Blue Spot

FT.com / In depth - Murdoch brokers Obama ‘truce’

Rupert Murdoch brokered a “tentative truce” between his Fox News network and Barack Obama at a secret meeting with the Democratic presidential nominee, accor­ding to the author of a book on the News Corp chairman.

Fox News is seen by the Obama campaign as among its most hostile critics. Mr Obama initially rebuffed efforts by the Kennedy family to secure a meeting with News Corp executives, Michael Wolff writes in the current issue of Vanity Fair.

However, Mr Obama agreed this summer to meet Mr Murdoch and Roger Ailes, president of the Fox News Channel, at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York.

While the senator for Illinois was “deferential” towards Mr Murdoch, who also owns the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, he “lit into” Mr Ailes, Mr Wolff reports.

“He said that he didn’t want to waste his time talking to Ailes if Fox was just going to continue to abuse him and his wife, that Fox had relentlessly portrayed him as suspicious, foreign, fearsome – just short of a terrorist,” the report states.

Mr Ailes responded that Fox’s coverage might have been more favourable had Mr Obama been more willing to appear on its programmes. The three men agreed upon “a tentative truce”, Mr Wolff writes.

Nick Shapiro, Obama campaign spokesman, said: “They had an open and frank conversation where they got the opportunity to clear the air.”

Fox News has been accused of below-the-belt coverage of Mr Obama this year. One news segment asked whether a fist-bump greeting between Barack and Michelle Obama – a gesture commonly used by American athletes – was a “terrorist fist-jab”. The network also referred to Michelle Obama as Obama’s “baby mama”, slang that refers to a mother who never married her child’s father.

A News Corp spokeswoman would not comment on the report. One person at News Corp challenged its subsequent assertion that Mr Murdoch was becoming “embarrassed” by Fox’s strident rightwing positioning as “going a little far”.

Labels: Fox News, Fox propaganda, Murdoch, Obama, Obama critics