Thursday, Aug. 2, 2007 | 7:56 a.m.
For more than a century the Bancroft family has owned The Wall Street Journal, which has been one of the nation's most respected newspapers. The family, however, is getting out of the business, making what some would argue is a deal with the devil.
Australian tabloid magnate Rupert Murdoch has agreed to buy Dow Jones & Co., the newspaper's parent company, for $5 billion. The deal was approved by Dow Jones' board of directors and the Bancroft family, which owns the controlling interest of stock.
The Journal has a well-deserved reputation as one of the elite newspapers in the country, and many fear that Murdoch, best known in America as the owner of the New York Post and Fox TV, will turn the newspaper into something like Fox News' right-wing propaganda machine. Acquiring the Journal also will bring credibility to the planned Fox Business Network cable TV channel.
The Bancroft family has been bitterly divided, with one member calling the sale a "no-brainer" and another saying Murdoch would "ruin everything" the family built.
Leslie Hill, a family member, resigned from her position on the Dow Jones board Tuesday as the deal was finalized. In her resignation letter, she said the deal was good financially, but the money fails to outweigh "the loss of an independent global news organization with unmatched credibility and integrity."
Murdoch has pledged to invest in the Journal, suggesting that he might add more pages and boost other efforts to strengthen the paper's future. Despite his pledge to keep his hands off the Journal's news operation, we share in the well-founded fear that, like the Bancrofts' ownership, the Journal's credibility is history.
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