Dow Jones panel says it sees no misconduct

The committee that oversees editorial independence at News Corp.’s Dow Jones & Co. unit said it has found “absolutely no sign of journalistic misconduct” among Dow Jones employees, reports Eric Engelman of Bloomberg News.

Engelman writes, “The committee responded to a letter yesterday from U.S. Senators Barbara Boxer and Jay Rockefeller, who asked the panel whether senior News Corp. executives in the U.S. knew about or were complicit in the phone hacking scandal now engulfing the company in the U.K.

“‘Our focus from the outset has been on insuring that the highest standards of journalistic ethics are being met at the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires,’ the committee said in a statement e-mailed late yesterday by its chairman, Thomas Bray, the former editorial page editor of the Detroit News.

“‘In conversations with countless present and former Dow Jones employees we have found absolutely no sign of journalistic misconduct such as is at the heart of the scandal in London,’ the statement said.

“Boxer, a California Democrat, and Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee, also requested information from the committee about the hiring of Les Hinton, who resigned as chief executive officer of Dow Jones on July 15.”

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