Editorials

Rupert Murdoch has bought Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal. May the guardians of good journalism be with us.

Say what you want about the Journal’s sometimes rabidly right-wing and detached-from-reality editorials; this page certainly has. The paper’s reporting is some of the world’s best — factual, in-depth, engaging, critical, questioning, fair and objective.

It is a superior newspaper, one that makes for more responsive government and a better nation. We always have needed that in the past. We’ll also need it in the future.

We do not, however, need another of Murdoch’s one-sided, pseudo-journalistic creations.

Fox News is dangerous because it masquerades as journalism and has the audacity to say it is fair and balanced. Not only does it degrade the quality and credibility of the news, it drags legitimate national television news programs down with it. CNN’s late-night, garbage-studded, one-hour entertainment gallery is the foremost example.

Murdoch’s newspapers also have gone the way of the gutter, serving as ideological Fox News mouthpieces in ink. The Times of London, once the finest paper in the United Kingdom, may serve as Murdoch’s flagship in Europe but it is a fish-wrapper for anyone not down with his vision of the future.

The $5 billion question — Murdoch’s price to play with the Journal — is will the paper continue its good journalism or will the editorial page start dictating the front page? All the world can do is wait and see.

In an odd newspaper coincidence, we also note this sad development: American Media Inc., owner of The Weekly World News, announced last week it would cease publication of the print version of that weekly supermarket tabloid.

That means no more Bat Boy and no more stories about ordinary people being abducted by aliens. Gone are those tantalizing headlines like “Aliens Attempt to Abduct Bigfoot” and “Mother Nature Endorses Gore for President.”

It’ll be a pity not having Bat Boy around to keep us company in the checkout line.

Maybe, though, we’ll be able to go to the front page of the Wall Street Journal and know we are reading news and not commentary.