Eric Ellis
11 January 2008
The media king’s purchase of Dow Jones & Co. has delivered some unwanted cargo in the form of a long-running libel suit.
In July of 2006, the Far Eastern Economic Review, reduced to a monthly shadow of its weekly former self, published a long and contentious interview with Chee Soon Juan, the harried leader of the opposition Singapore Democratic Party. The magazine promptly found itself the recipient of a letter from Drew & Napier, the lawyers for the autocratic minister mentor Lee Kuan Yew, and his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, demanding an apology.
The Review refused to apologize, and for a year and a half a libel suit has been dragging its way through the Singapore courts. The only suspense is over how big the judgment will be against the magazine. The Lee family has never lost a libel suit in its own courts. And there’s the problem for media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who paid US$6.8 billion for a controlling interest in Dow Jones & Co. which, in addition to publishing the Review, also owns the Wall Street Journal and its international editions.
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