I think you'll find Murdoch is more in touch than people think.
He's actually spoken out about doing something that other traditional news/media organisations would like but don't say. If everyone follows suit what will be left for Googles dumb bots to index?
Googles search engines are already filled with linkback pages, twitter feeds and pointless dross... without being able to spider into sites with info on them the dross count will increase.
How does this benefit the media organisations? They can start recouping advertising revenue, as who would pay google to advertise if people use it less because they can't find any useful/relevant information?
Googles strength for advertising comes from the one hit when people search. Once they find a relevant site and bookmark it they don't need google to find it again.
It's one Borg against another... Both can lose their stranglehold, but someone needs to get the ball rolling.