The Murdoch empire: headed for a left turn?

By Wes Vernon

Can Rupert Murdoch's New York Post switch its editorial policy from conservative to liberal? Sure, it could. The popular tabloid switched from liberal to conservative when Murdoch first bought it back in the seventies from Dorothy Schiff, the Grande Dame of New York liberalism.

If the NYP — arguably one of just five major metropolitan editorially conservative newspapers today — made a left turn, it would be going in the direction of countless other papers as the sixties generation of editors took over. Cases in point include the Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, Los Angeles Times, Hearst papers, and Detroit News.

Can you top this one?

Okay, how about the Wall Street Journal, another one of the five big newspapers with a starboard editorial culture?

Oh, no, you say. Not the Wall Street Journal. Its upper middle to upper income white collar readers would not stand for it. They would jump ship in droves. Well, maybe — although statistics have shown that the old stereotype (always exaggerated) about most of "the rich guys" being Republicans and the "common people" being Democrats started to fall apart in the sixties and collapsed with a vengeance in the eighties when the Gipper became the first president since FDR to unscramble conventional political wisdoms.

But the Wall Street Journal? It does seem improbable right now, but don't discount it as a gentle, gradual, years-long slide in the future.

Is the consensus right about Murdoch and Dow Jones?

Let us review some of the commentary in recent weeks about Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. takeover of the Dow Jones and its publications, the most treasured of which is WSJ.

Ignatius

David Ignatius writes in the Washington Post that the Journal has lost a lot of its "panache" of what he sees as the good old days when he was a reporter there.

"For Journal alumni," he writes, "the past decade has been like watching a car wreck in slow motion," with Murdoch arriving "to pick up the bodies."

Many of Ignatius's analytic judgments of the Journal — both in his day and as the paper has evolved over the years — deal with personalities in the newsroom and in the executive suite.

But what apparently sticks in his craw as much as anything is that the editorial page started doing its own reporting "with equal portions of journalistic hustle and ideological spin and it often overshadowed the news side."

In commenting on that, where to begin?

First, the "firewall" between the editorial and news staff at the Wall Street Journal is such that some have said it's like reading two newspapers for the price of one. In that situation (whose purposes are laudable), it should not be surprising that the editorialists would start doing their own digging, especially if they questioned whether all of the "straight reporting" was conveying the whole story. In fact, at one point, the Washington newsies of the Journal and its editorial staff held a high-decibel "stick to your own territory" argument one night in Washington's posh Madison Hotel.

Secondly, if one buys "two for the price of one," it does not follow that one side should ape the story line of the other. That's part of what a "firewall" is all about, isn't it?

Third, it's no big secret that while the Journal's editorials are mostly conservative, its news reporters are like most others in the business (as indicated in several polls) — liberal to the core. That is perhaps most clearly personified by former Journal Washington Bureau Chief Albert Hunt, whose stewardship Ignatius endorses.

The best example of the WSJ editorial page's independence came when one of its writers L. Gordon Crovitz did his own investigating in the Iran-Contra case during the Reagan years. What he found tended to be exculpatory not only toward Reagan but also for many others in the administration, including Oliver North.

What Crovitz did was to break up one of Washington's palsywalsy lynch mobs. He ruined the wolfpack's hanging party, wherein the mob, rope in hand, was formulating another Watergate. That may be what really gripes Ignatius. How dare this interloper not follow pack journalism's carefully crafted script. Compounding the Washington Post columnist's disenchantment, one suspects, is that Crovitz is today publisher of the Journal and executive vice president of Dow Jones.

Jim Martin — in a Washington Times column — reported hearing some WSJ reporters bragging about doing "news" stories whose purpose was to contradict WSJ editorials. The point: No matter how reporters consider themselves "fair," human nature will not always be denied.

Thomas

Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas — who is also a contributor to (NewsCorp-owned) Fox News Channel — comments on another observation by David Ignatius, who speculated that "[a]dvertisers, in the end, perhaps weren't enthralled with a newspaper distinguished by vitriolic right-wing attack editorials."

