Wall Street Journal Reporters Stage "Walk-Out"

Source: Newspaper Guild Press Release

WSJ reporters “across the country chose not to show up to work this morning” to protest the potential sale of Dow Jones to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. The paper’s “long tradition of independence…is threatened today,” a press release states.

Newspaper Guild release

June 28, 2007 11:00 A.M.

A statement from Wall Street Journal reporters:

Wall Street Journal reporters across the country chose not to show up to work this morning.

We did so for two reasons.

First, The Wall Street Journal's long tradition of independence, which has been the hallmark of our news coverage for decades, is threatened today. We, along with hundreds of other Dow Jones employees represented by the Independent Association of Publishers' Employees, want to demonstrate our conviction that the Journal’s editorial integrity depends on an owner committed to journalistic independence.

Second, by our absence from newsrooms around the country, we are reminding Dow Jones management that the quality of its publications depends on a top-quality professional staff. Dow Jones currently is in contract negotiations with its primary union, seeking severe cutbacks in our health benefits and limits on our pay. It is beyond debate that the professionals who create The Wall Street Journal and other Dow Jones publications every day deserve a fair contract that rewards their achievements. At a time when Dow Jones is finding the resources to award golden parachutes to 135 top executives, it should not be seeking to eviscerate employees’ health benefits and impose salary adjustments that amount to a pay cut.

We put the reputation of The Wall Street Journal and the needs of its readers first. That's why we will be back at our desks this afternoon, producing the day's news reports. But we hope this demonstration will remind those entrusted with the future of Dow Jones that our publications' integrity must be protected, and sustained, from top to bottom.

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/06/28/wall-street-journal-reporters-stage-walk-out


Read more: http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=12696

From the corporate sector.

Wonder if all the anti-boycott people will show up.

I don't think they are going to find very many people in sympathy with their position.

They preached the supremacy of the corporation for years now they're whining because the corporation that employs them acts against their interest.

WTF did they think was gonna happen?

the bottom lines of all these M$M whores are suffering, because they've forced consumers to go elsewhere for real information.

i like that they're snubbing their noses at murdoch... but they have no one to blame for the sagging fortunes of the M$M but themselves.

have discovered that they don't like chickens

It's their editorial division which is on crack. Since these are reporters, it sounds like they fear Murdoch will now force their news coverage to also be slanted. I hope they win out, News Corp. is a terrible company and I don't know how they keep buying media outlets when they were already violating regulations for the number of outlets owned the last time I checked.

Sorry, but the issue with the Wall Street Journal is the independence of its journalists and editors. The editorial page is a conservative mouthpiece, but the articles are written by reporters who have never been afraid to report the facts. This non-interference is at risk under Murdoch's ownership unless control over the paper's editorial staff is seated with an independent board. That is what the Bancroft family is demanding. Yes, the family wants to sell because the price being offered by Murdoch is insanely high. But the Bancrofts belong to a tradition that puts journalistic independence at the core of their operation. Their editorials are waaaaaay out there, but the news pages are off limits. That's what the fight is about. Unless Murdoch guarantees that he won't turn the news columns into Faux News for Busy Bankers, he won't get the Journal.

The news staff of The Wall Street Journal are some
of the finest reporters and editors on the planet.

The folks who write the RandO* page, on the other hand,
are moonbats entirely divorced from the real world (and
yes, at the WSJ, they live in a completely separate area
of the building) and the news staff makes jokes about them.

There's no doubt that:

o Murdoch is completely culturally-compatible with
the RandO loonies.

o He is equally incompatible with the news staff.

Tesha

* Review and Outlook, the editorial and "op-ed" pages.

It is an interesting situation though. They have facilitated the pro-corporate status-quo as it has grown redder in tooth and claw. Now it is going after its own hired help, which shows that nobody is really safe, who draws a pay packet.

Even though they are doing the right thing, because they are doing it long after we told them to, we aren't going to support the principle?

I for one will welcome them to the fight. I hope their union can use the proposed acquisition as leverage for the employees, and I hope the journalists have learned a lesson, although I'm not quite sure what that lesson would be, or if it would be the same for everyone. Maybe Rupert will bail, or maybe they can create some firewalls to try to protect some integrity.

Corporations don't automatically have to be bad.
There is really nothing wrong with trying to make them better.
We aren't going to turn socialist overnight and we probably wouldn't even want that anyway.

Are the envy of every media worker, with a clue, whose company has been part of a consolidation move in the last 20 years.

The editorial policy of the paper and the reporters. The WSJ has some great reporters. Yes it is mainstream but some very good reporting comes from there. Remember Daniel Pearl?

Come on......they are trying to make a point about Fox taking over. Give them a break.

The editorial policy is absolutely the Dark Ages, but has nothing to do with the reporters.

page. The WSJ news pages are actually worth reading--far more informative and in-depth than most corporate news. They seem to me to have high journalistic standards--well-written, intelligent, seek out many sources, try for balance on controversial issues--and if the eds or owners sometimes mess with the headlines and leads, or with the parameters of coverage, the news article are still more informative than most corporate papers. The editorial page, on the other hand, is foaming-at-mouth fascism--irrational, stupid, kneejerk, you name it. Big contrast.

