Feeling blue about Rupert

The Audit, the Columbia Journalism Review’s indispensible blog, offers an interview with James Ottaway, that is one of the best pieces on the News Corp. wooing of the Dow Jones board that I’ve come across. (CJR also ran this absolutely terrifying online profile of Murdoch last week that is a must read for anyone interested in the future of The Wall Street Journal and American journalism.)

The Murdoch sale, according to Ottaway, a shreholder who “ran the largely profitable Ottaway unit within Dow Jones, and held various other posts until 2003, and served on the board of directors until last year,” says a News Corp. takeover would result in “more media concentration in the hands the people who use their media power for personal, political, and business interests, as Murdoch does so blatantly with the New York Post, FOX News network, Star TV in China, Phoenix TV in China.”

That, he says, violates the American tradition of journalism.

The American tradition, which I think is a higher standard, produces a higher-quality of journalism. This wasn’t (always the case) from the founding of the country when we had highly partisan press run by political parties and individuals. Jefferson starting a newspaper to attack Adams when they were running for president. We’re a long way from that. But since the Second World War, the principle has been that in your news columns, you report accurately, fairly, as objectively as you can. And on your editorial pages, you can state your personal political—business interests if you want—but generally, American journalism has been to act with a sense of public service in the way you run your newspapers and to consider a newspaper…a public trust, and not just a personal piggybank.

Otherwise, he says, you have “capitalism gone crazy.”

What we’re in danger of losing is fact-based journalism that serves as a basis for public debate. I fear for the country if we do not have unbiased news sources available to every citizen so that they can hear all sides of major public issues and make intelligent decisions when they vote or speak for or against candidates or issues; where the information is based on some agreed-upon factual starting point. Otherwise everything is propaganda and biased information, and nobody knows what the truth is.

And he offers this final thought:

I am saying privately to many of the Bancrofts, and would say publicly: We should not sell Dow Jones and Ottaway Newspapers to Rupert Murdoch. If some of the family members want to sell their Dow Jones shares, let us find a way to buy them out that is not damaging to Dow Jones and its reputation for absolute integrity in reporting and analyzing global business news. Let us find new investors to help us build the company, and not sell it to a company like News Corp, whose core business is entertainment, and whose newspapers are either tabloid fluff or weapons to enhance the business and political interests of Rupert Murdoch.

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Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet