The reason for the dust-up was China. Last week, Murdoch's 28-year-old son, James, who just a few years ago was best known for starting an indie record label in New York after leaving Harvard, gave a policy speech at the Milken Institute in Beverly Hills, Calif. With his father in attendance, James, now in charge of News Corp.'s China initiative, leveled a blistering attack against Falun Gong, the spiritual movement banned by the Chinese government after 10,000 of its followers protested in Tiananmen Square two years ago.

Murdoch labeled Falun Gong a "dangerous" and "apocalyptic cult" that "clearly does not have the success of China at heart." He also chastised the Western media for painting a relentlessly negative picture of the Chinese government by focusing too often on the topic of human rights violations.

According to the Los Angeles Times account of the speech, Murdoch "startled even China's supporters with his zealous defense of that government's harsh crackdown on Falun Gong and criticism of Hong Kong democracy supporters."

Tunku Varadarajan, the Wall Street Journal's deputy editorial features editor, took offense. And as is usual when a Journal columnist lands someone in his sights, the takedown was a bare-knuckle affair. Varadarajan lit into Rupert, "a master practitioner of the corporate kowtow," for instructing James, "a college dropout," in the "craft of craven submission to the communist regime in China." And that was just the first paragraph. It's the type of invective Journal columnists used to reserve for the Clinton Justice Department.

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