After a little prompting Rupert Murdoch gave it straight when asked what he thought of Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger's vision of a future without paywalls: "I think that sounds like BS to me." (BS being the faux-polite version of bullshit, presumably used so that his own media organisations didn't have to asterisk out their boss's comment).

My colleague Andrew Clark (who is older than he looks) only managed to elicit that response on the second attempt to get Murdoch's thoughts on Rusbridger's Cudlipp lecture argument that paywalls around newspaper websites could lead the industry to "sleepwalk into oblivion". When Clark first inquired: "I don't know if you've read Alan Rusbridger's speech... ?" Murdoch replied with a terse "No."

Maybe the News Corp chairman would think differently if he read the whole speech and considered its nuances. Or maybe not.

More ... http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2010/feb/03/rupert-murdoch-rusbridger-bs