Rupert Murdoch Says Fox Is Winning The Ratings Wars Because All The Other Media Are So Liberal

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Rupert Murdoch believes Fox News is handily winning the cable ratings wars because all the rest of the media are so liberal.

He was on Neil Cavuto's show to brag about his newest reports on quarterly profits, and explained his company's success can be explained thus:

Murdoch: Well, I think as far as Fox News goes, it's very simple. You know, ah, it's very powerful, it's very good, and it's very balanced. And everybody else, every newspaper other than ours, and every -- it may be an overgeneralization, but by far most newspapers -- and certainly the other television networks sort of are, um, on one side, the liberal side of things, we're -- I think the population of this country is pretty worried about its direction, and you know, they turn to Fox News.

But only a few breaths before this, Murdoch bragged about all the money being brought in to Fox by James Cameron's Avatar -- about $200 million this quarter alone, with more on the way (apparently the DVD/Blu-Ray release is really raking it in).

I dunno about you, but having watched Avatar a few times, one cannot describe its political POV as anything other than "liberal." Certainly there's no question that Cameron himself is one.

So if Fox News is winning because it's conservative, why are most of his company profit's actually being generated by a liberal movie?

I think a better explanation of Fox's success is equally simple: Murdoch has discovered that news sells better as entertainment, and partisan propaganda is infinitely more entertaining than straight news. But YMMV.