Bought and paid for

If there's a bout of censorship everyone seems able to get behind it's Rupert Murdoch's cancellation of his own Fox Broadcasting O.J. interview and the publication of Simpson's book wherein Simpson "imagines" how he would have done the crimes that not one person on earth doesn't believe he committed. This episode also belies the adage that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Or maybe not....

Hitchen's points out that Simpson is very nearly illiterate. Which means the entire event is one of conscious manufacture, from the approach made to Simpson by person or persons unknown to write such a book, something he surely did not do himself, to the arrangement for publication by ReganBooks, an imprint owned by Murdoch, which was to be presaged by a two-part Simpson interview on Murdoch-owned Fox Broadcasting to be conducted by Murdoch-owned Judith Regan, publisher of Murdoch-owned ReganBooks. Murdoch-owned Bill O'Reilly fulminated, as did many others, and Murdoch-owned Fox News led the moral charge against the Murdoch-owned event. And now, after his cancellation of both the book and the interview, followed by a heartfelt apology to the victim's families, Rupert Murdoch looks to be a man of upstanding moral character, one who runs a media empire that has shown us all the true and clear path of good corporate citizenship. And the entire circus was bought and paid for by Rupert Murdoch and/or agents thereof.

At News Corp., the medium is the message.