Former WSJ reporter says Murdoch will meddle

Matt Pottinger, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who is now a Marine serving in Iraq, writes an op-ed piece for the Washington Post that states that News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch has routinely meddled in media coverage of China, where he was a journalist.

As such, Pottinger warns that the same thing could happen if Murdoch was allowed to acquire Dow Jones & Co., the parent of The Wall Street Journal.

Pottinger wrote, “Murdoch is not an editorial ogre but a smart, charming businessman with a pioneering style of journalism that has its place in a free country. His editorial support of America’s troops is generous, and he has created a fresh point of view with Fox News. I’m also told he keeps his hands off the Australian, one of the many newspapers he owns. But the Wall Street Journal is not Fox News or the Australian, and its mission is not their mission. China will be the biggest story of the 21st century. Its policies and progress must be understood and reported fearlessly. Beyond that, the Journal brings us a quality of news that’s not only unusual but important to our future.

“Several days ago in western Iraq, an unseen guerrilla detonated a bomb moments after my fellow Marines and I had driven over it. Marines call near misses like this a ‘gut check.’ I know why I took certain risks working for the Journal, and I know why I take them as a Marine, and while I still haven’t figured out how to say it without sounding too earnest, high-minded and patriotic, I’ll say it anyway: Some things in America need to be protected, and none more than a free and intrepid press. Because no one exercises that role better than the Journal, the loss of its rigorous, undiluted reporting would be a hole in America’s heart deeper than that hole in the road.”

Read more here.