Murdoch goes on the offensive against the NYTimes

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, the subject of a two-part series in the New York Times about his business operating style due to his bid to purchase Dow Jones & Co., the parent of The Wall Street Journal, lashed back at the Times for what his company called biased treatment.

The second part of the series is running in the Times on Tuesday and it focuss on Murdoch’s business operations in China, which have become an issue for many Journal reporters in that country. They fear that stories they have written in the past about the country and its government will be killed if Murdoch buys the paper. In April, the Journal won a Pulitzer Prize for its China coverage.

Joseph Kahn of The Times wrote, “News Corporation officials in Beijing and Hong Kong declined to comment for this article. After The New York Times began a two-part series on Monday about how Mr. Murdoch operates his company, the News Corporation issued a statement:

“‘News Corp. has consistently cooperated with The New York Times in its coverage of the company. However, the agenda for this unprecedented series is so blatantly designed to further the Times’s commercial self interests — by undermining a direct competitor poised to become an even more formidable competitor — that it would be reckless of us to participate in their malicious assault. Ironically, The Times, by using its news pages to advance its own corporate business agenda, is doing the precise thing they accuse us of doing without any evidence.'”

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