Rupert Murdoch Attacks His Critics

Rupert Murdoch is going to war. He is mad as hell and isn't going to take it any more from his enemies who are tarnishing the good name of his company, News Corp. (NYSE: NWS). No more apologizing for past alleged indiscretions.

The media mogul's declaration of war last week specifically targets "the lies and libels" of such enemies as "the old toffs and right wingers" who are stuck in "the last century with their status quo monopolies."

The high-tech weapon used to launch the all-out attack on the old toffs and right-wingers was Rupert's Twitter account. He was so incensed at wrong doing on the part of his enemies, the night of March 26 he fired a barrage of three Twitter messages on the perceived injustices with increasing bellicosity. The tweet bombardment ended with a call to arms worthy of a Winston Churchill: "Let's have it on! Choice, freedom of thought and markets, individual personal responsibility."

That doesn't sound like the old blood-sucking vampire capitalist oligarch who once declared "Monopoly is a bad thing, until you own one."

It showed the new No More Mister Nice Guy is not one of those old farts who disdain modern weapons of mass distraction like Twitter. For example, I only tweet when fomenting a social revolution.

What made the Old Ghoul, as he is sometimes fondly called in his former Mother Country of Australia, go nuclear were the "old toffs and right-wingers" at the BBC... which must have surprised a lot of license-holders who always complain the Beeb swings the editorial cricket bat from the left side of the wicket.

What specifically got his dander up was the BBC running a documentary on its Panorama series, titled Murdoch's TV Pirates (not to be confused with the Pittsburgh Pirates or the Somali Pirates). After a four-year investigation by the Australian Financial Review newspaper, the Panorama documentary accused an arm of News Corp., NSD, which is in the encryption and smartcard business, of encouraging piracy against competitors by stealing the codes of pay-TV rivals, passing them on to disreputable consumers on the Net who could help destroy competitors in the pay-TV business.

By attacking 20th century monopolies, Rupert seemed to be implying that he and NewsCorp were paragons of personal responsibility and free choice for all. "He wanted free pay-TV for all," interpolated the old toffs and right-wingers at Perdido Street School blog. " Except for his own pay-TV networks, of course. Those you have to pay for."

What a guy.

I can understand why the Old Ghoul is especially agitated these days. NewsCorp may be facing two criminal investigations over the latest allegation -- one in Australia, one in Britain. The war against the media critics might be a feint designed to take investors' minds off the coming parliamentary report this month on what an MP has called "the single largest corporate corruption case in this country in 250 years -- phone hacking on an industrial scale, News International employees bribing the police so widely that Scotland Yard became, in effect, a subsidiary of News International."

NewsCorp released a statement accusing the BBC of "gross misrepresentation" in alleged stealing of codes. Murdoch's TV Pirates had "presented manipulated and mischaracterized e-mails to produce unfair and baseless accusations."

That is rich: Rupert and NewsCorp complaining about misdemeanors and other crimes of journalism. Hello kettle, meet pot.

To further calm investors, James Murdoch, who had drawn the short straw in the Who Dunnit UK newspaper cock-up, resigned this week as chairman of British Sky Broadcasting (LSE: BSY), a beneficiary of alleged chicanery in the NSD case. That clears the air in the Augean Stable that is NewsCorp, investors might believe.

If William Shakespeare were a NewsCorp common stockholder, he might very well be saying now, "The old ghoul doth protest too much, methinks."