LONDON– “Human rights is a dirty business.” So said the late Martin Ennals, Amnesty International’s first secretary-general. And once again with Rupert Murdoch, press baron extraordinaire, we have yet another instance when wealth, power and narrow, self-serving, political interest outrank freedom of speech, democratic values and anti-totalitarianism. Murdoch has stopped his publishing house HarperCollins going ahead with the publication of “East and West”, a book authored by Chris Pattan, the last British governor of Hong Kong and a highly respected British Conservative politician. “Kill the book” an angry Murdoch banged the table as he shouted at Anthea Disney, the chief executive of Murdoch’s News American Publishing in New York.
Murdoch’s underlings should not have been surprised. Indeed the only question is why they signed up Patten since their boss has a long record of cosying up to Beijing and Patten has an equally long record of fighting Beijing tooth and nail over his admirable effort to introduce a degree of democracy into Britain’s last colony before Hong Kong was returned to China last year.
Murdoch’s interests are transparent: to secure carriage of his Asian Star satellite tv channel on a pan China cable system, a business proposition that can only go ahead if the hierarchy of the Chinese communist party approves. To this end, four years ago, he cancelled his contract with the BBC to relay it on Star when it broadcast a documentary critical of Mao Tse-Tung and the ruling elite. Likewise, he sold his stake in the outspokenly liberal Hong Kong newspaper, the South China Morning Post to avoid giving any offence to the Chinese government in the run up to the end of British rule. Murdoch also published a biography of Deng Xiaoping by his daughter in an overt attempt to ingratiate himself further with the powers that be in China. (Book advances way out of line with what the book could reasonably expected to earn have also been dangled in front of western politicians, ex-British prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major and U.S. Congressional leader, Newt Gingrich, which inevitably begs the question what favour he is trying to solicit from them?)
But now Murdoch has taken one step too far. Axeing Patten has met with outrage, a boycott by authors, the threat of a major court case and, most important, a tangible sense that the tables on the deck have shifted. As Andrew Neil, one of his former, and very successful, newspaper editors observed this week, “I cannot help feeling that the Patten episode is a turning point in Murdoch’s affairs. It’s not just the usual suspects who are ganging up against him. The scandal has devalued the status of everything he publishes”.
I’m caught up as a bit player in this drama. I was just about to sign a contract with HarperCollins to write a history of Amnesty International when the storm broke. I’ve now made it clear to HarperCollins that I will be withdrawing the book unless before next Monday Murdoch either apologizes to Patten or sells off HarperCollins. Even though my statement made the front pages of British newspapers–and was even reported faithfully in Murdoch’s own paper, The Times–I don’t expect my small stone to fell Goliath. But now that one of London’s top literary agents has said he’s asking more than 100 well-known writers to boycott HarperCollins, I wonder what kind of a publishing house Murdoch has left. I wonder too what they make of it all in Beijing. My guess is that analysts will be telling the politburo that Murdoch is too machiavellian by half for the good of China. They will be questioning in their convoluted way–conspiracy is an art form in communist societies–why Murdoch signed up Patten in the first place? After all Murdoch once defended his venture in China, back in 1994, by observing that television is the greatest threat to totalitarian regimes, a remark he’s saught, by later kowtowing to China, to consign to the dustbin of history.
The human rights community has never made progress by compromising its integrity. If you have anything to do with Amnesty International one is awed by the numbers of men and women who’ve been prepared to renounce even the little they have in their world for the sake of their principles–their homes, their families, their freedom and often their lives. Rupert Murdoch who has every material asset that one can imagine has, to my knowledge, never sacrificed anything. His power is for his profit and his profits are to increase his power. All is subsumed in that. Freedom of the press are words he uses only to fight off privacy laws. Yes, even ruthless, competitive businessmen can behave with integrity. I’ve met them. But not this one. He has become a danger to democracy and to the central, essential values of our freedom-loving societies.
