Put this in the category of Chinese media living up to stereotypes about Chinese media:

Fortune reports that China Daily refused to run a News Corp. ad celebrating its $5-billion takeover of Dow Jones.

Spanning three pages and playing off Dow Jones’ motto, the headline is “Free People, Free Markets, Free Thinking,” and trumpets Murdoch’s convention-challenging accomplishments over several decades. Those include the launches of the Sun tabloid and BSkyB satellite broadcasting in England, the creation of Fox television (and The Simpsons) in the United States, the Fox News Channel, and the purchase of MySpace two years ago.

Cheeky, sure, but not many papers would turn down a three-page ad. The Financial Times turned it down, too, though for mostly because it didn’t much like giving its rival such gloating room. Fair enough. But why did China Daily say no?

China Daily’s objections, according to News Corp. insiders, were more comprehensive, including - not surprisingly, the liberal use of the word “free” in the headline. Under advertising laws in Communist China, use of such words as “first” or “best” must be approved by authorities. Apparently Murdoch has rejected to the papers’ requests to modify the ads.

Much as this sounds like Cold War “them Commies hate freedom” kind of talk, well, I wouldn’t put it past China Daily to live up to its reputation.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 16th, 2007 at 9:40 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.