The WSJ reporters have had a lot of freedom to pursue stories, time to pursue them, good resources, lots of inches in the newspaper columns to fill out details, background and various viewpoints--and the reason, I think, is that the business/investment community MUST HAVE accurate news. Period. You can't run a business and you can't make good investments without accurate information about political/economic/social trends and events.

The editorials and opinion columns are nuts. Whacko rightwing. But the news section is run differently. And THAT is no doubt what the WSJ reporters are upset about. Murdoch doesn't do news. He does crapola.

The news page crimes of the WSJ--in addition to the crime that is their editorial page--tend to be the same as those of the NYT, WaPo and to some extent the LAT, and have to do with the parameters of the news, headlines/leads, and sometimes focus. All the major papers were downright traitorous to this country on the leadup to the Iraq War, with the NYT at the head of the pack (worse than the WSJ) on publishing outright lies. WaPo has been worse than the WSJ on the Bush Junta in general. And the LAT has been generally better than all three, on the war and the Junta. They're all horrible on the issue of Hugo Chavez and Venezuela (prep for the oligarchy's next theater of war). But I would not rank the WSJ as particularly bad, as war profiteering corporate news monopolies go. The WSJ has the starkest difference between news and ed/opinion.

You have made me think twice and do an about-face (okay, enough cliches for now)... ;)

:toast:

I was going to make the same point until I saw your post.

Bravo.

to the "psycho" editorials.

A lot of people wouldn't end up reading the "psycho" editorials if it wasn't for the excellent reporting done by the reporters.

So it's not like it's benign.


The best thing would be for the reporters to be hired by a reasonable news organization and for people to see the WSJ as the "psycho" (actually pro-greed, anti-human-rights and obnoxious) organization that it is.

Wall Street Journal reporters are excellent. One of its medical / science writers is amazingly forthcoming about the
problems of corruption of science and drug development for example.

It's important that we not lump everyone together with whore media types, although the WSJ does have some like that.

What's interesting too is here at this journal that writes about corporate activities, we see the journalists worrying about
the "....severe cutbacks in our health benefits."

Wonder of Michael Moore could have some fun with that...?

n/t

really give it much play. CNN is quiet. CNBC not a word.

Anyway, I wish they get their demands. With the corporate world being what it is, I expect they will not.

or party with Paris Hilton.

Thanks for the thread Hissyspit.

:applause:

They're members of a union, but they're working for one of the most virulently anti-union publications in the country. You lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas. What the F* are they afraid of? That Rupert Murdoch will stifle to progressive voice of the Wall Street Journal? A pox on the lot of them.

Read the posts above. You'll learn that there's an iron wall between the editorial page loonies and the journalists who write for the rest of the newspaper.

The WSJ is one of the best newspapers in the world. It covers more stories than any other, maybe 2 or 3 times as many as the NYT.

And it is independent and objective as hell. You'll find more stories critical of this administration in the pages of the WSJ than anywhere else. Back in the day when Bush had everyone in the MSM bamboozled, the WSJ was one of the few journalistic voices of reason in the country.

Some of the smartest and most intellectually honest people I know are WSJ reporters.

Thanks for helping to set the record straight. Only those who have never read the Journal would blame the reporters for the tone and content if its editorials.

are seldom the problem. It's the owners advertiser & editors that squash the stories & suppress the truth.

And when you take a paycheck from the Wall Street Journal, you know you're working for the devil.

Jeff, with all due respect, for you to refer to reporters of the Wall Street Journal as servants of "the devil", I think some perspective is in order. WSJ will never be "The Nation". But it has been one of the best newspapers at reporting facts and issues and letting the chips fall where they may. Their paychecks don't come from "the devil" because there is no devil. It's a discussion about what sort of paper it will be going forward, because it will go on. The reporters and unions simply want recognition that Rupert Murdoch's judgement must not determine who makes news decisions.

One would have to be severely deluded if one believed that even the "objective" reporting of the WSJ was not first filtered through the lens of corporate domination. Would WSJ be a worse newspaper? I don't know, but it would be a more honest newspaper and not dilute its repressive political views with just enough "objective" news to mislead the weak-minded.

I was focused on one story, the Plame leak case. Of all of the reporting out there, from Time magazine to The Nation to the LA Times, one publication stood head and shoulders above the rest on reporting facts and investigation of leads. The Wall Street Journal had more NAMED sources, more in-depth analysis, and less inflamatory descriptors than any other group by a WIDE, WIDE margin. (Their editorial staff would often "report" exactly the opposite findings, often in the same issue)

Murdoch knows that in order to facilitate his right-wing takeover of media, he has to kill off the factfinders. Target number one is the Journal, the best mainstream factfinders in America. It is likely that the benefit cuts the Journal staff face are all part of the general trend among the monied few to compete with Murdoch's empire in a sad race to the bottom. Sadder still, it seems all-too possible that Murdoch will end up owning the Journal anyway, whether the workers there concede to cuts or not.

I don't know what we can do to stop this, but a good place to start would be emphasizing to our presidential candidates that getting in bed with Rupe Murdoch is the kiss of death for a nomination bid.

Are you listening, Hillary?

This of course plays well for Murdoch as he will be more than agreeable to replacing any and all current staff with lower paid hacks. Too bad for them, but I guess this is just the free market. Or, how about what's good for the goose is good for the gander; or every dog has its day.