Wall Street Journal
Two weeks ago, my colleague Julie Moos asked: Whatever happened to the Wall Street Journal editorial integrity committee? (This group was last heard from publicly in April 2008 when they criticized Robert Thomson and Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton for their handling of managing editor Marcus Brauchli’s departure.) The committee members surface in today’s Journal, and seem to want to send a message that they’re doing something for their $100,000/year salaries:
Since its inception, the committee has repeatedly reached out to a broad range of staff and management at Dow Jones. We have reviewed ethics procedures and enforcement standards. We have talked with former employees. We have reviewed the journalistic offerings of the newspaper.
Here’s what the panel thinks about the Journal’s phone-hacking coverage:
The Journal was slower than it should have been at the outset to pursue the phone-hacking scandal story, in our opinion, though it is doing much better now with aggressive coverage, fitting placement in the paper, and unflinching headlines. We agree it could have done a better job with a recent story allowing Mr. Murdoch to get his side of the story on the record without tougher questioning. We have discussed this with the involved editors.
But a pattern of wrongdoing? A culture of journalistic malpractice? Shills for Rupert Murdoch or anybody else? That is not the newsroom we have observed over our four years.
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