WSJ under fire: US fallout of the Murdoch fiasco

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch may be able to  dodge a pie to the face, but he may find it harder to rebuild the flagging credibility of his US media properties. In a war of words playing out on the opinion pages of the most venerable American media organisations, News Corp. is being taken to task for its subpar stateside coverage of the illegal reporting tactics that led to the shuttering of the 168-year-old News of the World(NoTW). [caption id=“attachment_44452” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Rupert Murdoch, gives evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee on the News of the World phone-hacking scandal in this image taken from TV in Portcullis House in central London on Tuesday. AP”]  [/caption] It’s not so much that anyone thinks that US-based News Corp. journalists are surreptitiously hacking phones or paying off police officers. The uproar has instead focussed on the undue influence that Murdoch may assert on the media conglomerate’s American entities. News Corp coverage of the NoTW affair to date hasn’t been persuasive that the media baron—who isn’t shy about his conservative political leanings—manages to maintain a healthy distance from the editorial decisions of his media conglomerate’s stateside subsidiaries. Exhibit A: Fox News Though it’s common knowledge that Fox News wears Republican blinders and does not live up to its “fair and balanced” motto, the network’s misleading approach to covering the NoTW scandal was particularly troubling. The news station had previously declined to cover the topic until a “Fox and Friends” segment aired Friday, in which public relations veteran Robert Dilenschneider brazenly portrayed NoTW as the victim—rather than the perpetrator—of hacking. Blathering on about how credible entities like Citibank and the Pentagon had also suffered at the hands of criminal hackers, Dilenschneider made a rousing cry for improved efforts against the “serious hacking problem in this country.” The segment ended with host Steve Doocy agreeing with Dilenschneider that the press had overblown the NoTW incident. The segment was met with outrage. James Fallows of The Atlantic called Fox’s willingness to spin the story “ The Most Amazing Thing Fox News Has Ever Done." “I submit that this could not happen at any other news organization,” Fallows wrote. “Rather, it could not happen at a news organization. It happened at the agitprop operation known as Fox News.” Exhibit B: The Wall Street Journal The Wall Street Journal, the feather in the News Corp cap, has also been accused of failing to aggressively cover the NotW brouhaha. Former Journal reporter Dean Starkman observed in a Columbia Journalism Review column that his former paper’s NotW coverage is “obviously hamstrung, and far, far below the paper’s true capacity.” New York Times columnist Joe Nocera also took issue with a Journal article containing Murdoch’s first public interview since the phone hacking scandal broke, which he described as “craven” due to the reporter’s failure to ask his boss hard questions. All of this, Nocera argued, is an indication that “The Journal was turned into a propaganda vehicle for its owner’s conservative views. That’s half the definition of Fox-ification. The other half is that Murdoch’s media outlets must shill for his business interests. With the News of the World scandal, The Journal has now shown itself willing to do that, too.” Exhibit C: The Wall Street Journal Turn to the Journal’s opinion pages for the strongest indication that the NotW scandal has negatively affected News Corp.’s credibility. In a one-two punch of op-eds aimed at restoring the public’s faith in its editorial independence, the Journal instead comes off as desperate and defensive. A much-maligned Monday opinion piece beseeched the public to refrain from painting the esteemed paper with the same brush as the disgraced NotW. In fact, the Journal argued that its reputation and those of its capable reporters had been unfairly targeted; it also blamed competitors for the uncomfortable situation that the paper currently finds itself in. As the editorial stated: We also trust that readers can see through the commercial and ideological motives of our competitor-critics. The Schadenfreude is so thick you can’t cut it with a chainsaw. Especially redolent are lectures about journalistic standards from publications that give Julian Assange and WikiLeaks their moral imprimatur. They want their readers to believe, based on no evidence, that the tabloid excesses of one publication somehow tarnish thousands of other News Corp journalists across the world. And yet, that very same editorial mouthed the corporate talking points when it came to a potential probe of News Corp by the US Department of Justice. The piece prompted swift backlash from media veterans and the public, and prompted journalist Jeff Jarvis to tweet: “The Wall Street Journal is becoming Murdoch’s cheap harlot, publishing his ‘interview’ and ’editorialising’ his defence.” Monday’s cry of Schadenfreude was followed by a piece published Tuesday by features editor Robert Pollock, who also sought to assure readers that the Journal maintains full editorial independence. “If Rupert Murdoch has a thought-out plan to influence politics and the op-ed editor of The Wall Street Journal doesn’t know about it, it must be a very subtle plan indeed,” Pollock wrote. He added: “If you want an example of editorial independence at News Corp., look at how often ‘The Simpsons’ mock their broadcasters at Fox.” Perhaps recognising that these are far-from-convincing arguments, Pollock further sought to deflect criticism by accusing his competitors of biased coverage: Pollock wrote: Everyone knows the Sulzbergers interfere in the New York Times_. The Grahams are not hands-off owners of the_ Washington Post_._ Wall Street Journal editors and writers had been by far the freest at a major American newspaper. That freedom continued under Mr. Murdoch. This is a neat trick. There’s no quicker way to silence an American journalist than to accuse them of partisanship, no matter how large a farce pristine political “Objectivity” may be. The unspoken agenda To be fair, Rupert Murdoch has put The Wall Street Journal and even Fox News in a tough spot. It’s difficult and perhaps financially unwise to take down the guy who signs your paycheck. But the situation is also an arguably good proxy for a newsroom’s ability or willingness to push back against an unspoken agenda that comes down from on high. The Journal is rightfully heralded for its fine business coverage, but in Murdoch’s first interview after the NotW scandal broke, he blithely told the Journal that News Corp had handled the crisis “extremely well in every way possible.” The paper may continue to argue in an endless line of op-eds that it hasn’t punted on its NoTW coverage, but shouldn’t we be skeptical when a newspaper reports—without challenge—a clear distortion of reality by its own corporate CEO?