The Slate Magazine had an article called “Who had a critical profile of Rupert Murdoch’s wife spiked?” this week:
You can no more injure Rupert Murdoch by calling him a purveyor of sensationalism and trash than you can offend gangrenous flesh by calling it stinky. The man doesn’t have calluses. He is a callus.
That’s not to say Murdoch is completely impervious to what is said and written about him. His weak spot is his family, as the Wall Street Journal learned in 2000 when it published a 3,500-word Page One story (subscription required) about his wife titled “Meet Wendi Deng: The Boss’s Wife Has Influence at News Corp.”Murdoch Spouse, 31, Has Come A Long Way Since Leaving China a Dozen Years Ago”A Yale Connection in Beijing.”
The piece angered Murdoch, whose News Corp. is currently bidding for the company that owns the Journal. News Corp. executive Gary Ginsberg told the New York Times last week that the Deng article “wasn’t a legitimate news story, in that Wendi had no role in the company at that time. What they were doing was looking for a pretext to write a public story about a private individual.” [Full Text]
