Don’t give up on the WSJ just yet

Ryan Chittum of Columbia Journalism Review writes Monday that comparing The Wall Street Journal to Fox News, which is also owned by News Corp., is simply unfair.

Chittum was responding to a column in Saturday’s New York Times by Joe Nocera.

Chittum writes, “But let’s be realistic here, it’s almost impossible to cover yourself. Does anyone expect the Journal to unleash a Guardian-style campaign on Rupert Murdoch (one major reason why it’s so problematic for him to own it in the first place, as Dean said last week)? It was Nocera himself, (back then at Fortune) who wrote the best piece on Dow Jones’s Telerate fiasco back in the 1990s, not the Journal.

“What we should is expect is that the WSJ, as a comprehensive business paper, will report the news as it develops, disclose its ownership, and display the story appropriately for its readers. But, true, it ignored or underplayed the story for too long.

“I think London bureau chief Bruce Orwall, who wrote the story and presumably conducted the interview Nocera is exercised about, worked with what he had in a bad situation, and that wasn’t much. But he still got some real value out of it. Here’s Orwall’s second paragraph:

In an interview, Mr. Murdoch said News Corp. has handled the crisis “extremely well in every way possible,” making just “minor mistakes.”

“I understand how that could be perceived as Pravda-esque, but I really don’t think it was. It reads to me like the Journal gave Rupert enough rope to hang himself—in this instance an astonishing quote showing the old man is either off his head or thinks we are, or both.

“It’s not much of a stretch to think that that quote was one of the things that forced News Corp.’s board to finally assert itself.”

Read more here.