News Corp. Chief Rupert Murdoch offered a gloomy outlook on the economy, media and current tech challenges at the cable TV industry's largest annual gathering this week.
Murdoch
agreed with the widely held conclusion that abundant free content online is breaking the media industry's business models. "People are used to reading everything on the net for free, and that's
going to have to change," he warned. He went on to question whether newspapers should continue to allow aggregators, like Google, distribute newspaper content without being paid for it. "If you have
a brand like The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal, you don'thave to [let] Google steal all your copyrights."
Murdoch also said he fears financial markets may not
recover for two or three years. His chief concern is that the U.S. government will throw too much money at the crisis, causing a surge of inflation that could prevent a sustainable recovery. Higher
taxes and a larger government could also constrain the business climate, he said.
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