Murdoch on Gates and more

Rupert Murdoch doesn’t give many interviews, but James Harding does a great job with the media mogul in the Financial Times (the interview is available online only to subscribers). The paper version is available just about everywhere, however, and is worth a look for this alone today.

Here’s Murdoch on Bill Gates: “I don’t dislike Bill, but Warren Buffet says that Bill Gates is the kind of man who, if he saw a competitor drowning, would push a hose down his throat to be sure.”

He says Vivendi’s Jean-Marie Messier is someone who has “never… met a journalist he didn’t give an interview to”, and ex-Time Warner head Jerry Levin is “the chairman of the company which made the biggest blunder” of the bubble years.

More curious to me is the contrast between Murdoch’s avowed republicanism and his stated intent to see his son Lachlan succeed him at News Corp. What’s the difference logically?