Murder He Didn’t Write

Before the national media outcry about its content, O.J. Simpson’s new book “If I Did It” was scheduled to hit shelves on Nov. 30, following a two-part interview on Fox News. Judith Regan, the publisher of “If I Did It,” marketed the book as Mr. Simpson’s hypothetical confession for the 1995 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. But on Nov. 20, Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp., which owns ReganBooks, cancelled its publication. And on Dec. 15, Judith Regan was fired.

Murdoch chose to, as he said, “agree with the American public.” But what he actually meant was that he chose to decide for the American public. And by releasing her own contrite statement shortly thereafter, Regan only served to support Murdoch’s barefaced suppression of her project.

Certainly, ReganBooks has many other projects it could choose to undertake. Certainly, some people might find the words and thoughts of a suspected murderer to be disturbing. Certainly, some people might find it in bad taste for a company to pay for these very same disturbing thoughts. But guess what? Those people don’t have to buy the book. Just like they don’t have to buy pornography, or read “How to Make Love Like a Porn Star” (another ReganBooks product), or watch “American Psycho.” Good thing Murdoch wasn’t around during the publication of “The Origin of Species,” or we might never have been able to read that, either.

You would think that Rupert Murdoch’s blatant censorship would be lambasted in the media, but surprisingly, it is Judith Regan who has received the punishment. After Murdoch’s public statement that the project was “ill considered,” Regan released her own statement entitled, “Why I Did It.” In it, she identifies herself as a victim of domestic abuse and attempts to justify her decision to publish the book.

But as Regan states in her own press release: “‘To publish’ does not mean ‘to endorse’; it means ‘to make public.’ If you doubt that, ask the mainstream publishers who keep Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” in print to this day.” If Regan really believes that she was only “making public” a certain kind of literature, then why did she issue her apologetic release?

For Judith Regan to assume any blame for the situation only serves to undermine her original journalistic duty: to look under the rock and to see what is growing there. Just because her audience doesn’t like what she found doesn’t mean she should apologize. And it definitely doesn’t mean that Rupert Murdoch should get to decide whether or not the American public can see what she found. It’s time for Judith Regan to stop apologizing and to start looking for a boss who can stand behind her in controversy instead of kowtowing to the whims of the American public. And with a reported $120 million in annual revenues, according to Newsweek, she shouldn’t have much of a problem.



Vanessa J. Dube ’10, a Crimson editorial editor, lives in Wigglesworth Hall.