Thomas — emphasizing that no one at NewsCorp dispatched him to weigh in on the topic — retorts that the late Robert Bartley, the editorial page editor at the time Ignatius says the Wall Street Journal was "flawed," won a Pulitzer prize. This writer interviewed Bartley (on my then-CBS Radio Crosstalk program) about his eighties book Seven Fat Years, which should generally be an instruction manual on how the free enterprise system was meant to operate. (I dissented from Bartley's open borders view on immigration and his take on the more exotic outer reaches of the "global economy," but those are topics for another day. I still had great respect for him.)

Suffice it say, Cal Thomas has no problem with the Murdoch takeover.

Babbin

In Human Events, Jed Babbin (author of In the Words of Our Enemies), pens an open letter to Murdoch, observing that "you're in the news business to make money, not lose it. That comes as a shock to some on the left because many of them seem to be content to lose money by the bucketful." Babbin further says "you'll naturally want to make some changes to the Journal without damaging its journalistic 'brand." The author endorses Murdoch's desire to put more "urgency" in the Journal and interprets that to mean "better news coverage."

However, Babbin expresses "puzzlement" that Murdoch would even joke that he won't meddle "any more than 'Pinch' Sulzberger does at the New York Times. " Of course, Babbin adds, "Pinch Sulzberger's meddling is notorious and has damaged the New York Times immeasurably."

Kincaid

Finally we come to longtime media critic Cliff Kincaid. He says some "meddling" (not Kincaid's word) by Murdoch would be justified. And the editor of Accuracy in Media's AIM Report surely has a point. (Full disclosure: I do some writing for the AIM Report.)

First, does anyone seriously imagine that Murdoch — having plunked down billions for the property — does not have the right, perhaps an obligation, to make at least a few teensy-weensy adjustments here and there?

What Kincaid suggests to Murdoch is that he "clean house" at WSJ.

And he names names. As an example of the type of shenanigans plaguing the "news" pages of the "conservative" bible of the buttoned-down Wall Street types, the AIM editor cites former WSJ reporter A. Kent MacDougall, who — after departing the paper — wrote a two-part boastathon in the socialist Monthly Review about left-wing "boring from within" at the Journal.

MacDougall told Kincaid that Murdoch is too much of an "ideologue" to run the paper.

Hold it. Let's make sure we have this right. This guy who rants about the dangers of American imperialism and says Karl Marx was his favorite journalist argues that Murdoch is too much of an "ideologue" to be running a newspaper? Only the double-standards of mainstream journalism could accept that with a straight face.

Kincaid also refers to articles by Jonathan Kwitny glorifying Communists in El Salvador and using pro-Communist CIA turncoat Philip Agee as a secret source.

Whither WSJ under Murdoch's empire?

There are some — including Kincaid — who question Murdoch's self-proclaimed conservatism. I myself have questioned the media mogul's taking on a Saudi prince to help him fend off a potential hostile takeover.

It is true that — for a conservative — Murdoch has done some things that would seem to contradict that portrait of his worldview. But support for Hillary Clinton and Al Gore? That says little, if anything. I've known conservative-minded broadcast CEOs who have attended fundraisers for liberal politicians whom they would never be caught dead voting for on Election Day. It's all part of a regulated industry building its bridges. However, Murdoch has done other things that conservatives find harder to understand.

On the other hand — whether motivated by ideology or good business sense — he has given us a cable channel, Fox News, that has become popular with conservatives who see it as a television news outlet that shows respect for their views.

The word is that the editorial side of the Wall Street Journal "firewall" believes it will do just as well under Murdoch as under the century-old reign of the Bancroft family, or perhaps even better. Conversely, some 99% of the news staff — where more moles might be found — live in horror of Murdoch taking over. So yes, the new owner would do well to "clean house."

The long-term question

So who will take over when the 76-year-old Rupert Murdoch retires? If the answer is Roger Eugene Ailes, President of Fox News Channel and Chairman of Fox Television Stations Group, this column would have no problem. His background with the likes of Ronald Reagan and Rush Limbaugh marks him as a solid and trustworthy conservative.

One cannot ignore another possible successor in the person of someone with the advantage of being his father's son. Mr. Murdoch's offspring James reportedly is very liberal and is also very close politically to the Clintons and Gores of the world.

It all comes down to this: Will we at some point see yet another great conservative journalistic empire morph into something quite different, as happened many times in the last century? We can only hope this sorry bit of history does not repeat itself.

© Wes Vernon