Fox Despises Communism, but Mao's Money Talks: Murdoch and His Chinese Ties

BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Jeffrey Joseph

Glenn Beck's tirades about tenuous connections have already faced a fair share of ridicule, but his boss, Rupert Murdoch, must get a little nervous every time Beck decries someone as a communist bane to the U.S.  As The New York Times pointed out in great detail, Murdoch has more than a couple of ties to Chinese communists, ties that appear to permeate most aspects of his life.

Sure, he is now married to a woman from mainland China, one who used to work for his Star TV broadcasting group from Hong Kong, but those were not the only inroads he made with the country.  He has also worked together with the state in matters of censorship and has come out in defense of policies set forth by China's political leaders.  Indeed, other companies had to make sacrifices in order to make things work in China, but based on what his former employees have stated, none would acquiesce as easily as Murdoch.

In fact, Murdoch went even further to support the Communist agenda.  He had one of his subsidiaries, HarperCollins, publish a book about Deng Xiaoping, a major political force in the history of Communist China, in the hopes of garnering further trust from his would-be friends there.  Written by Xiaoping's daughter, Murdoch held a large party in New York for the release, but it, nonetheless, it sold poorly.  Given its poor sales, and Murdoch's reaching out to Xiaoping, who was still a senior leader in China at the time, it appeared a pretty overt attempt to placate the Chinese.  That was certainly bad enough on its own, especially with parts of the book that seemed surprisingly jingoistic, but in covering one of the most pivotal international incidents ever, Murdoch suspiciously ended Star TV's ties to BBC News after the latter repeatedly showed a man facing down a tank in Tiananmen Square against Murdoch's wishes.  He explained it away as a business decision.  Unsurprisingly, the supreme leader would eventually laud his "objective" coverage of Chinese politics.

It's no wonder, then, that Murdoch, thanks to an initiative from his wife, has licensed out MySpace to a group of investors for a MySpace China, with a uniquely Chinese set of restrictions that Google and Yahoo! also encountered, or that he will soon have a home in Beijing just a block away from the Forbidden City.  Known in the U.S. for his overtly conservative news shows and purportedly pro-democracy broadcasting, Murdoch and his wife look to call a locale in China home.  As a businessman, he wants to go where the money is, even if that means going to and through a communist country.

So Murdoch is open to commerce with nations across the world, including those with less-than-democratic politics.  Just make sure no one ever informs Beck.  Forget him deriding Anita Dunn for an association with Mao; if someone tells him he may be getting paid Mao money, there's no telling what on-air disaster of an explanation might ensue.  In the interim, at least Murdoch will have plenty of money for Beck's confusing chalkboard.  It may only be a matter of time, though, before Murdoch's name ends up on it, too.

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