It's always a danger sign when a business person is widely known by their first name alone. In the case of Rupert Murdoch, like Donald Trump, the significance is his famously hands-on style and the power of his personality. (Note by contrast that the sage of Omaha is not typically known as "Warren.") For Rupert, the news, not just editorials, in his newspapers is what he wants it to be, and not what his editors may think it is; the editors who disagree leave, and are replaced with loyalists who dedicate their careers to being exquisitely in tune with R's sensibility and are inured to translating his opinions slavishly into what is presented as fact.

As far as the Wall Street Journal editorial board is concerned, they probably think R's ownership of the paper cannot matter too much. How could he take their views farther to the right, or more distant from reality? The opinion writers are dubious about Darwin, but not about Social Darwinism; doubtful about competition, but in love with monopoly; disdainful of poverty but enamored of wealth; indifferent to science (especially the science of climate change) but worshipful of capitalism; marvelously ignorant of economics, but crazy for money even when articulated in the abstract form of monetarism.

But even the editorial page writers should be wary of Mr. Murdoch. Their notoriously right-wing views have, to give the devil his due, the mark of independence and ideological fervor. That would be gone. When they might want to assail China for being, ahem, communist or corrupt or closed, if Mr. Murdoch found that he needed landing rights for a satellite business on the mainland or hoped for Beijing's approval to broadcast the 08 Olympics on Fox, the brave Wall St. Journal editorialists would suddenly discover that the ink they intended to use to express their anti-communist views had suddenly dried up -- or they would be looking for new jobs in the free labor market they have long praised.

The news writers of course already know what will happen to them. It happened to the Times of London before them, and at numerous other papers around the world. The WSJ newsmen and newswomen oday are the best in the world at digging into corporations to discover what is really going on -- with Mr.Murdoch as their boss, they would be told to write shorter, which means less thoughtfully and deeply, and to take it easy on his friends. Now, those who are friends cannot count on staying that way; moguls are fickle and, like Britain as to the continent, they have permanent interests rather than permanent allies. So from time to time the new journalism of R's WSJ might be directed at anyone. However, on a quotidian basis a Murdochian Wall St. Journal would be a mirror of his preferences, not an honest report card on business.

One could say that a Murdoch takeove of the Journal might be a great opportunity for the New York Times or even the Financial Times to expand business coverage in the United States. Perhaps there would be an unmet demand for objectivity, since there certainly would be a new shortage of that commodity. The problem is that readers are slow to realize they are being bamboozled. A Murdoch Journal wouldn't announce it was biased, any more than Fox News inserts a "not" in front of "fair and balanced." For quite a long time, perhaps a decade or more, the business community that faithfully reads the Journal today would tend to believe in the accuracy of its reporting, even while the history of all Murdoch operations is that integrity, courage, depth, independence and objectivity are early victims of his takeover of newsrooms.

What is to be done? In the long run the answer is competition in broadband that produces universal connectivity and open access to the cornucopia of the World Wide Web. That's why some friends and I started Frontline, but that's another story and only in passing will I note that Frontline already was lambasted by the Journal editorial page, so that we know for sure it is a pro-competitive idea. In the short run Congress ought to consider the impact of media consolidation on the newspaper business and weigh the virtues of changing the tax law so as to bolster private ownership by the Bancroft's and other families, like the Grahams and Sulzbergers. And everyone in the media business ought to realize that Rupert's acquisition of the Journal would be a fatal car crash between truth and self-interest that can be prevented best by being accurately discussed now, while the drivers of the Journal still have their hands on the wheel.