This conference is a Wall Street Journal event, so the specter of Rupert Murdoch’s buyout hovered over everything — like the Eye of Sauron turning its gaze upon, well, not exactly a settlement of happy hobbits, but, let’s just say, a crowd of sheltered journalists. (As a Journal reader, I’d hate to see the paper’s quality decline, but then again, as I’ve said, it’s only fitting that market forces should be threatening this champion of free markets.) Pushing this analogy to an extreme would cast NewsCorp president Peter Chernin, who spoke here and defended Murdoch’s bid, as the Mouth of Sauron.
Here is what Chernin had to say when quizzed about Murdoch’s plans for the Journal by Kara Swisher, who — like the rest of the WSJ journalists at the event — would work for him should the deal be consummated: “The notion that we want to buy one of the great trophies, a genuine public trust — the notion that we want to buy that to change it is completely counterintuitive. We made an offer at a significant premium. We believe it is the premier source of news and information on a specific aspect of this society.”
But what else was he going to say? “We intend to rape and pillage?” Assurances like these are pro forma.
“News Corp. is mischaracterized,” Chernin declared. “This is a very broad church.” Indeed; any media empire that can embrace moralistic right-wing politics and least-common-denominator popular entertainment has to be broad.
It wasn’t surprising that Mossberg and Swisher would be direct in confronting a News Corp. interviewee with tough questions about the deal: It’s still an open question whether Murdoch will win his bid, and everyone here had the same questions in mind. But, if Murdoch gets the Journal, is it likely that, a year from now, at the next D conference, we’ll be watching News Corp. execs get grilled on stage?
[tags]d5, d conference, wall street journal, peter chernin, rupert murdoch, news corporation[/tags]
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