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MURDOCH, PARSONS CRITICIZE YAHOO

Rupert Murdoch and Richard Parsons joined others who have criticized Yahoo for providing information to China about a journalist who was sentenced to 10 years in prison in April.

“I think they were wrong,” Mr. Murdoch, the chairman and CEO of News Corporation, said in answer to a question by President Clinton at the Clinton Global Initiative on Saturday. “You cannot do that with news.”

The journalist, Shi Tao, was sentenced for posting online a directive from the Chinese government about coverage of the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. The co-founder of Yahoo, Jerry Yang, defended the company’s decision to cooperate last Saturday in China.

The chairman and CEO of Time Warner, Richard Parsons, who joined Mr. Murdoch over the weekend on the panel discussion, said AOL “bailed out” of China because of concerns over its customers’ privacy. “The straw that broke the camel’s back for us was this notion that the government had the right to … monitor all the traffic” on AOL, he said.

Reporting must be held to the same standard, Mr. Parsons said. “I don’t think you can compromise with respect to the news. News either has integrity or it doesn’t.” The third member of the panel, Sony chairman and CEO Sir Howard Stringer, agreed, though he did not give an opinion on Yahoo’s actions.

Earlier that day, a former treasury secretary, Robert Rubin, surprised some in the audience when he said that democracy can often stand in the way of good governance in developing countries, and that “more autocratic” but less corrupt governments might better serve the needs of their people.

– Special to the Sun