Rupert Murdoch, owner of the internation News Corp, issued a warning to “every competitor and enemy” that he is planning to “hit back hard.” News Corp owns the British paper at the center of the wiretapping scandal and an Australian technology company facing investigation for piracy.
“Seems every competitor and enemy piling on with lies and libels,” Murdoch tweeted this evening. “So bad, easy to hit back hard, which preparing.” The tweet came after the Australian government called for an investigation into NDS, an Australian technology compnay accused of using piracy to “sabotage competitors.”
News Corp chief operating officer Chase Carey attacked the BBC and other media outlets for their coverage of NDS. “The BBC’s Panorama program was a gross misrepresentation of NDS’s role as a high quality and leading provider of technology and services to the pay-TV industry, as are many of the other press accounts that have piled on – if not exaggerated – the BBC’s inaccurate claims,” Carey said in a statement, per the Sydney Morning Herald.
Murdoch did not name his particular targets, but he described the type. “Enemies [have] many different agendas, but worst [are] old toffs and right wingers who still want last century’s status quo with their monoplies,” he also said. (“Toffs” is a British term for the upper class.)
“Let’s have it on!” Murdoch, a self-described libertarian, added in a third tweet. “Choice, freedom of thought and markets, individual personal responsibility.”
