Murdoch Slams Michael Wolff: 'Crap,' 'Nonsense'

Michael Wolff's biography of Rupert Murdoch hasn't even been published yet, but already Rupert Murdoch's feeling the need to challenge its credibility.

At the Goldman Sachs conference today, Murdoch was asked about rumors that he'd like to buy The New York Times. "Whoever wrote that crap, it's nonsense," he replied. "I'm not interested. We're not interested in buying any more newspapers. We're happy with what we have."

Of course, that "crap" comes directly from the pen of Wolff, who tagged along with Murdoch for nine months in the course of researching his 100 percent authorized book, The Man Who Owns the News.

From the excerpt in Vanity Fair:

[Murdoch] is spending time now in consideration of an even more far-fetched fantasy, The New York Times: he'd really like to own it too. Now, everybody around him continues to tell him that buying the Times is pretty much impossible. There will be regulatory problems. The Sulzberger family would never.... And then there's the opprobrium of public opinion.

But it's obviously irresistible to him. I've watched him go through the numbers, plot out a merger with the Journal's backroom operations, and fantasize about the staff's quitting en masse as soon as he entered the sacred temple.