When CNN launched a new ad claiming (falsely) to be beat MSNBC and Fox News in viewers, Fox's flack retorted that Time Warner CEO "Jeff Bewkes is too smart to buy [CNN president] Jon Klein's bullshit." But Rupert Murdoch isn't.

A modified—but equally misleading—version of the ad ran in the New York Post today. While it doesn't say CNN is "No. 1, with more viewers than Fox and MSNBC," it says essentially the same thing—CNN is "#1 v. Fox News and MSNBC"—based on the same laughable metric of cumulative viewership that nobody pays attention to when buying ads.

We get that times are tough. News Corporation, the Post's parent company, posted a 60 percent decline in newspaper profits last quarter and a humiliating $203 million loss company-wide. So the Post will take any ad it can get, even one that its corporate cousin's spokeswoman is calling it a bald-faced lie first.

Note: We don't know that Irena Briganti, the Fox flack, called the ad "bullshit"—the Los Angeles Times rendered it as "[nonsense]" in the quote. But we still know it.