Neil Cavuto Romances Rupert Mudoch, Investors Get Screwed

The News Corporation released their quarterly earnings yesterday after the market closed. On the surface there was good news as News Corp beat the estimates of analysts. So Rupert Murdoch visited his own studio to be interviewed by his employee, Neil Cavuto.

Cavuto introduced the segment with a bootlicking recitation of the financial powerhouse that is News Corp. It was a gloating exercise that portrayed News Corp as the savior of the economy and even attempted to recruit viewers to some sort of News Corp pep squad, suggesting that they…

“…count yourself maybe a News Corp booster. The parent company of this fine network, 20th Century Fox, HarperCollins, and on and on, reporting much, much, much, better than expected earnings in the latest period that dwarf well past some of the estimates in there.”

The problem is that, in this eleven minute interview (25% of his program), Cavuto and Murdoch glossed over the most important part of the earnings announcement, so far as investors are concerned – the outlook going forward. As it turns out, News Corp actually issued a warning that they would fail to meet earnings expectations in the next quarter. This information was divulged in the conference call with analysts, but Fox News viewers wouldn’t hear it. Consequently, if you were relying Fox for accurate reporting on the News Corp earnings, you would have lost a pile of money this morning as their stock plummeted six percent.

Watching this spectacle of Cavuto and Murdoch grinning and lying to viewers about the prospects for News Corp’s stock you can’t help but wonder if they crossed a line into deliberately misleading shareholders. Why wouldn’t they? Misleading their viewers is their core competency. If it isn’t weapons of mass destruction or death panels, it’s their stock performance. And when Cavuto got around to asking Murdoch what was driving the company’s unparalleled “success,” Murdoch detoured entirely away from economics to his political obsession:

“Well, as far as Fox News goes it’s very simple. It’s very powerful, it’s very good, and it’s very balanced. And everybody else, every newspaper other than ours, it may be an over-generalization, but by far the most newspapers, and certainly the other television networks, are sort of all on one side, the liberal side of anything. I think the population of this country is pretty worried about its direction and, you know, they turn to Fox News.”

See that? News Corp is successful because of the liberal media. Not because they gouged cable operators for higher subscriber fees and favorable channel placement. Not because of the one-time phenomenon of a little movie called Avatar. Not because of the monopolistic domination they enforce in media markets around the world. But I will agree with Murdoch on his last point, that the population of this country is pretty worried. However, that isn’t why they turn to Fox News, it’s BECAUSE they turned to Fox News. Anyone who watches Fox, and is foolish enough to believe what the see, is a prime candidate for an anxiety attack or an aneurysm.

It is also interesting that Murdoch conducted his interview with Cavuto on the Fox News Channel. Cavuto is also the anchor and Senior VP for Murdoch’s struggling Fox Business Network. But when Murdoch decided to make a television appearance to discuss his company’s earnings, he chose not to visit his own financial news network. Cavuto was reduced to playing the FNC tape on his FBN show. Does that say something about Murdoch’s commitment to FBN?

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3 thoughts on “Neil Cavuto Romances Rupert Mudoch, Investors Get Screwed

  1. I think it says Murdoch isn’t fooled by his own hype. Which, of course, is worse than being an honest fool.

  2. Look at all the fuss yesterday when two big advertisers got “inserted” on spazBeck. Purina and Nestles were busting their asses on damage control. Even today someone asked Evil Rupert how long he’s going to string along that basketcase show with no advertisers. He was offended!! Go back to Adelade matey.

    • That was funny. Murdoch said he wasn’t subsidizing Beck and the Beck was still a great leadin to the primetime schedule. He didn’t mention that his great leadin lost a third of his viewers since the beginning of the year.

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