Categories: OLD Media Moves

News Corp. gave $2.5 million to WSJ oversight board member

Reuters is reporting that News Corp. has pledged to give $2.5 million to a foundation run by a person picked to be on the Wall Street Journal editorial oversight board that will guard the paper against interference by News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch.

Murdoch agreed to purchase the parent company of The Journal earlier this week for $5 billion.

Jim Finkle and Kenneth Li wrote, “Rupert Murdoch’s global media conglomerate selected Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Nicholas Negroponte to be part of the five-member special committee that will oversee the editorial independence of Dow Jones’s news operations including the Wall Street Journal.

“Creation of the committee and agreement on who would be on it was part of News Corp’s $5.6 billion deal to buy Dow Jones.

“Asked if the donation compromised Negroponte’s independence as a member of a group designed to safeguard Dow Jones’ editorial integrity, Dow Jones spokeswoman Linda Dunbar said: ‘We are confident of the capability of the individuals to make independent decisions.’

“In an e-mail interview with Reuters in May, Negroponte described Murdoch as a personal friend and a key backer of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) foundation that makes inexpensive laptop computers for poor children.”

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.