No one could have predicted that Murdoch would move the WSJ newsroom to the right:
Mr. Baker, a neoconservative columnist of acute political views, has been especially active in managing coverage in Washington, creating significant grumbling, if not resistance, from the staff there. Reporters say the coverage of the Obama administration is reflexively critical, the health care debate is generally framed in terms of costs rather than benefits — “health care reform” is a generally forbidden phrase — and global warming skeptics have gotten a steady ride. (Of course, objectivity is in the eyes of the reader.)
The pro-business, antigovernment shift in the news pages has broken into plain view in the last year. On Aug. 12, a fairly straight down the middle front page article on President Obama’s management style ended up with the provocative headline, “A President as Micromanager: How Much Detail Is Enough?” The original article included a contrast between President Jimmy Carter’s tendency to go deep in the weeds of every issue with President George W. Bush’s predilection for minimal involvement, according to someone who saw the draft. By the time the article ran, it included only the swipe at Mr. Carter.
On Aug. 27, a fairly straightforward obituary about Ted Kennedy for the Web site was subjected to a little political re-education on the way to the front page. A new paragraph was added quoting Rush Limbaugh deriding what he called all of the “slobbering media coverage,” and he also accused the recently deceased senator of being the kind of politician who “uses the government to take money from people who work and gives it to people who don’t work.”
On Oct. 31, an article on the front of the B section about estate taxes at the state level used the phrase “death tax” six times, but there were no quotation marks around it…
Bing users beware, I guess.
No matter what anyone says, I believe that future generations will be puzzled that an Australian tabloidist and a Korean cult leader had so much influence on American media in the early 21st century.
Just Some Head
Conservatives aren’t picky about who is tossing their salad.
Hunter Gathers
@Just Some Head:
Do they prefer jelly, or syrup?
mai naem
Hey, I am sure William Jefferson Clinton never realized that his signing of the media law overhaul would lead to six thousand Rush wannabes wailing from every freaking local radio station in this country. Even on XM you have one single left station and five right wingnut stations.
Sirkowski
The Raspoutines of our times?
Col. Klink
Obama should take a page from Murdoch and double-down on healthcare. He should immediately draft every eligible citizen who is unemployed or without healthcare into the army to fight the GWOT and call anyone who opposes him a traitor. With 70 million citizens fighting in Afghanistan we’re bound to win, and everyone will get heathcare and fulltime employment in the process. He could then pull a total GOPer and leave the entire budget disaster to the next administration. Win/win baby!
Numberwang
During a recent hotel stay, I had my first chance to read the print edition of the WSJ since Murdoch’s purchase, and the changes were blatant. I particularly remember an article about how Obama’s job creation bill discussion with legislators had been utterly derailed by his partisan attacks, featuring only nonsense quotes from Republican congressmen.
Well, ok, they *did* quote a chart David Obey displayed at the meeting, so I guess that counts for balance.
Kryptik
Don’t forget Kaplan and Hiatt’s changes mirroring what Murdoch’s done to the WSJ.
asiangrrlMN
Ugh. Just ugh. I don’t have much to say, but I do have a question. What is the meaning behind the title of this post?
I do have one thing to say, fuck you Rupert M. with THREE rusty pitchforks an infinity ways this side of Sunday.
Zifnab
@Col. Klink:
I was waiting for you to say he just throws a signing statement in to open up Medicare to the general public. Then flips everyone the bird, sits back, and waits for Senators to start calling for impeachment.
Robin G.
@Just Some Head: Well, that made me throw up in my mouth. Thanks.
dmsilev
@asiangrrlMN: A Chinese Wall is a firewall between two departments or segments of an organization, intended to prevent conflicts of interest (ie a financial firm with an investment-advice arm is supposed to firewall that from their trading division).
-dms
Comrade Scrutinizer
@asiangrrlMN: Wikipedia is your friend (sometimes).
jeffreyw
“Shut up”, he explained.
dr. bloor
@asiangrrlMN:
Uncanny. Do you know his favorite safety word, too?
Comrade Scrutinizer
@dmsilev: In practice, I think you can replace “wall” with “clusterfuck”.
jeffreyw
@asiangrrlMN:
No cupcakes for you, Ma’am, until you’ve had your supper.
asiangrrlMN
@dmsilev:
@Comrade Scrutinizer: Thanks, guys. Why use Wiki when I know I can get the answers from you? Besides, given that it’s DougJ, I thought it was just another song title with which I was not familiar.
@dr. bloor: He won’t fucking need it ‘coz we’ll be doing edgy bdsm. Besides, with his mouth gagged, I won’t be able to hear it, anyway.
