Reporters in The Wall Street Journal’s Beijing bureau have written a letter to the Dow Jones & Co. board, asking them to oppose an offer to sell the parent of The Journal to News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, according to an Associated Press story.

The AP story stated, “Correspondent Mei Fong said Tuesday that she and six of her colleagues wrote a letter to the board of Dow Jones & Co. saying they fear that under Murdoch’s leadership writers would be pressured to soften their reporting on China.

“The May 10 letter pointed to a series of articles on the adverse effects on China’s booming economy, which earned the China bureau the Pulitzer. Journal reporters were worried that such hard-hitting reports might not be possible if Murdoch’s media conglomerate, News Corp., were to take charge of the paper, it said.

“‘Many of those stories shed an unflattering light on the (Chinese) government and business interests,’ said the letter, which has been widely circulated on media Web sites.

“Such reporting ‘is an important example of the coverage that we fear would suffer if News Corp. takes control,’ it said.”

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