Murdoch admits gaffe on Patten memoirs

Harper Collins’ has also agreed to pay the remaining 100,000 pounds or so that remained of the advance that Patten received from them to write the book. A statement issue by the lawyers representing bothsides stated that “Harper Collins have unreservedly apologised for and withdrawn any suggestion that Chris Patten’s book, East West, was rejected for not being up to proper professional standards or being too `boring’. They accept these allegations are untrue and ought never to have been made.”

Earlier in the week, Rupert Murdoch publicly said that the executives at Harper Collins had “screwed it up” leaving him in a “completely inexcusable position”. Murdoch said that he disliked Patten, not because of China but because he had undermined Mrs Thatcher, and that his executives should simply have withdrawn from the agreement to publish offering to make good all loses. The feeling was that heads would roll at Collins, as they usually do when the chairman of News International is crossed. But, the media tycoon was forced to accept at least some responsibility for the fiasco. In another statement of retreat Murdoch said “there are no winner or losers in the current controversy; mistakes have been made andwe all share the responsibility.” He also stressed that all people involved had his “total confidence”.

While the controversy has given the non-Murdoch media another chance to question News Internationals methods, it would appear that Murdoch will remain unassailable. Despite the bluster of outrage at his “suppression” of the freedom of expression, Harper Collins has not lost many of its best selling authors. So far only two popular writers including historian Peter Hennesey and journalists-biographer Simon Heffer have announced that they will no longer publish under hat imprint. Murdoch, however was unperturbed by this saying that Collins published over 1000 titles each year.