The Future Dragon Queen of World Media or Much Maligned Mother of Two?

I think it can safely be asserted that who owns the media is equally if not more important than who the politiciians are: indeed it can be argued that it’s the media that chooses the politicians.

In all, 16 of the top 30 media owners are from the US. The other countries with media owners in the top 30 are Japan (with four representatives), France and the UK (with three each), Germany (two) and Italy and Mexico (one each). Non-American companies on the top 30 list include Axel Springer, Bertelsmann, BSkyB, ITV plc., Fuji TV and Televisa.

The top 30 media owners in the report generated a total of $215bn in media revenue. Two online companies, Google and Yahoo made it into the top 30, ranked number 13 and 15 with revenues of $6bn and $5.2bn respectively

Mass media ownership transcends international borders and the polioy decisions and editorial influence of owners now has worldwide scope. Take Rupert Murdoch for example, whose overwhelming grip on American public discourse just tightened with his purchase of the hawkish, rightwing Wall Street Journal.

But is it even really Murdoch’s grip any more? Is he, to use a vulgar American phrase, pussy- whipped by a nubile young wife? Many western journalists would like us to think so.

Murdoch is in his seventies and has a much younger Chinese born wife, Wendi Deng, who’s causing much media paranoia over whether China, in addition to being one of the world’s largest creditor nations and buying up western banks, is planning to take a massive slice of worldwide media control with Deng as some sort of proxy.

Or it could be anti-Chinese racism and mysogyny, an occidental fear of the Yellow Peril, focused onto one woman, Deng. There’s plenty of evidence for that.

Private Eye has had fun for years with Wendy Deng, casting her in typical neocolonial style as a Dragon Lady who uses her sexy oriental (Did they say she’s oriental, by the way? And sexy?) ways and remorseless physical demands to shag her ageing husband to death and grab his billions for the seething communist hordes of China.

Here’s typical public schoolboy racism from Private Eye in 2003:

“Never Too Old”
by Dame Silvie Krin

The story so far: Multibillionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch has married a fragrant young oriental beautyfrom the land odf birds-nestsoup.

Now read on…

“I got great news for you Lupert.” purred the lovely Wendy Deng as she entered the gymnnasium of their 48th storey Manhattan penthouse apartment.

“You mean you’re going to switch off this lousy rowing machine and give me an ice-cold tinnie?” puffed the sweating septuagenarian tycoon, as he tried to keep up with the machine’s remorseless demands,

“First guess wrong,” hissed his peach-skinned paramaour, as she turned up the machine to Olympic Standard (Bronze) Level.

You get the drift, and besides, I’m not copying the whole thing out.

As much as I enjoy and admire Private Eye (I’ve been a regular reader for over 20 years), let’s face it, in its attitudes to women and minorities it ican often be paternalistic, colonial and crass, the cuteness and likeability of Ian Hislop on HIGNFY notwithstanding. So if I didn’t absolutely dismiss the rumour (because leaving ethnicity aside she is young and he is old and it’s been known) I suspected the motivation behind it.

But then I started to google and to read stories about how recent Murdoch decisions have favoured Chinese state interests and how his media interests in China itself collude with state censorship; and how a meticulously researched and sourced profile of Deng was suppressed by the publisher that commissioned it when Murdoch sold his stake; and how a series of publications in their turn declined to publish, for no other apparent reason than they feared to offend Rupert.

Oddly enough the only place the profile is available in full online is China’s New Century Weekly – in Chionese – it’s come to something when China will publish something western journalists are too scared to.

Murdoch has attacked anyone who seeks to write about his wife on the grounds that Deng is a private person; which is a bit flimsy considering Deng is now Chief of Strategy at MySpace China, an arm of Murdoch’s empire, and they have two daughters who will potentially inherit a substantial slice of media control in their own right, aside from anything Deng herself inherits when her husband predeceases her, as he’s almost bound to do barring medical miracles. Even the Murdoch billions can’t cheat death.

Deng, with that amount of potential clout, is no private person. She makes decisions that affect millions:

Myspace China to Move Servers to China
Mon, Jul 23, 2007 Myspace | web 2.0

In a recent interview with local media, Luo Chuan, the CEO of Myspace China, which is part of News Corp, (Public, NYSE:NWS), said the company will move its servers to China. According to Luo, the server move will be enhance the site’s appeal to local audience while keeping the China site connected to Myspace’s global database. However, the process will be technically and financially challenging and there is no set schedule for the server move. Source: 163.com

This decision of course will give the Chinese government ultimate physical control of the servers should they so choose and a hell of a lot of leverage over MySpace in terms of censorship.

