Rupert Murdoch Lies to Get Ahead in Business 36682

Rupert Murdoch lie? To the press? But doesn’t he understand the sanctimony of this industry? He does, after all, publish things on newsprint.

But, as Slate’s Jack Shafer argues while brandishing a Lexis Nexis account, Rupert doesn’t care so much about facts. Which means Shafer’s calling bullshit on his arch media nemesis (slash media mogul who impresses him to no end) regarding his statements to the Financial Times, where he deflected criticism that he’s in the business of pleasing China … so he can do more business with China.

Back in the FT in 1994, relays Shafer, was this report:

Mr Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corporation, has finally admitted that he kicked BBC World Service Television off his Star TV system in Asia to please the Chinese government and help establish the satellite service there.

And yet, in yesterday’s FT, came this “it was a business decision, not a political one” Rupert quotable about his satellite network kicking off the BBC:

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.

And then there’s the book by the UK’s last governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, which was critical of China and a title Rupert never wanted to see daylight. As you might guess, the facts contradict much of what’s coming out of Rupert’s mouth.

So now that we’ve established, without question, that Rupert cares more about making a dollar, or a pound, than politics, telling the truth, and human rights violations, can we get back to that O.J. Simpson book he spiked? We hear that’s a really hot topic right now.