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Journalism of Courage
LONDON, February 27: Harper Collins finds the memoirs of Chris Patten, the controversial former British governor of Hong Kong, too dull to publish. Patten and dull? Hard to stomach. The real reason is that Rupert Murdoch, who largely owns Harper Collins, does not want to displease the Chinese government which recently gave his Star TV permission to broadcast to some cable stations there, says The Independent.
Patten, as the last colonial governor of Hong Kong, had a very stormy relationship with the Chinese government which excluded him from even the smallest courtesies at the hand-over.
Patten’s agent was told by Harper Collins that the decision to drop the book was based on the drafts of the first six chapters, which they claimed “did not meet expected standards”.
But according to The Independent, the decision not to publish Patten’s memoirs, East and West, was made at the top and Rupert Murdoch “personally intervened” to stop its publication.
The paper quotes an internal memo from HarperCollins chairman Eddie Bell to Anthea Disney, chairman of News America Publishing, a subsidiary of Murdoch’s News Corp, which suggests that decision not to publish came from above. The memo says: “Following your instructions to relinquish rights, I have given considerable thought to the potential ramifications of such action … KRM (Keith Rupert Murdoch) has outlined to me the negative aspects of publishing which I fully understand.”
Bell goes on to say, “It is difficult to believe that any decision by Harper Collins to relinquish rights will not be directly attributed to News Corp.”
A senior Collins editor Stuart Proffitt, who was working on East and West is said to have quit the company in the wake of the controversy over the book. He is said to have quit or been suspended after refusing demands from Collins executives to either not publish the book or to get Patten to rewrite sections of the book critical of the Chinese government.
Proffitt described Patten’s memoirs as a “lucid, best-writtenand compelling book” written by a politician in the last 15 years. Chris Patten, who now has a publishing deal with Macmillan is suing Collins for breach of contract.
In Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, business has always come first, principles later. For a man who once claimed that satellite television was “an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere”, Murdoch has done a swift turnaround and accepted that the acquiescence of totalitarian regimes is very often necessary to the expansion of satellite television.
The exit of one of Britain’s better known editors, Andrew Neil from the Murdoch-owned Sunday Times, is said to be the outcome of another act of placation.
The Sunday Times did a lengthy investigation of the manner in which British aid payments towards the building of the Pergau dam in Malaysia won British business building contracts for the dam. Mahathir Mohammed relegated Britain to least favoured nation status as a consequence of this investigation. At the time, Star TV was inthe process of getting permission to expand its network.
Soon, Neil quit the Sunday Times and Star began broadcasting to Malaysia.
