WSJ Integrity Under Mudoch, Hahahaha-oops

On April 22 Marcus Brauchli "resigned" as Editor of the WSJ, apparently under "pressure." The five member committee established at the time of the Fox purchase to ensure the journalistic integrity of the WSJ was not informed. The committee was unhappy, as the WSJ themselves reports:

The committee said it relayed its concerns to officials at News Corp., which in December acquired Dow Jones, publisher of the Journal. The officials pledged to keep the committee "thoroughly informed" during the search for Mr. Brauchli's successor, the committee said.

So they're a tad upset?

In its chronology, the committee said it "has not been made aware of any issues of editorial independence or integrity either before or since" the April 22 meeting. The committee said it later met "and decided that there was no practical way to 'unresign' Brauchli and start the process over."

You will pardon me if I also reflect the view of one of the Bancroft family

"I expected this paper to be transformed in the way Mr. Murdoch wants it to be, and it will be, regardless of all the window dressing," said Christopher Bancroft, who opposed the News Corp. deal.

If you think Faux News takes this seriously,

Under the terms of the agreement, the Journal's managing editor has "authority over all news decisions," including "news coverage, length, placement and accompanying art" of stories. A Dow Jones spokesman said, "There is absolutely no suggestion from the special committee that the integrity of the Journal's reporting or of its reporters has been compromised in any way whatsoever."

The same kind of deal was reached when the London Times was sold to Murdoch and the upshot was predictable.

The London committee was supposed to have approval over the hiring and firing of the top editors, according to the newspapers' articles of association. But a year after buying the paper, Mr. Murdoch forced out the Times's editor, Harold Evans, igniting a controversy within media circles.

Whatever could the problem have been?

In recent months, Mr. Brauchli had pushed Journal editors for stories to be shorter and get to the point more quickly. At times, he portrayed this as his own initiative; at other times he said these were instructions from the new owners.

Since the News Corp. takeover, the paper has begun publishing more general-interest and political news, including on the front page, and added more news pages. But Rupert Murdoch, News Corp.'s chairman, was impatient with the pace of change, according to people close to the situation.

I'd guess this paper just wasn't getting trashy enough quickly enough. You can soon expect the boring stodgy accurate journalism of the WSJ to be replaced by its Editorial quality content and be no more than a distant memory. In the interests of accuracy, all block quotes are taken directly from WSJ's own reporting and I'd be willing to bet as favorable to itself as possible.

So who exactly is supposed to be the fan base for the Faux Business Channel? Nobody I've ever heard of - and yes - it is billed as a business channel, and generates tons of......derision. Welcome to Faux News Corp WSJ, if you want to keep your jobs you better learn to suck badly quickly.