Rupert Murdoch has denied claims that he allowed political pressure from the Chinese government to influence his business decisions. The issue has been raised following News Corp's bid for Dow Jones, owners of the Wall Street Journal. He dealt head-on with the two main cases mentioned by critics.
Of his demand to his book publishing imprint, HarperCollins, to drop publication of a memoir by Chris Patten, the former Hong Kong governor, he said: "I did not think it would sell, but then they went ahead anyway.
"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."
Turning to the decision his by Hong Kong-based Star TV satellite operation to stop broadcasting a BBC news channel in China, he said: "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." (Via FT.com)
