At Least Tierney Didn't Get It

(Not that he had a shot anyway…).

I’m referring of course to the purchase by Rupert Murdoch of the Dow Jones empire, including Barron’s, The Wall Street Journal, and the debt of the parent company (for whatever it’s worth, I already posted on this some time ago here thinking it wouldn’t happen, forgetting of course that Murdoch usually finds a way to get what he wants).

In the May post, I included a recent update with a link to an excellent Daily Kos post featuring an excerpt from an interview Keith Olbermann conducted with Rachel Maddow that I thought was very interesting (here).

I’ve also included this link to a column in today’s Inquirer by journalist Claudia Rosett of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies about Murdoch’s purchase. The column is absolutely startling in that it provides no insight whatsoever into the potential ramifications of the deal and instead contains the typical boilerplate you would expect from Philadelphia’s conservative paper of record (newspapers are profit-driven enterprises with subscribers as consumers and oh-we’ve-progressed-so-far-from-the-early-cut-and-paste-days and misty memories of days gone by, etc.).

Again, how sad that the Inquirer considers this to be acceptable editorial commentary (and why on earth is someone who belongs to a think tank supposedly dedicated to fighting international terrorism writing about the media business anyway?).

And by the way, if anyone has any regrets later, don’t forget that I tried to prevent this (and if anyone thinks that the august publication formerly owned by the Bancroft family will be immune to the treatment the New York Post received here, they should tell me when the spaceship lands).

Update: I'll admit that Edwards is tossing a bone to those nasty, unkempt liberal bloggers such as yours truly here, but he also happens to be right; I wish there had been more of this during the media mergers of the '90s.

Update: Negroponte was "assigned to monitor the WSJ's 'editorial independence'," huh? Typical Murdoch tactic (memorize what Rachel Maddow said in that kos post).