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Ted Turner says Murdoch 'Going to Have to Step Down'

Ted Turner spoke to Bloomberg Television's Betty Liu this morning about Rupert Murdoch and the News of the World phone hacking scandal as well as Warren Buffett and President Obama's tax plan.

Turner said that Murdoch is "going to have to step down" and that "he should have known" about the hacking.

Courtesy of Bloomberg Television

 

Turner on Rupert Murdoch:

"I'm past retirement age now. So, I'm 72. That's a little late to be running a corporation. Murdoch's still doing it at 80, but for not for much longer, I'm afraid. I think he's going to have to step down."

"He hadn't survived anything like this...This is serious...It's going against the law. You know, not even Rupert Murdoch should be allowed to break the law. Nobody should....He should have known. I mean, he was chairman of the board. He's responsible. I took responsibility when I ran my company. You never heard me say, 'Well, I didn't know.' You never saw me get in that kind of trouble, did you?"

On making amends with Murdoch:

"I did, and I still have made amends. I'm just, quite frankly, I'm very disappointed that this has occurred. A major media company should definitely be following the law, that's all. And when they break the law and certainly, it's already been admitted that News of the World broke the law. So, there's no question that the law was broken."

"The question is how big a scandal is it. And they're investigating that now, and we'll know soon enough. But in the mean time, you know, you are innocent until you're proven guilty. And I believe in that, too."

On President Obama's proposed tax plan:

"The wealthy have a good situation compared to a lot of the developed world. Our taxes are lower on the wealthy people. So, you know, nobody likes to pay more taxes, except Warren Buffet likes to pay more taxes. He's the only one."

On whether Warren Buffett should pay more taxes:

"Well, he thinks so. He can always write a check to the government, just send 'em the money. But I don't have a big problem with it. I'm certainly in favor of keeping the inheritance tax, for instance, and have been all along. Because if we do away with the inheritance tax, we'll have some families in the United States over a period of years that'll get richer than anybody else in the world, and the wealth will be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, and I don't think that's good. I believe in a strong middle class."

On Buffett's giving pledge:

"I'm on board. I think it's a good idea. But it's a lot easier for he and Bill Gates to give away half of what they have because they have so much than it is somebody with only one billion, you know, they give away half, that's $500 million, and you only have $500 million left, it's hard to afford a jet plane at that level."

On he has helped recruit for Buffett's giving pledge:

"I've written a couple of letters to try and encourage certain people to join the pledge...I got a couple of rejections. But they were conditional objections. They said they were thinking about it...Things are so uncertain now in the economic situation that you might lose it overnight. And every wealthy person has a fear that they're going to lose it. Now, you know, when I merged with AOL, I lost 90 percent of what I had. It rallied a little bit, but...I laid in bed at night thinking about which of my ranches I was going to sell first and which of my paintings in my art collection if the situation kept going."

On whether he's worried about the economy right now:

"Yes, I worry about everything. I'm the global worrier. I worry for everybody. You know, so other people don't have to worry so much because I'm worrying about it for them."

On what the one thing out of Washington he'd like to see in order to create jobs or to get CEOs to start hiring:

"Maybe it's not one thing. Maybe it's a combination of things. I think stimulating the economy and putting some people back to work...well, I think they should have done more solar and wind. That would have created a lot of jobs, more than that would have been lost in the coal and oil industry, because they'd be created here."

"When we give the money to Saudi Arabia for the oil, Saudi Arabians get it. But if we build wind and solar here in the United States, the money stays here and hires people. I would have had a bigger energy component to my bailout...It probably would have been a lot worse, the economy would have been worse without the bailout. But I don't think it was done as well as it could have been. But then, you know, it's real easy to sit on the sidelines."

 

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