the story was true or Americans were in danger or just to fulfill any premise of journalism. He did it because Rupert Murdoch had agreed to, in Murdoch's own words, allow people to retaliate.
When O'Reilly a stalker producer to interrupt a GE business meeting, it wasn't reporting. It was, again to use Murdoch's term, abuse.
And most importantly, all of it, from Fox's petulant, defensive name calling, to O'Reilly's slandering of GE, Murdoch will stop all of it if MSNBC simply stops watch-dogging Fox.
Thus, simply, Rupert Murdoch has revealed his company's news coverage and the people who deliver it are there simply to pursue their own petty vendettas.
Rupert Murdoch, not only doing his carnival fun house version of actual journalism, but stupid enough to admit it, in public, today's worst person in the world.
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