Times coverage of Dow Jones/Murdoch deal vs. WSJ stories

New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt took a look Sunday at his paper’s two-part series of News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch and is business tactics in the wake of his offer to purchase Dow Jones & Co., the parent of The Wall Street Journal, amid complaints from News Corp. that the series was slanted.

Hoyt wrote, “My own judgment is that this was a natural story to pursue and The Times would have been remiss if it had not done so. If anything, the newspaper was slow off the mark. Nearly three weeks before its articles appeared, The Wall Street Journal took its own front-page look at Murdoch and concluded that his media outlets did precisely what Ginsberg was accusing The Times of doing: making coverage decisions to advance his business interests.

“Ginsberg said the Journal story was ‘a very fair, objective piece.’ If it seems surprising that he would praise a tough Journal story while complaining about similar articles in The Times, remember that Murdoch is going to extraordinary lengths to reassure The Journal’s newsroom that he will not interfere with its independence, as a long and well-documented record indicates he has elsewhere.

“Ginsberg sent a long list of what he said were factual errors or examples of bias in the first of the two Times articles, which focused primarily on Murdoch’s activities in the United States.”

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