Rupert Murdoch, News Corp's chief executive, yesterday defended himself against accusations that he had allowed political pressure from the Chinese government to influence his business decisions.
Mr Murdoch, whose family has a controlling stake in the News Corp media empire, yesterday defended his conduct in China as questions about it have become a rallying point for those seeking to derail his $5bn (£2.5bn) take-over bid for Dow Jones and its Wall Street Journal newspaper.
The Bancroft family, which controls 64 per cent of Dow Jones class B voting shares, gathered yesterday to discuss the offer. They have received letters from Dow Jones investors and Journal reporters in Beijing urging them not to sell to Mr Murdoch, who, they claimed, had a history of sacrificing journalistic integrity to further his business interests.
Speaking to the Financial Times, Mr Murdoch rebutted the two cases most frequently cited as evidence of his meddling: the decision by publishing armHarperCollins 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."
Other allegations, including one that he had paid an advance to Deng Xiaoping's daughter of $1m, were untrue, he said. A payment of $20,000 for the rights was made by a separate group.
