Aline Van Duyn and Joshua Chaffin of The Financial Times write that News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch defending himself against accusations that he influences editorial content in his newspapers regarding China.
The comments were done to try to calm concerns that he would influence the editorial content of The Wall Street Journal if allowed to purchase its parent, Dow Jones & Co.
The reporters wrote, “Speaking to the Financial Times, Mr Murdoch rebutted the two cases most frequently cited as evidence of his meddling: the decision by publishing arm HarperCollins to drop publication of a memoir by Chris Patten, the former Hong Kong governor, and the move by Hong Kong-based Star TV satellite channel to stop broadcasting BBC news in China.
“‘I had told the HarperCollins editors not to publish the Patten book because I did not think it would sell, but then they went ahead anyway,’ Mr Murdoch said. ‘When I then found out they were publishing it, I told them anyone else could publish it, just not them. In retrospect, it would have been better just to publish it.’
“Mr Murdoch said the decision by his Star TV satellite group to drop the BBC’s English-language news channel was driven by commercial considerations: ‘Star was losing $100m per year; we had to pay $10m per year to the BBC. I said ‘Let them pay it themselves’, and they did. We also cancelled two other third-party channels – MTV and Prime Sports. At that stage we never ever had any request from anybody in China. Indeed, there was no discourse at all.'”
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