Telegraph | News | Blair attacked BBC on Katrina, says Murdoch

Telegraph | News | Blair attacked BBC on Katrina, says Murdoch: "

Blair attacked BBC on Katrina, says Murdoch
By Melissa Kite, Deputy Political Editor
(Filed: 18/09/2005)

Tony Blair was shocked by the BBC's coverage of Hurricane Katrina, describing it as 'full of hatred of America', Rupert Murdoch has claimed.

The chairman and chief executive of News Corporation apparently let slip details of a private talk with the Prime Minister during a speech to a conference in New York.

Mr Murdoch, a long-time critic of the BBC who controls rival Sky News, said the Prime Minister had confided his feelings to him last week.

He said Mr Blair had been in New Delhi at the time they spoke. The Prime Minister had turned on the BBC coverage of New Orleans: 'He said it was just full of hatred of America and gloating at our troubles,' the Financial Times reported Mr Murdoch as saying.

Bill Clinton, the former US president, and Sir Howard Stringer, chief executive of the Sony Corporation, also criticised the tone of the BBC's coverage during the seminar on Friday at the Clinton Global Initiative conference in New York, according to the report."