'Outsider mentality' pits Murdoch against the elite, says new book
Author says media tycoon still sees himself as anti-establishment despite wide influence
Rupert Murdoch still sees himself as an anti-establishment outsider, even after building the most powerful media empire on the planet, a new book says.
Murdoch's World: The Last of the Old Media Empires by David Folkenflik says the Australian-born US magnate remains distrustful of governments following his long history of battling regulators in several countries.
Murdoch's executives "have always defined themselves by [the company's] enemies - unions, liberal elites, The New York Times, the BBC, The Guardian and the Australian Broadcasting Corp; self-satisfied politicians, red-tape happy government regulators, the leftist university professoriate," the author writes.
"It is the defining contradiction of Rupert Murdoch's corporation that it has accumulated more influence than any other media company in the world and yet remains convinced of its status as an outsider."
Murdoch, who is under pressure from a phone-hacking scandal in Britain and recently split the huge News Corp conglomerate into separate companies focusing on entertainment and publishing, has long had "contempt" for much of what government does, the book argues.
"Murdoch comes by that contempt for government intervention by way of personal experience," Folkenflik writes in the book released this week.