Watching The Media Watching Wendi

What a pity that The Monthly, which published the Wendy Deng profile by Eric Ellis last month, has decided not to publish it free online this month. Maybe that was part of the contract: Ellis seems keen to keep selling it around the world.

A Chinese translation of Ellis' story was published in New Century Weekly last month (cover above), but the UK Guardian pulled out. Here's Crikey's coverage of events from ericellis.com:

The article, written by Eric Ellis who works as Fortune magazine’s South East Asia correspondent, was also supposed to appear in The Guardian a week ago, but was spiked for unknown reasons, reports China-based expat-run media source Danwei. Ellis confirmed this with Crikey. The Guardian -- which made one of 20-odd international offers Ellis received to publish the piece, from publishers in Argentina, China, Italy, Switzerland, HK and the UK, among others -- "praised" the work, he says, photosourced, edited and legalled it, only then deciding not to publish. Their reasoning in a nutshell: on reflection, a businessperson's spouse is not fair game (Wendi is a director of News's MySpace operation in China). Ellis is unsure what caused the change of heart. It's ironic, he says, that the Western press, "which doesn't mind criticising the state-controlled media in China -- admittedly with justification" has been hesitant about the piece, while the Chinese "had no qualms about publishing it, and were very professional and thorough". Perhaps a little schadenfreude at Rupert's expense is enough to keep the censors at bay. As Ellis notes, the Chinese are willing and keen to publish such a story as it sends "a message about what they think of News Corp." And that is, not much, as Bruce Dover is set to explore in an upcoming book, Rupert Murdoch's Adventures in China.

For Spanish speakers, aqui se encuentra la historia en El Pais.
Finally, here's an interesting little snippet from a You Tube video called Serenity Firefly Confrontation:

WHY was this great TV series [Firefly] cancelled by Fox before its first episode??? Rupert Murdoch owns Fox, Myspace and TV Guide Channel. Why did TV Guide Channel ban my cable access TV show? Sir Rupert Murdoch, Australian Knight of the British Empire, is married to Wendi Deng, a card-carrying Communist Party citizen of Communist China. They live in Bejing, the capital of Communist China. Since the Communist Manifesto bans ownership of private property, the Communist Party of China now owns Fox News. Joss predicting the evil Alliance merger of China & USA subverts the Commie's stealth takeover. Train Job showed US and ChiCom flags merged into one. Hence, Firefly cancelled & banned before its first episode.