Murdoch, the Wall Street Journal, and Lessons from the New York Post
New York has seen it all before: as Rupert Murdoch stalks a venerable newspaper, he reassures everyone that he will preserve the publication's traditions. But he didn't keep that promise when he bought the New York Post thirty years ago and there's no reason to believe him today as he covets the Dow Jones Co. and its Wall Street Journal.
In 1976, when Murdoch set his eye on the Post, it was known for its sensational headlines and liberal politics. The Post was then owned by Dorothy Schiff, who financially supported her husband's purchase of the Post in 1939 and soon gained control of the paper. Under Schiff's ownership the Post exposed Senator Joseph McCarthy's smear tactics, uncovered the secret fund that then-Vice President Richard Nixon defended in his "Checkers" speech, and published Murray Kempton's columns on the heroism of the civil rights movement.
By the time Murdoch came calling the Post was a tired version of its old self, with fewer tough investigations and a diminished roster of columnists. Still, the importance of its identity was acknowledged by both seller and buyer.
In a Post story of November 20, 1976 announcing the agreement to sell the paper, Schiff was quoted saying that "Rupert Murdoch is man of strong commitment to the spirit of independent, progressive journalism. I am confident he will carry on vigorously in the tradition I value so deeply." In the next paragraph, Murdoch cooed in response: "The Post will continue to serve New York and New Yorkers and maintain its present policies and traditions."
The promise wasn't even good for a year. In 1977, Murdoch's first year as owner of the Post, the paper covered the murdering gunman "Son of Sam" and the traumatic blackout looting of July 13. The occasionally thin reporting and often lurid headlines recalled the weakest sides of Schiff's old Post, but the big change was yet to come.
In the Post's coverage of the 1977 mayoral race, Murdoch showed his eagerness to turn the paper into his political instrument. His endorsement of Ed Koch, who took New York Democrats in more conservative directions, was announced with a front-page editorial. Favorable treatment of Koch in news stories followed.
Fifty out of sixty reporters at the paper signed a petition protesting what they called "slanted" coverage of the election. At the same time, columnist Robert Lipsyte quit the Post, saying that he had been blocked from expressing opinions contrary to the policies of the paper. Murdoch responded by saying that Lipsyte's column had "nothing compelling." As for the reporters who signed the petition, Murdoch said they were free to work elsewhere.
Under Murdoch's ownership, the Post became a politically conservative tabloid. It is not a moneymaker for him, but gives him an opening into the New York media market and a platform for his conservative views.
Of course, there are plenty of Post readers who enjoy its sports pages, gossip and media news without subscribing to its political perspective. But your reaction to its news and editorial pages depends largely on your politics. New Yorkers who found a voice in Schiff's liberal Post just don't have one in Murdoch's Post.
The Wall Street Journal's editorial page is already close to Murdoch's views in ways that the old Post never was. But the news side of the Journal has a history of independence that might well be compromised under Murdoch. To expect anything different from him is to ignore his history at the New York Post.
Comments (9)
Okay, so the Post went from a liberal slant to a conservative one. It was still and is still a tabloid.
The WSJ is, off the op-ed pages, a far more serious endeavour than the post ever was and it is still mostly bought by people who need to knowledge about business and the financial markets. That stuff is more measurable than political knowledge. Murdoch would simply not be able to slant the WSJ's business coverage if that slant leads traders astray. There's a reason why people in the know read the WSJ instead of Investor's Business Daily.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
May 17, 2007 12:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Okay, so the Post went from a liberal slant to a conservative one. It was still and is still a tabloid." Destor's missing the guest's point here. It's relevant in showing how ruthlessly Murdoch will manipulate the medium, for partisan or personal ends. If the WSJ is more serious, surely the danger is that much more pertinent to raise. Not that the tabloids don't influence people and weren't a reasonable way to assist Koch if one wished to.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
May 17, 2007 1:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
The New York Post was my family's afternoon newspaper when I was growing up. Not only did it have a liberal editorial bias and excellent columnists but you could trust the news pages. This despite its tabloid nature it was never quite like the New York Daily News.
The Murdoch took over. It would be an insult to canaries to line their cages with the Post. There is no real distinction between the Post's editorial pages and it's news pages. This be tolerable in a city with three major dailies and access to two more.
The Wall Street Journal's new pages can be trusted to be news and not editorials disguised as news. It would be shame if that was to end.
Daniel A. Greenbaum
May 17, 2007 2:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Points taken by both of you. I guess I just think that Murdoch can't do the same to the WSJ without financially hurting the asset he bought.
Also, Dow Jones is more than just the journal. I think that limits him. The value in the franchise is the value of the honest financial information it reports and distributes.
I go back to my Investor's Business Daily example -- that paper is the Washington Times of financial journalism... and it's not worth near as much as Dow Jones.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
May 17, 2007 7:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
If I had a WayBack machine, I’d grab Sherman and a case of Trojans and set the dial for the early sixties to visit the great newspaper families! Why you ask? Because I am evolving a theory that the decline of these families is owed in large part to birth control. Had the Taylors, Chandlers and Bancrofts had fewer children, like the Sulzbergers, then they would still be at the helm of their newspapers. But alas, they couldn’t help themselves so that the future generation demanded their share of the enterprise in cash which could not resist the media consolidation trend.
