The Christian book and Bible publisher, Zondervan, is presently owned by Harper Collins, which is itself a subsidiary of News Corp. News Corp is of course at the centre of the phone hacking scandal alongside its founder Rupert Murdoch and his son, chairman of News International, James Murdoch.
Zondervan’s link to News Corp has been strongly critiqued in major US news outlets like the Houston Chronicle and USA Today. Blogger Will Braun was one of those who wrote debating the ethics of buying Bibles from a publisher that is owned by Murdoch.
“For those us of [sic] who care about the Christian scriptures, what are we to make of this mix of billionaire media tycoonery, allegations of phone hacking and bribery, and the Holy Word of God?" he said.
“What are we to make of the fact that every time we buy a Zondervan product we contribute to Murdoch’s mogul-dom, which includes a personal fortune that Forbes pegged at $6.3 billion last year.”
Zondervan responded to these concerns through spokeswoman Tara Powers.
"This does not present an ethical dilemma for Zondervan as we will continue to operate with autonomy as we always have,” she stated.
"We are fortunate to have strong and positive relationships with our authors. They know who Zondervan is and how we operate and we have not heard of serious concerns from authors.
“While we are obviously aware of the matter at hand, it does not distract or detract from our work at hand and we will continue to pursue our mission and operate as we have for the past 80 years."