Huffington Post political reporter Sam Stein appeared on "The Rachel Maddow Show" Wednesday to discuss Rupert Murdoch's recent comments about Fox News and its competitors.
On Tuesday evening, the News Corp. founder spoke at a forum for the public affairs TV series, The Kalb Report, and turned accusations of a Fox News bias on their head by instead claiming that it was CNN and MSNBC that "tend to be Democrats." During a question and answer session, Murdoch struggled to name a single Democrat who worked for the channel. Unfamiliar with his own network's support for the Tea Party movement, Murdoch said that it would not be ethical for Fox to support Tea Partiers.
Maddow asked Stein to explain how it could be that a man who has made himself the "public and political face" of his media properties, could sound so out of step with his own network.
Stein: "There's obviously the element of plausible deniability, Fox's motto is 'Fair and Balanced' and to admit that you've sort of boosted the Tea Parties would remove that veneer. Secondly, keep in mind, Murdoch is the recent owner of The Wall Street Journal and by all accounts, he's been trying very hard to make that an on-level competitor with The New York Times so perhaps his attention is divided elsewhere. But also this is a man who is very much devoted to ratings. And love it or not, Fox News gets a lot of good ratings. And so maybe he's simply entrusted the enterprise to Roger Ailes under the premise that as long as he can deliver viewers, what's the harm."
Murdoch, Stein explained, is ultimately a businessman, and in the current political climate, it makes good business sense to ride the Tea Party's furor.
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