Murdoch's Loss-Making Strategy

An opinion column by David McKnight, an associate professor at the Journalism and Media Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, argues that "Rupert Murdoch's critics often make the mistake of caricaturing him as just another businessman, interested more in money than ideology. ... These claims underestimate Murdoch's powerful contribution to the shaping of political ideas in Britain, the U.S. and Australia in the past 25 years." In particular, he points out that Murdoch "maintains loss-making newspapers such as the New York Post and the London Times" and that The Australian was subsidized for 20 years. "Murdoch's preparedness to take losses year after year testifies to the fact that he often puts ideas and influence before profit," he writes.