Rupert Murdoch has been forced to deny he believes Barack Obama is a racist, after appearing to back the controversial Fox News presenter Glenn Beck's comments about the US president.
The chairman and chief executive of News Corporation said in an interview earlier this week that Obama had made "a very racist comment" and that Beck's views were "right".
"He does not at all, for a minute, think the president is a racist," a News Corp spokesman told the US website Politico.
In the interview with Sky News Australia, Murdoch was asked about the views expressed by contributors to Fox News, including Beck's view that Obama was a racist.
"He [Obama] did make a very racist comment about blacks and whites and so on, which he said in his campaign he would be completely above," Murdoch said.
"That was something which perhaps should not have been said about the president but if you actually look at what he [Beck] was talking about, he was right."
Beck caused uproar in July when he described Obama had "a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture".
His remarks were made during a discussion of Obama's reaction to the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr, an African-American Harvard academic.
Murdoch also said in the interview he thought the Obama presidency was going "badly", citing the defection of independent voters in recent elections in Virginia and New Jersey.
No comments:
Post a Comment