Murdoch's politics worry Wall St Journal employees

NEW YORK (Reuters) - News Corp.'s $5 billion bid for Dow Jones & Co. sparked fears among Wall Street Journal reporters on Tuesday that the staid bastion of business journalism could take a more political tone under the ownership of media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

Murdoch's international media empire includes papers such as the New York Post and the Fox network, which boast a large audience attracted to their politically conservative stances as well as their often racy stories.

The Bancroft family, which controls Dow Jones, has "repeatedly rejected lucrative offers in order to maintain that independence," said E.S. Browning, a 28-year Journal reporter and member of the union that represents Journal employees.

"When you take away the independence and make it part of a large media empire, especially a media empire that historically has not pursued the same kind of independence and quality as its primary objective, you just do irreparable damage to this institution," Browning said.

Journal employees are wondering whether "the very pungent views of the Journal's editorial board would somehow waft over into the news pages," said a reporter who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak for the paper.

The Journal's editorial page staff is considered to be conservative, but its news pages eschew political leanings when reporting on business and politics.

"It's got conservative editorial writers and straight-down-the-middle trustworthy reporters," said Philip Meyer, a University of North Carolina journalism professor and author of the book "The Vanishing Newspaper."

Other Journal reporters worry that News Corp. would not preserve what they see as the paper's standards for high journalistic quality.

"There's definitely consternation in the newsroom," said another reporter who also requested anonymity. "Murdoch just sort of has a track record of not necessarily inspiring the highest-quality journalism."

The reporter cautioned against immediately concluding that Murdoch would use the Journal as a political pulpit.

"He owns so many properties. They don't all march in lockstep," he said, adding that Fox runs the conservative news commentary program "The O'Reilly Factor" as well as the long-running and irreverent cartoon series "The Simpsons."

Murdoch, 74, said in an interview with Fox News Channel's Neil Cavuto that News Corp. would uphold the Journal's editorial traditions if it bought Dow Jones.

"We are the sort of people with the same traditions that I think would prove great guardians for the paper," he said.

Other observers said Journal employees should worry more about cost-cutting that Murdoch might instill at the paper, as News Corp. runs a very tight ship.

"The price he's paying is going to put enormous pressure on the company to reduce its costs and operate at a far higher profit margin to rationalize this incredible price that he's paying," said Alex S. Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics & Public Policy at Harvard.

Fears that the Journal would take on a more tabloid newspaper-style format under News Corp. are less well-founded, said Jones, a former media reporter at The New York Times.

"I don't think he would turn it into the New York Post, but I think he would turn it into something very different than what it is," he said. "A lot of high-quality journalists would end up biting the dust."