Recently, the board of Dow Jones & Co decided to accept Rupert Murdoch's offer to purchase the organization. Murdoch's apparent success in adding this substantial investment to his portfolio has aroused a good deal of concern in newspaper and television commentaries. Critics worry that the media giant will be expanding his already extraordinary influence over the world's news and entertainment businesses. They note, too, that control over Dow Jones will enable Murdoch to affect the Wall Street Journal's reports and editorials (WSJ is a division of Dow Jones). Murdoch has a reputation for interfering in the activities of his news companies, a practice that irritates the advocates of independent-minded Journal ism. Those critics warn that the Australian-born mogul is likely to make the Journal into a right-wing organ, much as he did with the Fox News Channel and his other media properties.

How Rupert Murdoch deals with staff at the Wall Street Journal remains to be seen, but he need not change the newspaper radically to bring its editorial policy in line with his personal views. The current WSJ cannot be characterized as a paragon of objective and balanced journalism. Its news reporting is impressive, but it practices a sharply partisan editorial approach. For years, the Journal's editorial writers have been stridently ideological in registering their opinions about U.S. domestic and foreign policies. During the years of George W. Bush's presidency, those editors have remained enthusiastically supportive of the administration's attempts to remove regulations on corporations. The editors have generally promoted a libertarian-style philosophy that casts doubt on most government-led reform programs. WSJ editors have opposed efforts to adopt stronger rules for campaign financing. The Journal's opinion writers rejected attempts to increase the minimum wage substantially and to create a publicly-based national health care system that extends benefits to the entire American population. Rupert Murdoch was probably quite pleased with these and other editorials when he encountered them as a reader rather than as boss at the Journal .

One of the best recent examples of the Journal's Murdoch-like approach to politics can be seen in its editorial positions on the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Although the Journal's editorials have recently expressed worry about America's growing troubles in Iraq, that attitude was not on display during the weeks immediately preceding the March 19, 2003 invasion. Commentaries in the Journal before the invasion resembled the language employed at that time by hosts and pundits who appeared on Murdoch's Fox News Channel.

Contributors to the Wall Street Journal beat the drums for war consistently during that period and gave virtually no space for voices opposed to war. A reader of its editorial pages during the first eighteen days in March 2003 would have difficulty understanding what the opposition to war was all about. The Journal's editorials and op-ed articles blasted opponents of armed conflict, suggesting that critics of military action were failing to support the nation and the president in a time of crisis. Editors joked about Democrats, saying that Nancy Pelosi's critique of Bush's policy "could have been written in Paris." WSJ editors charged that Senator Tom Daschle wanted to provide the "right of French first refusal." The editors argued with confidence that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and represented a serious threat to world peace. The United States was going to war for purposes of "self-defense," they told readers. "Saddam poses a clear and present danger for Americans." WSJ editors also maintained that the Iraqi dictator harbored al-Qaeda members in his country. Saddam Hussein had links to Osama bin Laden, they asserted.

Most op-ed contributors to the Journal during those eighteen days in March before the outbreak of war demanded military intervention. They did not treat war as a moot question, and they did not appear troubled by unforeseen complications that could result from U.S. occupation. The task ahead seemed obvious. The United States should fight Iraq immediately and remove Saddam from power. Oriana Fallaci, a controversial Italian journalist known for damning critiques of Islam, invoked an analogy from history, arguing that the Iraqis would greet U.S. military action with glee. Fallaci pointed out that the Italians hanged their evil dictator, Benito Mussolini, once Allied troops gained control of Italy near the end of World War II. Saddam Hussein could meet the same fate at the hands of angry Iraqis once an American-led coalition arrived. Winston S. Churchill, grandson of the famous British wartime leader, called for courage to act against "this monster once and for all." Churchill claimed there was a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq and warned that Saddam Hussein "possesses" an arsenal of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henniger saw connections to al-Qaeda, too. He said George W. Bush needed to "stick Saddam Hussein in a hole," before more U.S. citizens died from 9/11-type tragedies involving suicide bombings, anthrax, or other horrible attacks.

Only two WSJ op-ed columnists did not provide full-throated calls for war in the eighteen days before the fighting began, yet their arguments did not suggest fully committed resistance to war either. Kofi A. Annan, the Secretary General of the United Nations, made a vague appeal for wise decision-making in a time of crisis in his op-ed, and Albert R. Hunt, who identified himself as an "anti-Saddam hawk," expressed concern that the U.S. might enter a "minefield" in Iraq if it did not establish a clear exit strategy and obtain promises from other nations to share the burden of stabilizing Iraq. These two essayists provided the only meager examples of contrary opinion that the Wall Street Journal offered in its editorial pages. The thrust of opinion was overwhelmingly hawkish and clearly in the spirit of commentary television viewers heard at the time when watching Murdoch's Fox News Channel.

Rupert Murdoch may press his views at the WSJ once the business deal is completed, yet he is unlikely to create a political revolution in the newspaper's editorial offices. The Journal's opinion writers have been in his camp for years.

Related Links

Jim Sleeper: Murdoch’s Apologists on Parade

Alastair Campbell: Don’t Be Afraid of Rupert Murdoch

Steve Coll: Read All About It (New Yorker)