Categories: OLD Media Moves

WSJ immediately loses credibility if Murdoch is owner

Nicholas Von Hoffman of The Nation writes Thursday that The Wall Street Journal will immediatelty lose all of its credibility if News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch is successful in acquiring parent company Dow Jones & Co.

Von Hoffman wrote, “The first thing the Journal will lose if Murdoch buys it is credibility, a quality it has in rock-solid abundance–as opposed to Murdoch’s publications, which have a history of printing fiction.

“Recently the New York Times reminded its readers of two well-known instances thereof: ‘In 2004, Mr. Murdoch was even said by one New York Post employee to be the source for the Post’s erroneous headline ‘Dem Picks Gephardt as VP Candidate.” And: ‘In 1983, Mr. Murdoch caused a stir when he personally secured the publishing rights to what were said to be Hitler’s diaries, only to learn subsequently that they were fakes after publishing them in The Sunday Times.’

“The moment Murdoch takes over at the Journal, its reliability quotient will sink to that of Murdoch’s New York Post, which is a gas to read and which nobody takes seriously.”

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.