To understand Murdoch's motivations, you must realize that the man has a true love for the printed word, especially in newsprint form. The only thing that makes sense to me here is that he is intentionally sabotaging the internet to make his beloved newspapers more appealing. It's not going to work, but bless his heart for trying.
This man runs his news(!) organizations to spread his personal ideologies as opposed to actually providing news. The only thing he really cares about is maximizing profit (nothing wrong with that), to say that his action was a result of his love for printed media is pretty silly, really.
Yes, I'm serious. Thanks for asking. And no, Murdoch is widely misunderstood. Profit comes first, not his political ideologies. He basically supported Barack Obama in the 2008 election. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8220054890220213491 is interesting.
Speaking as someone who grew up surrounded by a Fox News target demographic (religious conservatives), I'll also note that many of them hated Fox's entertainment programming for undermining family values through violence, indecency, poor role models, and all the usual complaints directed at anything edgier than "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood".
Murdoch's news outfits may be blatantly biased, and overlap his own ideology to some substantial degree, but the primary goal is pandering to the audience's sensibilities (read: profit), not promoting his politics. Step back and think about it. Has commentary on Fox News ever convinced anyone to change their mind?
