Is Rupert Murdoch a good guy or bad guy?

He is trying to compile more and more money and power.

He is a bad guy.

I believe he’s misunderstood in his actions.

Fry and Laurie really sum up my feelings.

Was he even aware what his British tabloid was doing? Not that it is an excuse. I don’t think he is a bad guy for being a smart businessman, but it seems he crossed the line a little. He would be rich without his companies being so ethically disgusting. I complain about this all the time in big business and capitalism, making money is great, people should be rewarded for the creativity and business skills, but the pursuit of a profit goes to far sometimes, moves away from the golden rule, and then things eventually go south.

He crossed the line more than a little and his companies were infringing the rights of individuals and public figures on a massive scale. In the UK he was a very powerful figure and politicians were scared of him. That is probably why he got away with it for so long. He was in charge of the organisation, it is no defence to say he wasn’t aware of what was going on and I am sure he was. I don’t think Murdoch is an bad man so much as an example of how power corrupts.

potential Palpatine.
(was)

Murdoch is a powerful man in more than the UK and I find it hard to believe he, or/and his son did not know what was going on at least at some level. Is he bad… I agree with @flutherother. I don’t see him as bad. I see him as rich and powerful and driven by the desire for more money and power. I don’t know him as a man though. As a father or a son or a husband. We only see a slice of Rupert Murdoch and that slice is not very pleasant, but is he completely bad, I doubt it.

I think his companies are seriously damaged though and his organisation will need to do a lot of rebuilding. I am sure there have been many, many people waiting in the wings for something like this to happen and for him and News Corporation to be brought low. Interesting times.

I would say indifferent, he is in it for the money and the sense of power. How he achieves those goals is not of any particular interest to him as long as he personally doesn’t have to get his hands dirty. I would guess he was very aware of what was going on and just didn’t care.

I don’t think his companies are the only ones using this sort of information gathering. I wonder how many others are shivering in their boots waiting to hear their names called out.

He’s a greedy, amoral little slug.

He looks like a bulldog licking piss off a thistle too.
A fairly shallow remark, but I felt it needed saying…..so I did.

Think of the outrage on Fox News if Julian Assange had hacked into the phones of 9/11 victims. Fox would be calling for his head.

Neither.

He is a very successful businessman. When you are very successful at anything you have done things that others may not agree with.

He is a bad, bad man.

@Aethelflaed Absolutely brilliant!

He’s “just a man”, with all of the good and bad that comes with that.

However, as a billionaire “mover and shaker” he and his corporation are very illustrative of what happens when “big government” makes deals with “big corporations” – and as long as we have the one (either one) then we shall surely have the other.

That, of course, combined with “politicians who are afraid for their careers” – which also should not be. Politicians should not have decades-long careers in government. That’s equally awful, I think.

He has made his fortune by pandering to people’s most base urges, and almost always through lies, half truths, and innuendo. He views people’s grief as a money making opportunity.

“Bad: is too weak a word to describe him. He is evil incarnate.

I don’t have any direct knowledge of the man. I can just judge from what I hear, and from what I see him do. From hearsay, a picture emerges of a ruthless type-A personality that has virtually no real friends, but that uses reward and punishment equally to get his way in all things. Kieth Olberman revealed this this. At the end of the film clip, Olberman explains how his own health records were held over him as blackmail. Here is the complete story on the blackmail by News Corp.

In watching what Murdoch does, I see a man who may top the infamous newspaper robber baron, William Randolph Hearst, in trying to control governments and promote the Gospel of Greed that would revise spending and tax thinking so that the poor and elderly are ignored in order to provide ever more to billionaires—like Rupert Murdoch.

He sets the tone for his corporation. If he was the kind of guy who wouldn’t stand that kind of behaviour it probably wouldn’t have happened. He sets the tone of “a sensational story at any cost” hence you get this kind of thing happening.