The Wall Street Journal is reporting that
News Corp.’s (i.e. Rupert Murdoch’s) campaign to acquire Dow Jones & Co. inched toward a conclusion, as the two sides reached a preliminary understanding on a framework to protect the editorial integrity of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones’s other publications.
What I don’t understand is:
The current editorial perspective of the Wall Street Journal is conservative, Republican, and pro-business. Why would the Journal’s editorial policies need protecting from Rupert Murdoch?
On the other hand, the WSJ’s news reporting is conventionally liberal. So, presumably, the Bancroft heirs, like all good Trustafarians, are liberals, and they are proposing to protect the Journal’s “editorial policy” in the sense of protecting the right of the news board of the Wall Street Journal to report the news from a liberal and democrat perspective, i.e., the polar and complete opposite of the perspective of the WSJ’s editorial board.
Where exactly do those Bancrofts get off believing that they should be able to sell a newspaper (and other publications), and still continue to have some form of control over editorial policy?
And, why is it that newspapers’ “editorial integrity” needs protecting from the conservative Rupert Murdoch, but the so-called editorial integrity of papers like the New York Times presently under ultra-liberal ownership or management (which have been in enormous need of repair for decades) is never treated as an issue?
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