Rupert Murdoch agreed to a “truce” between his Fox News network and Barack Obama at a secret meeting with the Democratic candidate, according to the author of an upcoming book about the News Corp. chairman.
Writing in Vanity Fair, Michael Wolff — author of the Murdoch biography, “The Man Who Owns the News" — asserts that Obama viewed Fox News as among his most hostile critics and agreed to meet over the summer with Murdoch and Fox News Channel President Roger Ailes at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel.
Obama was “deferential” toward Murdoch, Wolff reports, but “lit into” Ailes.
“He said he didn’t want to waste his time talking to Ailes if Fox was just going to continue to abuse him and his wife, that Fox had relentlessly portrayed him as suspicious, foreign, fearsome — just short of a terrorist,” Wolff disclosed.
The three men then agreed to a “tentative truce,” Wolff writes.
Obama campaign spokesman Nick Shapiro acknowledged that the three men had an “opportunity to clear the air.”
A News Corp. spokesperson declined to comment on Wolff’s article, The Financial Times reports.
But one person at News Corp. disputed Wolff’s claim that Murdoch was becoming “embarrassed” that Fox’s right-wing positioning was “going a little far.”
Wolff’s biography is scheduled to be published in February.
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