Deng would like more decision making power and the question of who will control News International on Murdoch’s death is a typically toxic dynastic stew of ex-wives, alimony, alowances, inheritances, jealousy, sibling rivalry and a gliimpse of parent/child conflict.

A simmering debate over the trust that owns the family’s 28.5 percent voting stake in the News Corporation surfaced with the resignation last week of Lachlan, Mr. Murdoch and Mrs. Mann’s elder son, from his job at the News Corporation, where he was seen as a potential successor to his father.

The precipitating reason for Lachlan’s departure, he has told several people, was his father’s undermining of his position within the company over a long period.

[…]

People close to both father and son have also acknowledged, however, that tensions over the trust were a factor, and those tensions stem from the conflicting maternal ambitions of Ms. Deng and Mrs. Mann.

Last year, Mr. Murdoch told his children that he wanted to change the trust to give his two daughters by Ms. Deng, Grace, 3, and Chloe, 2, a greater role in the trust, which currently has an interest in the News Corporation worth $6.1 billion.

But Mr. Murdoch’s four adult children – three with Mrs. Mann and one with his first wife – have a say in the trust and are its primary beneficiaries, and they must approve this change.

[..]

Mr. Murdoch raised the issue of including his youngest daughters in the trust last year at a family meeting in New York, where one person close to the family said the debate was lively.

Oh, I bet it was lively.

It certainly sounds as though Deng may be trying to gain control of News International for herself and her children by Murdoch. It’d all be great fun, like a bastard sitcom mashup of Dallas and Dynasty with Drop The Dead Donkey, if it weren’t future control of worldwide tv, radio, newspapers and the internet we were talking about.

But let’s come back to Rupert’s latest purchase of the Wall St. Journal and what motivated it. Was he really pushed into by Deng as proxy for Chinese interests or was the motivation much more human – embarassment and retaliation at Deng’s past being revealed?

1. Until the details were published in the Wall Street Journal, Murdoch apparently did not know much about Deng’s past, including the affair and marriage with Jake Cherry, which secured her a US visa. One WSJ journo describes Murdoch as “ashen-faced” at their next meeting. As Ellis writes, Murdoch got a rude taste of his own tabloid journalism medicine. I can’t help wondering if that has anything to do with his current bid for the Journal?

A past Deng apparently has, according to commenters at the Wendi Deng Watchers Club:

At the tender age of 18, she freely walked into Guangzhou hotel rooms to sleep with a 50-year old married American (Jake Cherry) who spoke a language she didn’t understand (English) and was introduced to her by his then-wife (Joyce Cherry). On top of that, she suckered Jake Cherry into persuading his then-wife (Joyce Cherry) into sponsoring her into the U.S., where she lived rent-free in their home with their children, ate their food (with them), went places with them, took everything the Cherrys gave her (and also things meant for their daughter), ALL THE WHILE CONTINUING ON WITH HER AFFAIR WITH JAKE CHERRY IN FRONT OF THEIR FACES!

Whatever the truth of thiose allegations Deng certainly has Murdoch wrapped around her finger; her influence in News International is profound and will only increase if she gets her way. But in this she is no different from the many other women worldwide (cough, Huffington, cough) who marry for power, whatever their nationality. It wouldn’t be the first time a young woman with a bit of a past snares a rich old man at an opportune moment, but I do think an enormous amount of the hoohah about Deng the Dragon Lady as a Chinese double agent in the heart of the western free-market system is exaggerated and inspired by a mixture of envy, stereotypical male ideas about Chinese and Asian women and a fear of China itself.

There is truth there in that Deng has given Murdoch access to Chinese markets but the non-Murdoch media depiction of her as an evil oriental genius I think is a projection of journalists’ own misogyny, ingrained racism and worries about the potential power she is likely to wield on the demise of her husband.

Given the shrewdness and alleged lack od scruples with with she’s operated to her own advantage so far, Deng should certainly not escape scrutiny – and the claim by her husband that she is a private person and not up for discussion or beyond criticism, when he has made her a public person, is completely risible.

Yes, scrutinise Deng with a big magnifying glass, but scrutinise what she does, not what she is.