Topic: Newsmax
Christopher Ruddy uses a July 12 Newsmax column to defend his former boss, Rupert Murdoch:
This news hurricane currently overtaking the media should really be re-titled “Time to Beat Up on Rupert Murdoch.”
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Missing from all the sensational reporting is the fact that Murdoch is not well liked by the liberal establishment in Britain or in the United States. But this bias against Murdoch cannot deny the fact that Murdoch has played a key role in shaping our world today, including helping the West to defeat communism.
The allegations coming out of Britain are serious and should be investigated by the authorities, though I don’t believe Murdoch himself would ever have sanctioned criminal activities. During the mid 1990s, I worked briefly for the Murdoch empire at the New York Post. Such practices that have surfaced in Britain simply would never have happened at the Post.
Murdoch has, justifiably, moved to close his newspaper, The News of the World, and taken other serious actions to address these abuses.
In fact, many of the recent sensational press disclosures were actually provided to the official investigators by Murdoch’s own media company, which has been working closely with the police since the hacking allegations first arose two years ago.
Ruddy doesn't mention that one of the problems was that Murdoch papers were working a little too closely with police, as in bribing them to track cell phone signals of celebrities and others.
Murdoch as a victim of the left is a theme he repeats later in the column:
nd this really gets me to the guts of my story, the real backdrop: The left hates Rupert Murdoch.
Most Americans don’t know that it was Rupert Murdoch, an Australian and “outsider,” who came to Britain in the late 1960s and began shaking up the media establishment.
It was Murdoch and his newspapers that elected Margaret Thatcher, taking Britain out of its socialist coma. Were it not for Murdoch, it is doubtful the Iron Lady would have ever emerged.
Thatcher, with Murdoch’s support, broke the power of the labor unions and their lock grip over the British economy. Without Murdoch, there would never have been a Reagan-Thatcher alliance defeating the Evil Empire. And Britain would not be today a first-rate European power.Murdoch was not just a player in this. He was the key player.
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Murdoch and his paper saved our greatest city, New York. Back in the ’70s, the Big Apple was on the brink of insolvency.
Indeed, New York was on the path to become another Detroit; that is, until Murdoch decided to use the Post, then the third-most-read daily, to endorse Ed Koch, a dark-horse candidate and Democratic congressman in the 1977 mayoral election. Murdoch cleverly used a lottery style marketing program called Wingo, which, in the months leading up to the mayoral election, caused the Post’s circulation to mushroom.
Koch won that election handily, thanks to Murdoch. In my book, Koch saved New York by rolling back the power of the municipal unions that were a key factor in leading the city toward bankruptcy.
We suspect Ruddy wouldn't be so eager to paper over this scandal if Murdoch wasn't so conservative-friendly.
