The smirking face of media mogul Rupert Murdoch greeted staffers at the rival Sydney Morning Herald on Wednesday after a hapless interior decorator installed his picture on more than a dozen floor-to-ceiling pillars in the paper’s new offices.
Murdoch has long coveted Fairfax Media, the Morning Herald’s parent company, but been unable to buy it due to media laws — apparently causing confusion for Fairfax’s interior designer, leading to the spooky prospect of a larger-than-life picture of the paper’s main rival hovering above its newsroom like the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg.
“It seems that the designer wanted a media image and picked one of Murdoch, thinking he was Fairfax’s owner,” a newsroom source told the AFP.
Murdoch’s News Corp. conglomerate sold a 7.5 percent stake in Fairfax as it moved to acquire Dow Jones earlier this year.
Read the full Reuters story here.
(Photo credit: Australia’s ABC News)
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