Sunday on Twitter with Rupert: Scientology, Mormons, politics and papers

By Jul. 1, 2012, 2:00pm 1 Comment

@RupertMurdoch managed to stay quiet last week while Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and CEO of News Corp., was doing last-minute maneuvers behind the scene, then publicly pitching the break up of his company.

But his Twitter alter ego is back with a vengeance, starting Saturday with a sotto voce tweet about the past week:

Then came a Sunday barrage over 5 hours or so as Murdoch tweeted from the country he verbally shivved Thursday during his media rounds — when he said repeatedly proclaimed that he would not make any more major investments in England. He meant, perhaps, simply to tamp down the possibility that News Corp. would try again for BSkyB but came off as starkly negative on the country where News Corp. still holds 39.1 percent of the pay TV company, including Sky News, and News International, with the Times of London, the Sun and their Sunday editions. It’s also the country where his company, his reputation and that of his son James currently faces the most jeopardy both legal and legislative.


So far, so good. That was followed by a bit of unsolicited advice to Prime Minister David Cameron (it was Mitt Romney’s turn in June) — then he couldn’t resist the tabloid news of the day:

That done, as he has on several occasions since taking to Twitter over the winter holidays, Murdoch answered questions:

Sticking through the attacks on his credibility and ethics:

But. like many of his news outlets, Murdoch couldn’t stay away from Scientology, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes:

A little later came:

And a question about whether he is a Christian. Murdoch replied: “I try to be.”

He also drew a line between Scientology (“evil”), Mormonism (“a mystery”) and Mormons (“not evil”). Lucky for him given that he appears to be backing a Mormon for president.

Alan Murray, the Wall Street Journal deputy managing editor, chimed in:

Murdoch grabbed the chance to promote the Journal and went off the air (for now):

That’s just a sampling of the two dozen-plus tweets over six hours. The whole is a canny, conversational stream of consciousness.

No backing off the he-said-what comments that are getting the most attention but also a sincere effort to communicate with people he might not otherwise reach. I’ve watched a lot of people at his level use Twitter to broadcast. Murdoch seems to get that it needs to be interactive to succeed. (He has nearly 265,000 followers now, up from nearly 240,000 when I checked last Thursday.)

It’s a year ago this week that the phone hacking scandal blew up, taking with it the News of the World, News Corp.’s chance to buy BSkyB and, it looked for a time, possibly the Murdochs. It still is far from resolved no matter how often he says it is, particularly with a number of his former execs under arrest and potential investigations in the U.S. It has dented his and the family’s power, to be sure, and helped lead to the break-up of the company he built over some 60 years, but Murdoch survives.

He’ll survive Scientology, too.