WSJ editor Murray agreed with reporters about China headline

Wall Street Journal editor Matt Murray seemed to agree with reporters at the paper that a headline for a column about China was inappropriate but said he couldn’t do anything to change it, reports Marc Tracy of The New York Times.

Tracy reports, “Journal leaders met with newsroom employees to discuss the headline before China condemned it. In one meeting, Matt Murray, the editor in chief, seemed to agree with the complaints, but said there was not much he could do about the headline because of the strict separation of the news and opinion sides. In a second meeting, journalists pushed Mr. Lewis, the publisher, to change the headline, to no avail.

“The letter offered several examples of Journal reporters who said they were impeded while trying to do their jobs. A researcher interviewing people on the streets of Beijing was surrounded by a crowd and called ‘traitor,’ the letter said; and a ‘senior doctor’ in Hubei Province, where coronavirus seems to have originated, retracted an interview with the newspaper and told others not to speak with its reporters.

“One of the journalists who signed the letter was Chun Han Wong, a Journal correspondent whose press credentials were not renewed by the Chinese government last year. Mr. Wong shared a byline with Mr. Wen on the article that described the legal scrutiny of the Chinese president’s cousin.”

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