Murdoch and his third wife, Wendi Deng, at the
Met’s Costume Institute gala.Photo: Getty Images
The Times has the second installment of its Rupert Murdoch–is–a–bad–bad–man series today, this time focusing on his dealings with China and featuring a catchy new rubric: “The Murdochracy.” The piece checks in at 2,800 words, and it recaps what you basically already know about Mr. M.: that he’s constantly been willing to make concessions to the Chinese government to gain access to the Chinese market. We were going to use the magic of Microsoft Word to AutoSummarize this installment, too, but there’s actually one fairly fascinating bit we didn’t want to lose to the summation.
It’s News Corp.’s statement to the Times, presented in the article’s eleventh paragraph:
“News Corp. has consistently cooperated with The New York Times in its coverage of the company. However, the agenda for this unprecedented series is so blatantly designed to further the Times’s commercial self interests — by undermining a direct competitor poised to become an even more formidable competitor — that it would be reckless of us to participate in their malicious assault. Ironically, The Times, by using its news pages to advance its own corporate business agenda, is doing the precise thing they accuse us of doing without any evidence.”
Why so fascinating? That’s easy: because we can’t quite decide if it’s brilliant PR jujitsu — or if it’s maybe a little bit true.
