Mannerisms

Lord knows the Wall Street Journal isn’t perfect. It has its favourites and its hates, but it’s not nasty. However, now that it’s about to be bought by Murdoch, it could become nasty.

Murdoch is not nasty, but he’s a businessman who doesn’t let ideas of his editorial properties’ editorial integrity get in the way of his business interests.

For instance he is very pro the Chinese authorities to the extent of banning one of his companies from publishing the memoirs of the last governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten.

Not in itself a venal sin, but indicative of the way he sees his editorial products. He may not personally instruct his editors what to say or do but, by all accounts, they are absolutely left in no doubt about what he wants said and done.

The US family which owned the WSJ, and have now sold out to Murdoch, appear to be as wet as a bunch of scrubbers in getting absolutely zero enforceable guarantees out of Murdoch that the editorial integrity of the WSJ will be maintained.

One hopes people won’t be saying in a few years: ‘I heard such-and-such had happened, but it was in the WSJ, so it may not be entirely true’.

Just as people now say about things they hear on Fox.