Monday, February 14, 2005

Wall Street Journal

I really like the work that Stephen Green does over at Vodkapundit. However, in a post yesterday (2/13) entitled Burying the Lede (http://vodkapundit.com/), he makes a comment that needs to be addressed. He agrees with the editorial page editors of the Wall Street Journal that Eason Jordan's comments were simply not that big a deal. Neither they, nor Stephen, address the long history of Jordan making similar incendiary slanders, so I think they are wrong on this. But what I want to address is Green's point:

"So I find myself agreeing with the editors who wrote the piece I quoted above. Editors, I might add, who work for that left-wing rag, The Wall Street Journal."

The Wall Street Journal IS a left-wing rag. Except for the opinion pages which have a completely separate staff of writers and editors. Now the piece in question to which Green refers is one from the opinion section (the conservative voice in the paper). And I am sure that Green is aware of the different staffs on the paper.

What amazes me is how many other people out there assume that the Wall Street Journal must be a conservative paper because it writes about business. I've had liberal attorneys make this assumption in argumentative e-mails. As if business people are automatically all conservative (they aren't), so journalists covering business must also be. Of course, many of these folks are the same ones who claim that corporations are incapable of supporting liberal ideology. As if the act of filing papers of incorporation in the state capital renders the mind incapable of liberal thoughts.

Anyone who has read the paper consistently knows that the news pages are every bit as liberal as any other news outlet in the country.

2 Comments:

Blogger Stan said...

I have a lot of work today, so I will post something more substantial as an update tomorrow. The coverage of issues such as social security reform or the jobs stats, for example, have been tilted pretty badly against Bush.

I'll have to track down where, but a number of years ago I read about how the WSJ was deliberately organized to have a conservative opinion page and a liberal news staff. Perhaps I read it around the time that Robert Bartley retired.

Al Hunt, an absolutely reliable voice for whatever talking points are coming out of the DNC in his weekly column (and husband of CNN's Judy Woodruff), was the Washington Bureau chief for the WSJ for years (may still be). Like I said, I know you want more than my recollections, so I need to do some googling to provide links.

10:31 AM, February 15, 2005  
Blogger Stan said...

I have an update on this today, Feb 28.

12:58 PM, February 28, 2005  

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