GregB
This is post is blatantly anti-Chinitic.
-G
Oh yeah, and anyone to the left of Blanche Lincoln and Joe Lieberpud should cancel their subscriptions to the newest Murdoch rag on the block.
asiangrrlMN
@jeffreyw: Oh, that would be such a hardship for me to eat that pepper steak. No, no, please! Not the pepper steak! And, I got the Pink Floyd reference so I feel better about missing Chinese walls.
P.S. 1 degree here, bitchez. I just threw on a coat for the first time and still drove with the window down.
Notorious P.A.T.
Oh, of course.
Jamey
And I think that future historians will look at Republicans around the turn of the third millennium and deduce that ONLY an Australian tabloidist and a Korean cult leader could have risen to lead the GOP…
Comrade Scrutinizer
@asiangrrlMN:
__
Oh. Oh, my. With leather?
asiangrrlMN
@Comrade Scrutinizer: Two wetsuits and a dildo, bay-bee!
Jamey
22: Joe’s Garage, much?
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Jamey: Music is the best. (But leather comes in a close second!)
Brian J
It’s pretty fascinating to watch Murdoch make all of these moves. The Journal closes its Boston bureau, which was supposedly filled with some of the sharpest reporters in the industry, only to focus on expanding metropolitan coverage in New York with a $15 million budget and an editor from the defunct New York Sun. He’s also supposedly looking into starting metro editions for Chicago and Los Angeles, with San Fransisco’s edition launching last month, similar to what The New York Times is doing. (Perhaps the two aren’t connected that much, but it’s hard to see how one didn’t happen at the expense of another.) He’s shuffling around coverage of the paper to place less of an emphasis on business and financial news and more of an emphasis on general news.
It’s kind of odd for him to so drastically change what The Journal was to turn it into his version of The New York Times. If he can’t buy The Times and wanted to retain the power of The Journal, why didn’t he just buy the New York Sun last year and attach a free copy of it with every subscription of The Journal in the New York area?
Brian J
@GregB:
I started subscribing this past May. I was only going to do it online, but I like having the option of a paper copy and it was only 79 cents more per week, so I figured, “What the hell?” I haven’t received a paper edition of that newspaper, aside from the Saturday one, in months, but have been so busy/lazy I never got around to complaining. I finally shot them an e-mail yesterday, and they asked me to give them a time line of when it started. (I got the paper yesterday, by the way, but not today.) I’m debating whether I should say it’s been a few weeks or be honest and say it’s been a few months just to see what they say.
blahblahblah
Will business professionals continue buying the Wall Street Journal after it stops offering useful and factual business and political news? Don’t executives need access to factual truth in order to make sound decisions?
Dino
Fucking shame.
It was a great newspaper, if you ignored the editorials. I stopped subscribing because I was fed up with the latter. David Wessel conveys complexities into digestible bits. But his value could not overcome my disgust with the excreable Taranto, Strassell and Kagan columns. I did not want to subsidize those morons.
I did see a copy the other day with a color(!!) picture on the cover and immediately looked for a headline along the lines of: “Headless Body in a Topless Bar.”
GregB
How soon before the WSJ gets page three girls?
-G
Comrade Scrutinizer
@asiangrrlMN: Meh, wetsuits are overrated, and latex gets manky, especially those full-body latex suits. Now, knee-high lace-up soft leather boots with stiletto heels, a leather halter with or without a leather vest, and a tight leather skirt—that’s the only way to go. And safety words? It ain’t BDSM if you’re using safety words, it’s just playing around.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@blahblahblah:
__
As opposed to some other kind of truth?
Xenos
@blahblahblah:
What, American executives? Like our automotive, energy, defense, or financial industries? They wouldn’t know what to do with accurate information so they avoid it and try to suppress it whenever possible.
Makewi
I would imagine that owning a media outlet would give one a fair amount of influence over it. Not sure that translates into having influence over the rest of the media. You know, the 90% or so that isn’t owned by Moon or Murdoch.
As long as we are wondering things, maybe we could speculate a little on how Olberman is listened to. By anyone.
Darryl
You just made my day.
Pangloss
Get ready for the rollout of new products like the coal-powered Hummer, the Sarah Palin action figure, and a new cereal called Diabetes-O’s.
Robin G.
@asiangrrlMN: I’m impressed. I caved during the snow last week and broke out the down coat.
Brachiator
Three words. William Randolph Hearst.
Relatively objective news reporting has been the exception, not the rule, in the US and elsewhere.
asiangrrlMN
@Robin G.: I love the cold. Very much. And, I can keep my fireplace going with all the useless print newspapers I have lying around (just to make the post semi-on topic).
