Murdoch's "Precious"

--- Below is my comment on Bill Moyer's Huffington Post Blog Entry "On Murdoch" ---

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-moyers/on-murdoch_b_54361.html

Mr. Moyers, I think you are quite accurate in saying that Murdoch is "all appetite and no taste" in pursuit of his fresh corporate prey. Murdoch's pursuit of the Wall Street Journal has more to do with his ego than his need. That the Bancroft family has been reticent to give him what he wants has only stoked his passions to make the Wall Street Journal his possession. It's not what the Wall Street Journal "is" that makes Murdoch want it , it's that somebody has had the audacity to say he can't have it.

As far as a Murdoch ownership of the Wall Street Journal is concerned, I've never been a fan of the paper's editorial line and therefore get a certain amount of glee that the Wall Street Journal may become the possession of the tabloid king. I know there are discussions on "fire-walling" the editorial page from Murdoch misuse, but once this Media Don owns the paper he will do with it what he wants, to be sure. Maybe Murdoch does have a practical purpose in acquiring WSJ, in having a sense that ownership of the Wall Street Journal will bring credibility to some of the other media garbage he owns, but in reality the Wall Street Journal, with the change of ownership, will in an instant lose the credibility it has built up over the last 118 years. But Murdoch is probably blind to that fact, and only cares that he will have his "precious" and the Wall Street Journal will join the News Corp playpen.

As an aside, I'm thinking that the sale of the paper will be announced on July 8th, the anniversary of the Wall Street Journal's founding, or maybe July 7th if Murdoch is still on Australian time.

The grave state of American Journalism won't be corrected by the blocking of this sale, but maybe it will expand, by the number of subscribers of the Wall Street Journal, the individuals who believe that there is a problem in the current state of American media ownership that needs to be addressed.