How likely would the Wall Street houses have been to structure huge M&A’s had the families shown no interest in being acquired? How many stock poison pills would have remained intact and effective had there not been internal pressure from the hundreds of cousins to take the money and run?
Sure we’ve seen a lot of noise from institutional investors to change the Time’s stock structure so that they can better influence the company, but that ain’t going to happen while there is a Sulzberger with a pulse, and too few heirs. The media binge was the result of an idea that with the web and a thousand new television channels, content would be king. When the markets grew weary of the catastrophic media mergers (AOL-TimeWarner, anyone?) and stock prices of media companies started to plummet, the institutional investors resorted to pressuring the boards to fix their companies cosmetically (cost cutting and ridiculous “partnership” deals), solely for the purpose of improving stock prices so they could dump it. When their was firm family control, like the Sulzbergers, this was resisted (to a point). Where ownership was over-diluted, like the Tribune Company and Knight-Ridder (RIP), the companies had to fold their cards and obey their masters.
I’d consider going further back in the WayBack to stop newspapers from going public, but I think the case of prophylactics is more realistic.
As for Rupert, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me a couple hundred times, and, well…you get the gist. The canard that the London Times never felt his direct influence ignores the unique position that WSJ has on financial markets—the same markets that Rupert and his prodigy manipulate to grow NewsCorp. The fox wants to guard the chicken coop, but don’t think for a minute that this chicken coop is just another newspaper. This coop is where we keep the goose that lays the golden eggs.
May 18, 2007 6:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
I've been trying not to admit that I'm old enough to recall and admire James Wechsler's [spelling?] work with the Post, although I was just a kid growing up in the city. But if Dan is willing to point it out, I guess I am, too!
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
May 18, 2007 8:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
So pleased to see you posting here! Please consider contributing regularly if you haven't already. Professor Gitlin regularly posts on current political media coverage issues, but there are a lot of people frequenting this website who also enjoy a broader historic perspective on, well, nearly any topic--it's something that's lacking at TPM Cafe lately--the very current news and politics of the day has taken over more and more--but broader historic and cultural topics have been quite popular in the "peanut gallery" in the past and have elicited lots of interesting commentary when anyone takes an issue in that direction. I'm betting your expertise in media history would be quite well received, but also some of your thoughts on popular cultural history would be of equal interest, if not moreso.
May 18, 2007 10:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with Artappraiser, readers and bloggers of TPM would greatly benefit from hearing your historical perspective on the news media. Having nearly 20 years experience working for mid-sized newspapers in the West (one was owned by Capital Cities/ABC in the 1990s), I've seen how a revenue-hungry corporation can destroy the professional integrity and moral compass of a community newspaper, turning it into a bully pulpit (or worse, prostitute) for a small cadre of affluent business owners.
I've also seen how little the average reader knows about the inner workings of a newspaper. At the last newspaper I worked, a majority of the readership had moved from the Bay Area to a small community in the foothills and were expecting the same quality of writing and quantity of news hole from a newspaper that had one-tenth the revenue of the Chronicle or Examiner. After months of letters and phone calls from readers complaining, I suggested to my managing editor (who recently came from Chicago) that he write a column about what goes on inside the newsroom -- warts and all. The readers loved it ... and the letters and phone calls shifted to what we wanted to hear about -- what was happening in the community and local government. We would still get complaints about not having enough national news coverage, but all we had to do was remind them they had OTHER news sources for that information.
People look for their local newspaper to be their voice, both in praise and in complaint. The publisher of that newspaper in the Sierra foothills was promoted up from the editorial department. He would often walk into our daily news meeting or stroll through the editorial department to compliment us individually on what we were doing RIGHT for the community or share a rumor he'd heard at the local Rotary meeting. As for the cadre of businesses that tried to wag the dog, he knew how to give them what they wanted without compromising his professional ethics as a journalist.
I left that newspaper during my son's first deployment in Iraq. As its copy desk chief, it was my job to ensure the newspaper was perfect before sending it onto the press; anyone who's worked in a newsroom knows what a pressure-cooker job that is. It was also my job to monitor all the Associated Press wire news -- the war news. The anxiety of worrying about my son distracted me from doing my job well. And because it was such a small newspaper, my editor said there wasn't another position he could place me while my son was deployed, so I decided to leave for the good of the newspaper.
I still keep in touch with a few people there and I was saddened to hear that the newspaper was struggling financially and forced to layoff some of its staff. Far too many of our small community newspapers are suffering the same fate. I wish readers would see their local newspaper as necessary as the water from their taps and the police officer on the street, because the local newspaper slakes our thirst for connection to the community and comes to our aid in times of trouble.
But, unfortunately, even local newspapers are now lumped together in that amalgamation we refer to as The Media and percieved as another megalithic and heartless corporation to hold in contempt. Guilty by association, I'm afraid.
I've worked for a couple of the best and worst newspapers; and there are times when I miss being in the newsroom, next to the heart of the community. Nowadays, when I want to know what's going on in the world, I turn to the Internet -- the last "free" source of information. And I want to keep it that way.
Think globally while surfing the Internet and act locally by supporting your local newspapers.
Debra Morgan Pardee
"The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them." -- George Bernard Shaw
May 19, 2007 11:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Throughout the 90s, the New York Post under Murdoch, then a board member of Philip Morris, refused to post any news about the health effects of tobacco.
Correction: I did see 2 articles-- on the health _benefits_ of tobacco.
May 22, 2007 1:23 PM | Reply | Permalink