Wall Street Journal’s Phony ‘Independence Pact’
April 24th, 2008 by Dan GillmorPortfolio: How Murdoch Cheated ‘WSJ’ Independence Pact. Only the very naive didn’t expect Rupert Murdoch to find some sly way around the agreement he made to respect The Wall Street Journal’s editorial independence once it was his. But when the time came, there was nothing very sly about it at all: Murdoch just did exactly what he wanted, turfing out managing editor Marcus Brauchli in a way that, arguably, represented a concrete and blatant violation of the independence pact.
Actually, only the naive gave this “editorial independence” committee any credibility whatsoever. It’s Murdoch’s paper. He’s doing exactly what he wants to do with it, and no one should ever have given even a micro-second’s thought to any other possibility. Anyone who spends any more time discussing this committee’s meaningless activities is wasting time.
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April 24th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Dan: I agree with you. I did, however, spend a little more time discussing it because I think the whole debate promotes an old-media myth about editorial independence. My thoughts here: http://www.knightdigitalmediacenter.org/leadership_blog/