Owner Murdoch Told NY Post Writers To Not Be Critical Of China

JAMES BARRON and CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
New York Times
Saturday May 19, 2007

Page Six, The New York Post’s free-swinging showcase for gossip about canoodling celebrities and cheating spouses, ran a tell-all item yesterday about a subject it does not usually cover in eye-popping detail: itself.

And it had some pretty juicy details: the editor of the paper patronized a strip club, and the longtime author of the column, Richard Johnson, once took a $1,000 cash gift.

And that was not all.

The item also raised anew long-heard allegations that Rupert Murdoch, The Post’s owner, had directed the Page Six writers to avoid items that could be seen as critical of China, where he was trying to do business.

The 675-word item was the latest twist in the long-running dispute involving Jared Paul Stern, a former freelance contributor to Page Six. He was suspended in April 2006 amid allegations that he had demanded money for favorable coverage — allegations that the authorities later declined to prosecute.

But the fight rages on. Mr. Stern now says he might sue Page Six, and as part of the legal preliminaries, his lawyer obtained a statement by a fellow former reporter for Page Six, Ian Spiegelman.

That four-page blast opens with allegations about Page Six and the editor of The Post, including the strip club and the $1,000 gift. While confirming those assertions in the item, the editor, Col Allan, was quoted as calling Mr. Spiegelman’s claims a “tissue of lies.”

Mr. Spiegelman said he had expected the document to be kept secret until Mr. Stern went to court. But yesterday, like the celebrities he used to cover, he awoke to find something he wanted kept private out in the open, on Page Six.

In what some saw as a move to pre-empt the story, Page Six itself revealed each salacious accusation of Mr. Spiegelman’s, point by point. Several of the points flatly denied elements of Mr. Spiegelman’s assertions; some confirmed at least portions of them; others simply listed the allegations without denials or confirmations.

The tawdry details come as Mr. Murdoch, whose News Corporation owns The Post, has made a $5 billion bid to buy Dow Jones and its centerpiece, The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Murdoch has been trying to persuade the family that controls Dow Jones that he stands for the same kind of august journalism that it does, and that his journalists adhere to high standards.

The harshest criticism of Mr. Murdoch from within Dow Jones has been that he is willing to contort his coverage of the news to suit his business needs, in particular that he has blocked reporting unflattering to the government of China. He has invested heavily in satellite television there and wants to remain in Beijing’s favor.

Many of the charges have been reported before, but Mr. Spiegelman repeated them in his statement. He said that in 2001, he was ordered to kill an item on Page Six about a Chinese diplomat and a strip club because it would have “angered the Communist regime and endangered Murdoch’s broadcast privileges.”

“Murdoch instructed Col Allan, who instructed Richard Johnson, that Page Six was not to pursue any unflattering stories about Chinese officials,” Mr. Spiegelman said in the statement.

Mr. Spiegelman also said that Page Six had killed “unflattering stories about Bill and Hillary Clinton on numerous occasions.” And he said that a “favor banking system” extended to Lachlan Murdoch, Mr. Murdoch’s son and a former Post publisher, and “famous friends like actress Nicole Kidman.”

Mr. Johnson referred a call for comment to a spokesman for The Post, Howard J. Rubenstein. Mr. Rubenstein repeated a paragraph that appeared on Page Six, attributed to Mr. Allan, calling Mr. Spiegelman’s claims “a tissue of lies.”

“He also said, ‘These allegations are a disgrace,’ ” Mr. Rubenstein said, referring to Mr. Allan. “We have nothing further to say. He’s not going to go allegation by allegation in a discussion.”

Mr. Rubenstein said much the same thing when he was asked about allegations that were mentioned but not specifically denied in the Page Six item: for example, that Mr. Murdoch had canceled the publication of a book by the News Corporation’s HarperCollins division critical of China’s Communist leaders and ordered the publication of one by Deng Xiaoping’s daughter.

“Generally,” Mr. Rubenstein said, “The Post is not going to go point by point on the accusations. They’re branding them generally as false.”

Still, on paper, The Post confirmed portions of two of Mr. Spiegelman’s more colorful recollections: Mr. Allan’s attendance at a strip club and Mr. Johnson’s acceptance of a $1,000 cash gift from a restaurateur.

Mr. Spiegelman said that Mr. Allan was a regular at Scores, a Manhattan strip club, but “did not have to pay to watch the women strip.”

The Page Six item yesterday quoted Mr. Allan as saying he had gone to Scores several years ago but asserted, “My conduct was beyond reproach.”

Mr. Spiegelman’s statement also said that in 1997, the restaurateur Nello Balan sent an employee to The Post with $3,000 in cash and orders to give the money to Mr. Johnson and two colleagues on Page Six.

“On this point, Spiegelman is one-third correct,” the item yesterday said, explaining that the amount in question was $1,000. Mr. Allan was quoted as saying that Mr. Johnson had made “a grave mistake” in taking the money and that he had reprimanded him “after he informed me of his error in judgment.”

The item did not say when Mr. Johnson told Mr. Allan about accepting the cash. Mr. Allan, who became the editor in 2001, did not work at The Post in 1997.

Public relations strategists said that by publishing the item yesterday, The Post was trying to get ahead of the story. “The Post is operating under the Henry Kissinger principle of, ‘What will come out eventually must come out immediately,’ ” said Eric Dezenhall, a public relations consultant and author of “Damage Control: Why Everything You Know About Crisis Management Is Wrong.”

“This is an especially sensitive time, of course, for Murdoch because of the proposed Wall Street Journal acquisition,” he said. “The most damaging allegation in this context is the specter of altering story content for agenda-driven reasons.”

Mr. Dezenhall added, “Self-disclosure is the better of his bad options.”

The uproar about Mr. Stern began 13 months ago with an allegation that he had demanded a $100,000 payment and a $10,000 monthly stipend to keep unflattering items off Page Six. He was caught on a videotape making the demand to the California billionaire Ronald W. Burkle.

Mr. Allan said then that Mr. Stern had been suspended pending the outcome of a federal investigation. In January, when the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan told him he would not face prosecution, he assumed that he would be able to work for The Post again.

But last month, as the one-year anniversary of the suspension approached with no change in his status, his lawyer, Lawrence Klayman, began moving to bring the matter to a head. He wrote to Mr. Murdoch, mentioning a civil complaint Mr. Stern had filed against, among others, Mr. Burkle, The Daily News and the Clintons.

Mr. Klayman said that he discussed Mr. Stern’s situation with Eugenie C. Gavenchak, a lawyer for the News Corporation, but the talks went nowhere.

Mr. Klayman then approached Mr. Spiegelman, a former staff reporter for Page Six who was fired in 2004 but who says he continued to send in news tips. Together they prepared the statement as an affidavit for a potential lawsuit. Mr. Klayman then forwarded it to Ms. Gavenchak last Friday, asking that she “take steps to ensure that Mr. Spiegelman and other witnesses are not threatened or tampered with.” Neither Mr. Stern nor Mr. Klayman would comment on who the other witnesses might be.

Mr. Klayman called The Post’s decision to publish yesterday’s item “the gift that will keep on giving,” and Mr. Stern added, “This was a pre-emptive strike where they just ended up shooting themselves in the foot.”