When business columnist Alan Kohler launched a vitriolic attack on Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation in last Saturday’s SMH and Age, the top brass at News went nuclear.

That’s
hardly surprising when you consider that Kohler claimed News Corp was
“nothing but a badly performing business mostly run by untrustworthy
people,” argued that “it’s time those who regard Rupert Murdoch as some
kind of business hero thought again,” and described Murdoch himself as
“a disgrace.”

But rather than take the attack lying down, News
execs have decided to fight back and have demanded a right of reply
from Fairfax in the form of a written response to run in the SMH and Age under the byline of News CEO John Hartigan (who’s actually a former hack who knows how to put a few words together).

At
the time of writing it wasn’t clear whether the piece will appear
tomorrow, although Crikey understands Fairfax has agreed to publish it.
News Ltd’s director of corporate affairs, Greg Baxter, confirmed the
company was “in discussions with Fairfax about this issue,” claiming
that Kohler’s piece was “incorrect in almost every respect” and he
hadn’t bothered to contact anyone at News Limited before writing it.

Baxter
wouldn’t discuss what the company would say in its defence or which
aspects of Kohler’s column were “incorrect,” but don’t expect the tone
to be mealy-mouthed. As far as News is concerned, the Kohler column
constituted a ferocious below-the-belt attack that breaches the
unwritten rules of media competition.