'WSJ' Reporters in China Warn of Murdoch Takeover

[EV_Ares]

By E&P Staff - Published: May 14, 2007 8:30 PM ET

NEW YORK Seven correspondents in the Wall Street Journal's China bureau has apparently written a letter to four board members at Dow Jones & Co., urging them to stand fast to their decision not to sell to Rupert Murdoch.

Among other things, they wrote that Murdoch "has a well-documented history of making editorial decisions in order to advance his business interests in China and, indeed, of sacrificing journalistic integrity to satisfy personal or political aims."

The letter, written last Thursday, was first posted by Greg Sargent at his blog The Horse's Mouth at the popular Talking Points Memo site (www.talkingpointsmemo.com).

It follows.

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We are correspondents who report from China for The Wall Street Journal, and we are writing to urge you to stand by the Bancroft family's courageous and principled decision to reject News Corp.’s offer to acquire Dow Jones & Co. There are only a handful of news organizations anywhere with the resources and the integrity to pursue the truth in matters of national and even global importance. Thanks to your family’s committed stewardship, the Journal is at the head of this dwindling group.

Our China team won the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting this year for a series of stories detailing the consequences of China‘s unbridled pursuit of capitalism – for China and for the rest of the world. Many of those stories shed an unflattering light on the government and business interests. The prize is a reflection of the Journal’s substantial investment in covering what is perhaps the biggest economic, business and political story of our time: how China‘s embrace of markets and its growing global role are reshaping the world we live in. It is an important example of the coverage that we fear would suffer if News Corp. takes control.

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