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Murdoch: Regan was not a team player

09.02.07 Kimberly Maul

Rupert Murdoch made a public statement yesterday about the controversial firing of publisher Judith Regan from News Corp's HarperCollins publishing company, the New York Daily News reported. Regan was "not a team player," Murdoch said, "and that's putting it mildly . . . she wasn't for us."

At "Media Summit New York" at McGraw-Hill's headquarters, Murdoch said that early on he gave the green light to the television and book project for O J Simpson's If I Did It, which was cancelled in late November, as long as the money went to the kids. According to the Daily News, Murdoch said he signed off on the project, but didn't stay on top of it, until he was told while on his ranch in Australia about the public outcry.

"It was a mistake," he said. "I said [to Regan], 'If it really reads like a confession, he gets no money.' It's my fault. I should have been closer to it." But even the drama with If I Did It wasn't what caused Regan's abrupt firing in December. Another controversy, like the one surrounding the inventive Mickey Mantle memoir by Peter Golenbock, caused Murdoch to stop and think.

"I thought, oh God, we don't want to go through this again," he said, according to the Daily News. "Just cancel that book." Regan was fired on 16th December, after allegedly making anti-Semitic remarks to a HarperCollins lawyer.

US HarperCollins Kimberly Maul Judith Regan News Corp

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