An unsigned editorial in the Wall Street Journal tears into the Guardian newspaper and the BBC for hypocrisy and claims they have tarred the entire News Corps organization with the sins of a few.
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.
It also criticizes ProPublica for its report that the Bancroft family, previous owners of the WSJ were having second thoughts about having sold the publication to Murdoch. It further criticizes the Bancrofts for focusing too much on dividends and not investing in the product.
We shudder to think what the Journal would look like today without the sale to News Corp.
and it further defends recently resigned CEO and Publisher Les Hinton, arguing that he returned the paper to profitability and citing a larger "news hole," and more foreign and weekend coverage, plus expansion of its digital offerings.
The editorial also attacks the foreign bribery laws in the U.S., arguing that Attorney General Eric Holder is racing to see if the law has been violated in response to media colleagues and "the political mob" who are "....braying for politicians to take down Mr. Murdoch and News Corp."
With the executive leadership of News Corp either in court, out of work, or about to testify before Parliamentary committees, one wonders if the WSJ's piece was written as part of a corporate plan or simply drafted in a moment of high dudgeon by the paper's editorial board which has been particularly famous since the Murdoch takeover for its heated defenses of conservative positions on everything from Wall Street reform to environmental and consumer regulation and...of course...foreign bribery laws.
Read the whole thing....it even dredges up defenses of Robert Novak and Scooter Libby in the process....a true WSJ editorial work of art.