Wall Street Journal

So much for objective journalists.From the moment word got out that Rupert Murdoch had offered billions to buyout The Wall Street Journal, the media have cried foul. Journalists and media critics charged that a Murdoch takeover would turn the prestigious business newspaper into a journalistic joke, that the media mogul would page six-ify the Journal.An art director at The New York Times, carried…

Time magazine came out swinging last week against Rupert Murdoch for his offer to buy the Wall Street Journal. In an article titled "Murdoch vs. Family-Owned Newspapers", Time painted a picture of Murdoch as a "controversial genius" who used his company for power and profit, swooping in to take over a family business where the owners "have made use of dual-class stock structures that allow them…

Perhaps you read this week that in April, the US Treasury reported all-time-record tax collections of $383.6 billion. If you did, you didn't read it in the dead-trees version of the New York Times. The Old Grey Lady did not deem Thursday afternoon's news "fit to print" on Friday (requires free registration), even choosing not to carry the related Associated Press report that is the main topic of…

Rupert Murdoch, founder of the Fox network and Fox News Channel and CEO of media giant News Corp has the ability to make grown journalists cry. A quick survey of liberal media blogger Jim Romenesko's Media News page shows an industry in a panic over Murdoch's $5 billion offer to purchase Wall Street Journal parent company Dow Jones.Why all the fear and loathing?To put it simply, Rupert Murdoch is…

Imagine a conservative congressperson doing something this unhinged and not getting raked over the coals in the press (Wall Street Journal link requires subscription): Tuesday was Africa Malaria Day, and Michigan Representative John Conyers marked the event by inviting something called the Pesticide Action Network to Capitol Hill to denounce DDT as an unsafe malaria intervention. What was he…

Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali immigrated to the US from Holland in 2006 after her controversial views of Islam (she called it “backwards”) resulted in serious death threats and the eventual murder of a friend. An April 24 Reuters article by Alexandra Hudson (picked up by the Washington Post website) stressed the theme that the Muslim women of Holland were relieved that she left for America. It…

Conservatives often ponder why more young conservatives don’t go into journalism. Here’s one easy reason: the path to prizes and prestige doesn’t come from fierce investigative probing into liberal sacred cows or sharp-eyed conservative commentary. It comes from pleasing liberals with stories which advance their agenda. The 2007 Pulitzer Prizes must have been a sad affair, what with no major…

Yesterday I noted that the New York Sun reported Melissa McNamara to be the producer CBS fired for plagiarizing the Wall Street Journal in a script she wrote for Katie Couric's April 4 "Notebook" vlog. For its part, CBS News refused to publicly release the name of the fired producer. As of publication of this blog post, CBS's ombudsblog "Public Eye" has not addressed the Sun's reporting. Now…

Imagine if you will that in September 1996, just days after America launched a missile strike on Baghdad to expand the “no fly zone,” Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich met with Saddam Hussein to discuss foreign policy matters without the permission of President Clinton. Would the media have vociferously discussed the possibility that Gingrich had violated federal law in doing so?If the answer is…