Critics of Rupert Murdoch often talk as if News Corporation exerts a monolithic right-wing grip on all of its media properties. Of course, there is something to it: Mr Murdoch is indeed a right-wing libertarian and is not afraid to express his views to his newspaper editors.

But the older that Mr Murdoch gets the more ambiguity emerges within News Corp. Peter Chernin, News Corp’s president, is a Democrat and Mr Murdoch has enthusiastically adopted his son James’ concerns about global warming. He has committed News Corp to reducing its carbon footprint.

All of which makes more interesting the stance taken by Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News and the man behind the new Fox Business network which launched this week. Mr Ailes is an unapologetic sceptic about whether climate change is caused by humans, or even whether it is occurring.

Sure enough, the first day of Fox Business included an interview with Fred Singer, a scientist at the Unversity of Virginia who has claimed that researchers who did not agree with Al Gore about global warming are unlikely to get academic grants.

You could draw various conclusions from this:

1. News Corp is a liberal place that allows conflicting views to flourish.

2. It is OK to disagree with Rupert Murdoch providing you are more right-wing than he is.

3. Roger Ailes is successful enough to go his own way.

I go for 3 with a dash of 2 and a couple of drops of 1 mixed in.

October 16th, 2007 in Media | Permalink