7. Another area of interest is the press commission’s role, why its 2007 inquiry named only Goodman and the investigator Mulcaire, and what role, if any, Hinton played.

A couple of other thoughts.

The Audit made no secret of its opposition to Dow Jones’s sale to News Corp. back in 2007. No one ever doubted the value-creating ability of Rupert Murdoch or his company. But its history of subordinating journalism values to corporate interests and skirting ethical boundaries in the U.S. and in China made it a poor home for the world’s leading watchdog of markets, the economy, and corporate behavior.

Recall, for instance, that back in 2006 two Journal reporters were among those subjected to “pretexting,” the use of misrepresentation to obtain personal records, at the hands of investigators for Hewlett-Packard (1). Now it’s called blagging, and it’s alleged to have been done on a mass scale at the Journal’s parent.

Last year, we worried about the “Anglo-ization” of the Journal. By that we meant only its new owners’ light regard for, or even comprehension of, the paper’s traditional strengths in investigations, depth, and storytelling, particularly in its famous page-one stories, known as “leders.”

We noted the weirdness and duplicity displayed by News Corp. in its firing of former high-flying publisher Judith Regan in 2007.

I can’t help thinking about the old Dow Jones, where I used to work. It was so concerned with propriety that it didn’t even like to take out loans for fear of appearing beholden to banks, as former DJ director Jim Ottaway recalled in a 2007 interview with The Audit.

Now we have a hacking/pretexting scandal that involves possible widespread criminal wrongdoing at papers owned by a major media company, the parent of the world’s leading financial watchdog.

It would make a great leder.

1. “I Spy — A Reporter’s Story: How H-P Kept Tabs On Me for a Year —- Firm’s Search for Leak Led Sleuths to Scope Out Trash, Compile Phone Dossier —- Organizing a Bridal Shower”
By Pui-Wing Tam
Wall Street Journal
19 October 2006

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