Brooklyn Mutt

Last night at the Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital conference, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch appeared for a wide-ranging discussion 

Murdoch staunchly defended the Fox News Channel’s “Fair and Balanced” motto as accurate, adding that even Bill O’Reilly “gives both sides all the time” — a remark that prompted laughs from the audience.
So why aren’t there more liberal voices on Fox News, [conference chief] Kara Swisher asked? Murdoch replied that he would hire a liberal voice if he could find one that was strong enough.
“Would you hire Keith Olbermann?” Swisher asked.
Murdoch’s response: “No, I fired him five years ago… He’s crazy.” [WSJ]

 Responds Olbermann:

Firstly, the quote is, according to AlleyInsider.Com, “he was crazy.”

I appreciate the difference and apparently Rupert does, too.
But this is actually quite a news story (for a very small group of people who worked with me at Fox Sports, and people who covered tv at the time). I had already been the host of Fox’s Baseball coverage for two years when, in April of 2001, I got a tip from outside NewsCorp that Rupert was unofficially shopping the Los Angeles Dodgers, which Murdoch at that time owned. I confirmed the story with an excellent baseball source, then immediately went up my chain of command at Fox. They all said “if it’s solid, go with it,” but I suggested we get the corporate viewpoint on this, so they put me in touch with Rupert’s PR guy in New York….