Last week, Lachlan Murdoch acknowledged out loud that Fox is a political operation, thus putting the lie to the network’s claim to be a news operation. But I thought it was just as significant that he characterized the network as “center-right” when it has become a bastion of extremism.

NBC News caught Murdoch’s comments at an investor conference last week:

The main beneficiary of the Trump administration from a ratings point of view was MSNBC... and that’s because they were the loyal opposition," Murdoch said of the rival cable network. "That’s what our job is now with the Biden administration, and you’ll see our ratings really improve from here."

...

We're going to stick to the center-right. That's where our audience is.

Last year, The New York Times’ Ben Smith reported, “People close to Lachlan Murdoch describe him as a laid-back executive who doesn’t spend his days watching Fox and is sometimes surprised to learn of a controversy it has generated.”

I wrote more about this for Crooks and Liars last week.

(Murdoch image via screen grab)

3/9/21 correction: I originally said the quotes came via CNN.