Murdoch Strikes Back At Times

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By Tom McGeveran

June 26, 2007 | 7:30 a.m.

We'll have more to say shortly on Joseph Kahn's pretty impressive and exhaustive account of Rupert Murdoch's activities in China.

But the biggest news in the piece has to be the war that's now going on between Mr. Murdoch and The Times.

When we broke the news here that The Times was undertaking a "multi-bureau" investigation of News Corp.'s business practices, one of the names we'd gotten was Joseph Kahn in Beijing. Turns out his piece has been broken out of the rest of the investigation, and appears in today's editions (and here.) The upshot: nefariousness!

But the metanews was in the only statement offered by News Corp. to the reporter:

News Corp. has consistently cooperated with The New York Times in its coverage of the company. However, the agenda for this unprecedented series is so blatantly designed to further the Times’s commercial self interests — by undermining a direct competitor poised to become an even more formidable competitor — that it would be reckless of us to participate in their malicious assault. Ironically, The Times, by using its news pages to advance its own corporate business agenda, is doing the precise thing they accuse us of doing without any evidence.

We'll be following this closely, and have more on Mr. Kahn's China investigation--by all measures more impressive than yesterday's piece--anon.