If you listen to the shows This Week in Tech and This Week in Google on Leo Laporte’s TWiT network you hear lots of interesting commentary on tech topics. Unfortunately from time to time you also hear some ridiculous hyperbole, most of which references News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch is famous for many things related to media but is most well known as the guy who owns Fox News and The Wall Street Journal.

I have noticed that whenever Rupert Murdoch or one of his properties is mentioned on TWiT (the show) and TWiG Leo Laporte and Jeff Jarvis always take an extra moment to bash him. Jarvis typically calls Murdoch, “a dinosaur” while Leo likes to riff about Fox News’ female anchors and how Murdoch is an enemy of the internet. I find the charges against Murdoch as either a dinosaur or an enemy of the internet to be silly ones. He’s guilty as charged on the female anchor front but what that has to do with technology is beyond me. Anyway, Leo and Jeff have never really explained why they consider Murdoch to be so behind the times when it comes to the internet and technology. The best Leo could do was to use the fact that the Wall Street Journal has run stories about website and smartphone app information gathering as part of their What They Know investigative reporting series. And Jarvis loves to meander on about paywalls on news websites. Of course, one of Jarvis’ favorites, The New York Times, will be instituting a paywall in 2011. What dinosaurs!

Seriously though, I’m dumbfounded by all of this because I can easily think of several ways in which News Corp. has lead the way among major news organizations with respect to the embrace of the internet.

1. In 2005, years before Facebook took social networking mainstream News Corp. purchased the parent company of MySpace for $580 million dollars.
2. In 2007 News Corp. purchased Wall Street Journal parent company Dow Jones in a $5 billion dollar deal. Since the buy WSJ has retained their paywall, but also expanded their website to include journalist blogs, more video, user commenting and Facebook integration.
3. In the Dow Jones deal News Corp. also got All Things Digital which operates as a separate, web only entity focused on technology and the internet. More recently All Things Digital has beefed up their writing staff by hiring popular bloggers who cover a wide variety of tech topics.
4. WSJ also jumped on board the tablet bandwagon with a freemium app for both Android and iOS that offers a lower cost alternative to a full paper subscription.
5. Finally, word is that News Corp. is preparing to launch The Daily, an iPad only publication.

All of this sounds like anything but a dinosaur who has a vested interest in the downfall of the internet. It sounds like someone who has a heavy investment in the success of the internet across many platforms. So I must admit that I’m stumped at the criticisms from Jarvis and Laporte. It’s important for me to point out that I don’t think that all of these moves were great decisions or represent the best of what the net has to offer. Look at what has happened to MySpace web traffic over the last few years. And the success of the iPad only magazine seems to be a long shot at best.

Sadly, I suspect that the issue is a political one. Most people know that the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and the commentators on Fox News lean to the right. And here in the U.S. you’re going to upset about half the country with that point of view. So I think that those guys could be much more honest and say so rather than skirting the edges and firing off meaningless one liners against Murdoch. It’s just a waste of time on the podcasts.

It pains me to admit that one of the things that I really dislike about the tech blogging world is the insistence of some sources (ones that I generally enjoy) to sprinkle their content with politically motivated diatribes. Cmon, now. We get enough of that on regular radio and television every hour of the day. When I’m reading (or listening or watching) web based media about technology I’m interested in opinions about the technology or the services. I’m not interested in the politics of the people who funded them.

While Leo’s network is large enough that the loss of a few subscribers who feel the way I do doesn’t mean much, the same isn’t true for smaller web properties. My advice is to stick to tech and avoid the politics of things if you want to grow and sustain your audience. Maybe I’m way off on this. Maybe more people want political attitudes mixed in with their technology blogs and podcasts. I don’t. I much prefer Irish bar rules, which include no discussions of religion or politics. Perhaps I’m too naïve. Then again the way the world is today we could all stand to have a more idealistic view of things.

Update: Jeff Jarvis adds his 2 cents below in the comments. He says his opposition to Murdoch's approach to the internet is not political and I take his word on that. I still disagree with the final analysis though.