I was listening to MPR today, and they were talking about trying to decrease our debt and stabilize our deficit (federal) because of a bill being voted on today. The host presented it neutrally, and I was frustrated because he wasn’t pointing out the context of the freeze-spending crowd vs. the stimulate the economy crowd. Very disheartening.
Maybe he did bring it up later, but I didn’t listen to the rest of the program.
daveNYC
The Financial Times is going to eat the Journal’s lunch.
CalD
But he promised he wouldn’t!
d0n camillo
The thing with the Wall Street Journal is that it has hitherto been such a source of useful business news that readers were willing to overlook its bugfuck insane editorial section. Now that it looks like the bugfuck insanity has seeped into the news pages, it will be interesting to see what will happen to the WSJ’s circulation.
After all, shitty right wing centric fluffy news is pretty much a commodity nowadays thanks in large part to Rupert’s efforts.
toujoursdan
@blahblahblah:
No. Most economics is predicated on the lie that our economy and population can, and should grow infinitely, on a finite planet that is arguably in environmental decline.
“Peak oil/commodities, global warming, declining fish stocks, fresh water shortages, depletion of the Amazon, declining crop yields and soil erosion – all concerns of hippy environmentalist types. None of this could ever impact business. Debt? Who cares! Spend more to help the economy recover.”
It’s all based on the premise that neither the economy, nor the environment will ever change in a deleterious and permanent way.
And that’s delusional thinking on a mass scale.
R-Jud
@Brachiator:
Yes. Thank you. (I would also add Benjamin Franklin Bache.) Objective reporting is, by and large, mythical. We should clamor for more of it, but we shouldn’t be surprised it isn’t the norm.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@asiangrrlMN: I kan haz subskripshun 2 ur newslttr?
AngusTheGodOfMeat
I dunno, a walk through the Hearst Castle is still a goddam headshaker that takes the cake.
Jay B.
Right, like the one that was owned by a gigantic military contractor until a couple of weeks ago. Or the one that was one of the 53 corporations that gave GW the $250,000 max for his inauguration. Or the one run by the guy who endorsed George Bush over his “old friend” John Kerry because he thought Bush would be better for his company.
So, by your own terms, people who own the media call the tunes. Fair enough. And since the owners are, by and large, big supporters of Republicans — those referenced were NBC, Time Warner and Viacom — I think you’ve pretty much killed the idea that there’s a liberal media, your bizarre Olbermann fixation notwithstanding.
And when a rich liberal decides to buy a network and starts running the Mao Tse-Tung Hour and you bitch about it, we get to be stunned at your ignorance. Right?
Brachiator
@R-Jud:
I would also add Benjamin Franklin Bache
Oh, hell yes.
Political factions and newspaper editors were complicit in dirty partisan politics as soon as fledgling political parties came into being in the US. And Murdoch is as American as William Duane, the Irish immigrant who took over the paper after Bache’s death (and who even married Bache’s widow).
DougJ
Three words. William Randolph Hearst.
At least he was a Murkin.
That guy from the car commercials did a great job playing him in “Cat’s Meow”, too.
R-Jud
@AngusTheGodOfMeat: They let cows into the Hearst Castle? California is so wacky, man.
cleek
@Hunter Gathers:
jam.
nobody can syrup a dick up a conservative’s ass.
Mike G
A Chinese Wall is a firewall between two departments or segments of an organization
In media terms, a supposed firewall between the owner/publisher business side of a media organization and the editorial/content side. Owners are theoretically not supposed to manipulate the content.
Like all such ethical rules in corporate America, it’s widely ignored. The Chinese Wall in a Murdoch organization is about 2mm high.
Twisted_Colour
That’s “former Australian tabloidist” thank you very much. Murdoch hasn’t held Australian citizenship for 25 years. You Yanks can keep him.
grumpy realist
Wish I could buy stock in the FT. What is Murdoch thinking?! People put up with the nutty editorial page because the news itself used to be quite factual. Now–the first section has turned into nothing but anti-Democratic propaganda. (The Marketplace and Finance sections still seem to be avoiding the taint–but for how long?)
There’s only so many years you can live in a propaganda-infested bubble telling you what you want to hear before your company/company goes down the tubes. Witness the USSR. Good business owners know this. Good owners WANT critical and unbiased analysis of the business environment around them. (Hello FT, bye-bye WSJ)
Well, looks to me like there’s a good opportunity for a top-class business-US-covering newspaper that gives facts and accurate analysis to its readers. Anyone game?