When I was profiling Roger Ailes, I was given an audition of sorts in his office, before he eventually agree to be interviewed. It was supposed to be off-the-record, but Roger being Roger, it was as revelatory as anything that followed, and one of its most revealing aspects was when Roger was informed by his secretary that Rupert Murdoch was waiting outside his office. He seemed bemused by his boss's presence and said that Rupert, in fact, came down to visit him all the time, because Roger alone among News Corp. executives wasn't climbing up Rupert's leg, and because Rupert loved being in the center of the action — where the news was made.
And it's Rupert Murdoch's constant presence in Ailes's office — his constant presence in his newsrooms, and his sheer animal joy at being there — that made his opening salvo at Tuesday's hearings so incredible. The thing that has distinguished Rupert Murdoch's ownership of media in this country and around the world has been his use of the media — his conviction that there's no reason to own a newspaper or a television network unless you can use it to advance your own interests and have your own fun. He loves the news because he loves gossip — a confidante calls him "a junkie" — and so it hardly matters if, as he said before Parliament, "1 percent" of his "53,000 employees" were engaged in illegal means of getting inside dirt: If the dirt was any good, and gave him pleasure, he was privy to it, because the pleasure of proprietary information has always been his payoff... even if he was never directly involved in arranging payoffs.
And that is why I wouldn't give too much credence to the story that is surely to emerge from the hearings....
Source: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/rupert-murdoch-scandal-6118235?src=rss
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