Editorial: Dow Jones CEO Phillips was a newsman at heart

Warren Phillips

The Wall Street Journal has published an editorial about former Dow Jones & Co. CEO Warren Phillips, who died Friday at the age of 92.

The editorial states, “We saw his fortitude personally in the 1980s when two Journal editorial writers based in Asia were charged with contempt of court in Singapore for criticizing the city-state’s treatment of opposition politicians. The publisher in Asia at the time listened to local lawyers who advised retreat, and our editorial writers and the publisher apologized to the Singapore court.

“Phillips read about the apology in a competing newspaper, and the same day we got a call in Hong Kong from Bartley, who said as we recall it that ‘the mood has changed around here.’ A lawyer from headquarters was dispatched to Singapore, and the Journal proceeded to fight future battles over press freedom all the way to the Privy Council in Britain—until Singapore barred such appeals.

“Phillips believed that the Journal’s news coverage should be fair and as free of bias as humanly possible. He also supported the Journal’s editorial-page mission of free people and free markets, and he defended both principles across his great career. In an age when many journalists and publications have abandoned even the pretense of fairness to pursue partisan ends, Phillips offers a lesson to us all.”

Read more here.

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.