The Far Eastern Economic Review developed "cold feet" (its editor's phrase, not mine) about reviewing a book about its new proprietor, global media baron Rupert Murdoch. However, you can be assured it was purely an internal decision.
When Rupert Murdoch took control in December of Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, he also collected a small Hong Kong monthly, The Far Eastern Economic Review.
The Review has the smallest staff, the smallest circulation (less than 20,000 by some analysts’ estimates) and the smallest revenue of any publication in the Murdoch empire. But it has a voice in Asia beyond its size, and its reporting has, over the years, rankled many Asian politicians and business executives.
But in one of the first tests of editorial independence under Murdoch ownership, The Review’s editor, Hugh Restall, has acknowledged getting “cold feet” about publishing a review of a book that is critical of Mr. Murdoch’s business forays into China in the 1990s.
The author of the book, “Rupert’s Adventures in China: How Murdoch Lost a Fortune and Found a Wife,” is Bruce Dover, a former Australian journalist who was employed by the News Corporation in China during that period. It looks at Mr. Murdoch’s attempts to make money and the compromises undertaken to avoid upsetting government officials in Beijing.
More titillating is the book’s account of Mr. Murdoch’s courtship of Wendi Deng, a News Corporation executive in China, whom he later married.
The book has received considerable publicity in Asia and has been reviewed by publications like The Economist and The Financial Times.
Initially, Mr. Restall thought he would follow suit. He and his deputy commissioned an Australian freelance journalist based in Jakarta to write a 1,000-word review of the book.
But Mr. Restall soon changed his mind. According to an e-mail exchange published Thursday on the Web site www.crikey.com.au, Mr. Restall wrote to the journalist, Eric Ellis, on Feb. 24, a day after the article was filed, saying, “I’m afraid I am getting cold feet on this one — I’ve just gotten a copy of the book, and it looks more like the work of a disgruntled ex-employee, rather than an analysis of the business.”
Mr. Restall said he had never been called by Mr. Murdoch, who offered guarantees of editorial independence to win Dow Jones. The issue, he said, was an internal editorial matter and “our policy is not to discuss editorial decisions.”