Give Rupert Murdoch a Break
The editorial staff of the Wall Street Journal, plus sundry other journalists, are running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Their fear? That Rupert Murdoch, publisher and destroyer of worlds, will take over the Journal with his stained hands.
They bleat he’ll dumb it down and change its editorial mission. Which is what–to make the world safe for capitalism? Then the Journal should be applauding Murdoch’s $60 a share offer.
Murdoch has a history, they say, of using his media empire to advance his own causes and line his pocket.
No shit, Sherlock! What does a publisher do? Yellow journalism was Joseph Pulitzer, who got a prize named after him, and William Randolph Hearst, who got an empire, battling in a gutter war for circulation–and to see who could get the U.S. into the Spanish American war first.
Murdoch focuses his chirpy Fox News, smarmy New York Post and the rest on sensationalism and celebrities. He likes to sell papers and make money.
As they say, the new Golden Rule is the one who has the gold, makes the rules. The Wall Street Journal may not like it–but hey, that’s capitalism.
So give me–and Rupert–a break.
June 21, 2007 at 4:47 pm
[…] That’s the dilemma that workers at the Journal face, claims a New York Times story. Rupert Murdoch would ‘dumb down’ the paper and the rest of Dow Jones; a possible GE/CNBC buyer would […]