Categories: OLD Media Moves

Columnist: Dark day if WSJ falls to Murdoch

Paul Carpenter, a columnist for the Allentown Morning Call in Pennsylvania, writes Friday that it will be a dark day in business journalism if The Wall Street Journal is sold to News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch. News Corp. has made a $5 billion offer to acquire its parent company, Dow JonesÂ & Co.Â

Carpenter once worked for Barney Kilgore, who helped turn the Journal into a great newspaper in the 20th century.

Carpenter wrote, “If that happens — if the pinnacle of America’s journalistic world falls into the filthy hands of this horror — it will be a national tragedy. Murdoch is the opposite of everything Kilgore stood for. He makes William Randolph Hearst look principled by comparison. As The Washington Post once put it, Murdoch’s name is ‘synonymous with sleaze journalism.’

“I have expressed similar views, calling Murdoch’s Fox News TV operation the ‘propaganda arm for the Republican Party’s lunatic fringe.’

“It is bad enough that we have Fox News corrupting news media standards, along with other pursuits that reflect Murdoch’s character, such as the Star tabloid rag he founded and his pornography operations.

“If he is able to contaminate one of our most prestigious newspapers, it will be a dark day for American journalism, as if we need more dark days.”

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.