Think Again: Rupert Murdoch

"Rupert Murdoch Is the World’s Most Powerful Media Mogul"

Not for long. The chairman and CEO of News Corp., who likes to view himself as an antiestablishment rebel, is today the ultimate insider. No other media executive has as much personal clout with world leaders, in part because none so willingly uses his moguldom to reward friends and punish enemies. Murdoch has helped elect -- or defeat -- at least two British prime ministers, several New York City mayors, and numerous American presidents, among others. He is also the ultimate global capitalist, an Australian-turned-American whose real home is his jet. With News Corp.'s ability to beam satellite programming to 40 million subscribers across the Americas, Asia, and Europe, along with its Fox movie and TV studios and cable network, newspapers from Hong Kong to New York, several book publishers, and a burgeoning Internet division, no other media company can claim greater global reach. Nearly half of News Corp.'s $25 billion in revenues last year came from outside the United States.

Even so, Murdoch's position as the king of media is slipping. For one thing, the satellite-television system he cobbled together after a 20-year struggle may soon unravel. Rupert recently announced that he was close to swapping assets with cable billionaire John Malone in order to buy back Malone's 19 percent stake in News Corp. -- a stake that uncomfortably rivals Murdoch's 30 percent hold over his own company's shares. The price is likely to be News Corp.'s dominant position in DirecTV. Such a deal would leave Murdoch without a digital distribution platform in the critical United States market.

For another, Wall Street analysts don't share the public's outsized view of Murdoch's might. At current share prices, they give News Corp. a total market capitalization of some $68 billion. That's on par with Disney, but still less than archrival Time Warner, whose market cap is roughly $81 billion. (Disclosure: Time Warner was my longtime employer and still helps pay my mortgage.) More importantly, none of the traditional media giants comes close to the value that moneymakers are placing on eight-year-old new media upstart Google, which is currently worth more than $150 billion. After a remarkable four decades of striving and reinvention, Rupert may soon be yesterday's most powerful media titan.

"Murdoch Puts Money Ahead of Ideology"

Not really. Sure, Murdoch has always made running a successful business a major priority. That means at times supporting tough-minded politicians who are winners, regardless of their party label. (Over the years, he's backed left-leaning leaders like Australia's Paul Keating and Britain's Tony Blair, as well as conservatives like Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush.) When it comes to entertainment, that also means valuing market share more than ideological correctness. Take, for example, Fox's over-the-top cartoon Family Guy, which regularly mocks major religions and features a talking, martini-swilling dog, or its tasteless and ill-fated attempt to profit from accused murderer O.J. Simpson's hypothetical confession. Such programming may be the antithesis of the "family values" embraced by many of Fox News's traditionalist, red-state viewers. But so what? The cultural contradictions of capitalism are both ancient and legion, and the notion that Murdoch is somehow uniquely hypocritical in this regard is not just facile -- it's downright misleading.

Although most of his news outlets have openly advanced a broadly conservative agenda, Murdoch himself has been a consistent proponent of a particular type of conservatism. As he told me back in 1984, when I first wrote about Murdoch for Fortune, he has always been "very much for small business and the small man." This Murdochian little guy is a pragmatist, not a moral or intellectual conservative. He is typically anti-union and pro-market, likes a strong defense and strong leaders, and enjoys seeing the high and mighty taken down a few pegs. He's deeply suspicious of the power of pointy-headed bureaucrats, whether they reside in Washington, Brussels, or Beijing.

12345NEXT