Rupert Murdoch's Guy Gets It

Rupert Murdoch's Guy Gets It
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If Arthur Miller were at it again, he'd call the play Death of a PR Guy.

Gary Ginsberg, Murdoch's PR guy who got the ax yesterday, used to beg me not to call him a PR Guy--his official title was Executive VP of Global Marketing and Corporate Affairs--but that was his job: making Murdoch look good.

If not good, less bad.

Here's the job description: Take one of the least sympathetic people on earth--cold, hostile, mean, old, almost pathologically opportunistic, and basically unconcerned with what anybody thinks about him--and run behind him and make sure he doesn't say something cold, hostile, mean, or pathologically opportunistic that gets in the newspaper. (Murdoch's strange, unmediated interview last week in Australia suggests Ginsberg had already been off the job.)

Oh yes, and along the way, he treats you in a cold, hostile, and mean way. Not to mention he's not above just a little touch of...well, call it what you will: One Christmas Murdoch has little crèches put on the desks in the executives offices just to rankle Ginsberg, a conscientious Jew.

Or, when Ginsberg told his boss he was going to a wedding of a friend who worked for Bill Clinton and that Clinton would be there, too, Murdoch, sensing some possible Clinton hijinks, sent a reporter from the New York Post to spy on the festivities.

Ginsberg's deal with the devil was a clear one.

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