From the Guardian:
One of Rupert Murdoch's most senior European executives has resigned following Guardian inquiries about a circulation scam at News Corporation's flagship newspaper, the Wall Street Journal.There you have it. The once proud, conservative newspaper is now being run to the ground under Murdoch. It's not a pretty picture. The shoddy reporting on the Episcopal Church and the breakaways noted in my earlier post is all of a piece with the entire WSJ operation at the present time. Pity the employees of the Journal who remain dedicated to ethical journalism.
The Guardian found evidence that the Journal had been channelling money through European companies in order to secretly buy thousands of copies of its own paper at a knock-down rate, misleading readers and advertisers about the Journal's true circulation.
The bizarre scheme included a formal, written contract in which the Journal persuaded one company to co-operate by agreeing to publish articles that promoted its activities, a move which led some staff to accuse the paper's management of violating journalistic ethics and jeopardising its treasured reputation for editorial quality.
Nemesis
ReplyDeleteNemesis! Did I ever seize on this story when I found it in the Guardian. If I remember correctly, the news part of the Journal was always conservative, but the op-ed pages were more balanced and included good writing. I feel sorry for the ethical journalists who work for the paper.
ReplyDeleteI just wrote a really convincing reply to this, at some length and with some care. As it tended to become intemperate on some matters of finance and politics, it is perhaps just as well that the goddamned stupid malicious Google code suddenly invented a new undocumented requirement for one's being allowed to comment, which it announced to me as it totally and permanently destroyed my text.
ReplyDeleteTell me again about Google not being evil.
Anyway, I think you've got it backwards there: the news section was remarkably good at covering the financial and related news, not shrinking from such outrages as documenting various damage caused by lack of effective regulation and law enforcement.
After all, if you want to make profits in the market, and you're not big enough to manipulate it, you need to know pretty accurately what's going on.
It's the editorial section that has always existed for the purpose of softening the blows of exposure to reality by telling the readers what they really *wanted* to hear.
Figured out that theory of the WSJ several years ago, I did. But I'm less proud of this achievement than I was before learning that my father, back in the 1960s, described the same theory to my brotheras the received wisdom in the finance biz.
Porlock, how frustrating about your loss of the long comment. I won't tell you Google isn't evil. They're all out to get us. ;-)
ReplyDeleteWhat I wrote about the WSJ seems counterintuitive, and I expect you're right, but I seem to remember non-conservative opinion writers being given a forum on the Journal's op-ed page back in the 1980s perhaps. However, my memory is fuzzy, and I couldn't name names.
OK, it;s true that sometime last year the paper fell open to the editorial page, and there was an article by Warren Buffett, definitely not one of their crazies. But it's rare, unless they've recently reformed! And even now the news pages are pretty far from hitting bottom.
ReplyDelete"The worst is not, when you still can say 'This is the worst.'" -- Edgar (I think) in King Lear, quoted from memory.
Porlock, no doubt you're right. As I've said, my memories are vague.
ReplyDelete