Buried in a New York Times story Wednesday on media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s long-held dislike for 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is the revelation that the News Corporation chairman is building a “rapport” with Hillary Clinton.
“[A]bout a half-dozen mainstream Republican candidates are angling for Mr. Murdoch’s blessing, not to mention Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has developed her own growing rapport with him,” said reporters Amy Chozick and Michael Barbaro.
Nothing else is said about Murdoch’s apparent growing relationship with the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate.
The detail is noteworthy considering Murdoch’s media empire, at least as far as its U.S.-based news publications are concerned, leans editorially to the right. His New York Post tabloid frequently targets the Clintons with critical reports and even mockery on its front pages. Fox News, another property of Murdoch’s sprawling company, features commentators who are also generally critical of Clinton, and it rose to cable news dominance by reporting on former President Bill Clinton’s extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Last year, Murdoch signaled he was at least open to the possibility of Clinton as president. “It would depend on the Republican candidate, totally,” he said at the time.
In 2006, Murdoch hosted a fundraiser for then-Sen. Clinton of New York. Clinton reportedly said at the fundraiser that she was “very gratified that [Murdoch] thinks I am doing a good job.”
The supposedly budding relationship between the two could put the liberal watchdog Media Matters for America in a curious position. While Media Matters spends most of its manpower criticizing Fox News, the nonprofit is led by Clinton loyalist David Brock.
Bloomberg Politics reported Nov. 21 that “Correct the Record, founded by Clinton backer David Brock, has established itself as the research arm” of the former Secretary of State’s expected campaign for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination.
