Murdoch hangs on to poison pill defence

Tycoon sees off challenge from Liberty Media· News Corp snaps up stake in Australian paper group

Andrew Clark in New York

Saturday October 21, 2006

The Guardian

Rupert Murdoch narrowly succeeded yesterday in winning an extension of his "poison pill" defence against a takeover of his News Corporation empire, despite vehement opposition from the company's second biggest shareholder, Liberty Media.

At News Corp's annual meeting in New York, 57% of votes were cast in favour of retaining the provision, including a 30% block controlled by the Murdoch family. The so-called poison pill, which makes hostile bids prohibitively expensive, was created in 2004 to prevent Liberty Media's John Malone from advancing beyond his stake of 18%.

In a surprise move indicating frosty relations between the two media moguls, Liberty abstained from voting on the re-election of New Corp's directors.

News Corp, which owns the Times, the Sun and a big chunk of BSkyB, and Liberty have held on-off talks over Mr Malone's stake. One possibility has been a swap of that holding in the Murdoch empire for News Corp's 37% stake in the DirecTV cable television operation.

Mr Murdoch said: "If we are to believe Liberty, we're very close to closing a deal, but only time will tell. We're not in any rush or hurry at all; we've just got the poison pill through for another three years."

About 200 investors attended the meeting, including representatives from several conservative organisations who peppered Mr Murdoch with questions about News Corp's television output. In answer to one query, Mr Murdoch revealed that he had intervened at the personal request of a leading shareholder, the Saudi prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, to query Fox News's description of riots in Paris last year as led by Muslims.

Mr Murdoch said he was concerned because he understood that many of the rioters were from an Algerian Catholic background. "All I said [to Fox] was 'you ought to look at that and see if it's right. If it isn't right, you ought to change it'."

Leon Weil, of the conservative Parents' TV Council, queried the wisdom of the drama series Nip/Tuck, which he said featured "misogyny, sex, violence, incest, bestiality and necrophilia".

He added: "The producer of this series has publicly stated that his goal is for mainstream television to show a rear-entry sex scene. This is what News Corp is forcing millions of people to pay for as part of the basic cable subscription."

Mr Murdoch said all such programming was shown after a 10pm watershed.

Another right-wing activist, Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media, asked whether he approved of Channel 4's drama, Death of a President, which features a mock-up assassination of George Bush.

Mr Murdoch said News Corp's BSkyB business in the UK was legally required to run an open platform carrying free-to-air channels such as Channel 4 and the BBC. "It's not in our business, not in our power, unfortunately, to censor the BBC or ITV," said Mr Murdoch, who later said his use of the word "unfortunately" was a joke.

Meanwhile, News Corp has widened its position in the Australian newspaper market by snapping up a 7.5% stake in Fairfax, its main print rival. Mr Murdoch called it a "strategic stake" and rejected any suggestion that he was interested in buying Fairfax's flagship titles - the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age - to add to his the Australian.

My Oppinion

Murdoch is a media conglomerate and owns literally all major indusries in the print and televison media. The fact that he has so much power emphasises how easy it is for him to control the public, manipulating them into believing his views. Also, by being able to fight off his only compttion Liberty Media, shows that he will eventually aspire to the domination that he so desires.