FWIW, a copy of my letter to Bill O'Reilly of the O'Reilly Factor on Fox. Murdoch(head of News Corp which owns Fox) recently came out with some ridiculous statements regarding the Dalai Lama, playing sycophant to the Chinese. Below the letter is an article with exactly what he said. Bottom line: be wary of any news on Fox television!
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Mr O'Reilly,
As a fan of yours, it is regretful that Mr Murdoch has made such ludicrous statements of the Dalai Lama for his own gain within China, since I can no longer watch anything on Fox. I would certainly hope you take him to task for placing love of money above freedom of speech. If this is how he intends to run a media business, perhaps he should find another occupation since freedom of speech is supposedly what you are about. There is nothing worse than ignorance in action, and Mr. Murdoch is the epitome of this.
Regards,
Brian Kerecz
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Murdoch launches 'self-serving' attack on Dalai Lama
The Daily Telegraphy
7 September 1999
By Philip Delves Broughton in New York
RUPERT MURDOCH, the chairman of News Corporation, was condemned by human rights activists and Tibetans yesterday after criticising the Dalai Lama and condoning the Chinese occupation of Tibet.
Mr Murdoch, who hopes to expand his business interests in China, said of the leader of Tibetan Buddhism: "I have heard cynics who say he's a very political old monk shuffling around in Gucci shoes."
Mr Murdoch, 68, who recently married a 31-year-old Chinese woman, Wendi Deng, also excuses China's disregard for human rights on the ground that the average Chinese person cares more about "his next bowl of rice" than democracy.
Tibetan groups in America reacted furiously to Mr Murdoch's comments in an interview with Vanity Fair magazine, calling them "ignorant", "cynical" and "self-serving". His attack comes at a time when the Dalai Lama and the cause of Tibet are more popular than ever in the United States.
Mr Murdoch expresses his support for China's forced occupation of Tibet by asking whether Tibet's own culture was ever worth preserving: "It was a pretty terrible old autocratic society out of the Middle Ages. Maybe I'm falling for their propaganda," he says of the Chinese government, "but it was an authoritarian, medieval society without any basic services."
"Rupert Murdoch knows nothing about Tibet," said Tashi Tsering, a spokesman for the Tibet Fund, which sends money from the West to Tibetans exiled in India and Nepal. "People like him who work with the Chinese government are directly supporting the occupation of Tibet. He is definitely not someone to make moral judgments, particularly about someone like the Dalai Lama. He should stick to making money."
Mr Murdoch says that Tibet's main problem is "that half the people of Tibet still think that the Dalai Lama is the Son of God". The Dalai Lama, however, is supposedly the reincarnation of the first Dalai Lama rather than the son of God.
In his ambition to expand his Star satellite television business in China, Mr Murdoch has already been accused of placing his commercial interests above freedom of speech. In 1994, he dropped the BBC from Star after it was critical of Chinese leaders and of the Tiananmen Square killings. Last year, he ordered his publishing company HarperCollins to abandon publication of Chris Patten's recollections of his time as Governor of Hong Kong because they too were critical of the Chinese government. |
