The Wall Street Journal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
News Corp.
On May 2, 2007, News Corp. made an unsolicited takeover bid for Dow Jones, offering US$60 a share for stock that had been selling for US$33 a share. The Bancroft family, which controlled more than 60% of the voting stock, at first rejected the offer, but later reconsidered its position.[21]
Three months later, on August 1, 2007, News Corp. and Dow Jones entered into a definitive merger agreement.[22] The US$5 billion sale added The Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch's news empire, which already included Fox News Channel, financial network unit and London's The Times, and locally within New York, the New York Post, along with Fox flagship station WNYW (Channel 5) and MyNetworkTV flagship WWOR (Channel 9).[23]
On December 13, 2007, shareholders representing more than 60 percent of Dow Jones's voting stock approved the company's acquisition by News Corp.[24]
In an editorial page column, publisher L. Gordon Crovitz said the Bancrofts and News Corp. had agreed that the Journal's news and opinion sections would preserve their editorial independence from their new corporate parent:[25]
“
Mr. Murdoch told the Bancrofts that 'any interference – or even hint of interference – would break the trust that exists between the paper and its readers, something I am unwilling to countenance.' ... Mr. Murdoch and the Bancrofts agreed on standards modeled on the longstanding Dow Jones Code of Conduct.
”
A special committee was established to oversee The Journal's editorial integrity. When the managing editor Marcus Brauchli resigned on April 22, 2008, the committee claimed the resignation was under pressure, and that News Corporation had violated its agreement by not notifying the committee earlier.[26] Brauchli said that he thought it was reasonable that new owners would appoint their own editor.
A June 5 Journal news story quoted charges that Murdoch had made and broken similar promises in the past. One large shareholder commented that Murdoch has long "expressed his personal, political and business biases through his newspapers and television stations." Journalist Fred Emery, formerly of the British newspaper The Times, recounted an incident when Murdoch was reminded of his own earlier promises not to fire The Times' editors without independent directors' approval and allegedly responded, "God, you don't take all that seriously, do you?"[
