In Battle
With Rupert Murdoch.
A Personal View.
By JONATHAN POWER
LONDON-- "Human rights is a dirty business." So said the
late Martin Ennals, Amnesty International's first
secretary-general. And once again with Rupert Murdoch, press
baron extraordinaire, we have yet another instance when
wealth, power and narrow, self-serving, political interest
outrank freedom of speech, democratic values and
anti-totalitarianism. Murdoch has stopped his publishing
house HarperCollins going ahead with the publication of
"East and West", a book authored by Chris Pattan, the last
British governor of Hong Kong and a highly respected British
Conservative politician. "Kill the book" an angry Murdoch
banged the table as he shouted at Anthea Disney, the chief
executive of Murdoch's News American Publishing in New York.
Murdoch's underlings should not have been surprised. Indeed
the only question is why they signed up Patten since their
boss has a long record of cosying up to Beijing and Patten
has an equally long record of fighting Beijing tooth and
nail over his admirable effort to introduce a degree of
democracy into Britain's last colony before Hong Kong was
returned to China last year.
Murdoch's interests are transparent: to secure carriage
of his Asian Star satellite tv channel on a pan China cable
system, a business proposition that can only go ahead if the
hierarchy of the Chinese communist party approves. To this
end, four years ago, he cancelled his contract with the BBC
to relay it on Star when it broadcast a documentary critical
of Mao Tse-Tung and the ruling elite. Likewise, he sold his
stake in the outspokenly liberal Hong Kong newspaper, the
South China Morning Post to avoid giving any offence to the
Chinese government in the run up to the end of British rule.
Murdoch also published a biography of Deng Xiaoping by his
daughter in an overt attempt to ingratiate himself further
with the powers that be in China. (Book advances way out of
line with what the book could reasonably expected to earn
have also been dangled in front of western politicians,
ex-British prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major
and U.S. Congressional leader, Newt Gingrich, which
inevitably begs the question what favour he is trying to
solicit from them?)
But now Murdoch has taken one step too far. Axeing Patten
has met with outrage, a boycott by authors, the threat of a
major court case and, most important, a tangible sense that
the tables on the deck have shifted. As Andrew Neil, one of
his former, and very successful, newspaper editors observed
this week, "I cannot help feeling that the Patten episode is
a turning point in Murdoch's affairs. It's not just the
usual suspects who are ganging up against him. The scandal
has devalued the status of everything he publishes".
I'm caught up as a bit player in this drama. I was just
about to sign a contract with HarperCollins to write a
history of Amnesty International when the storm broke. I've
now made it clear to HarperCollins that I will be
withdrawing the book unless before next Monday Murdoch
either apologizes to Patten or sells off HarperCollins. Even
though my statement made the front pages of British
newspapers--and was even reported faithfully in Murdoch's
own paper, The Times--I don't expect my small stone to fell
Goliath. But now that one of London's top literary agents
has said he's asking more than 100 well-known writers to
boycott HarperCollins, I wonder what kind of a publishing
house Murdoch has left. I wonder too what they make of it
all in Beijing. My guess is that analysts will be telling
the politburo that Murdoch is too machiavellian by half for
the good of China. They will be questioning in their
convoluted way--conspiracy is an art form in communist
societies--why Murdoch signed up Patten in the first place?
After all Murdoch once defended his venture in China, back
in 1994, by observing that television is the greatest threat
to totalitarian regimes, a remark he's saught, by later
kowtowing to China, to consign to the dustbin of history.
The human rights community has never made progress by
compromising its integrity. If you have anything to do with
Amnesty International one is awed by the numbers of men and
women who've been prepared to renounce even the little they
have in their world for the sake of their principles--their
homes, their families, their freedom and often their lives.
Rupert Murdoch who has every material asset that one can
imagine has, to my knowledge, never sacrificed anything. His
power is for his profit and his profits are to increase his
power. All is subsumed in that. Freedom of the press are
words he uses only to fight off privacy laws. Yes, even
ruthless, competitive businessmen can behave with integrity.
I've met them. But not this one. He has become a danger to
democracy and to the central, essential values of our
freedom-loving societies.
March 4, 1998, LONDON
Copyright © 1998 By JONATHAN POWER
Note: I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172; fax
+44 374 590493;
and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
|