Quote:
Originally Posted by PatNY
In case this has not yet been noted in this thread, The Wall Street Journal is the sister company of HarperCollins, one of the publisher defendants who conspired with Apple. The two companies are both owned by the News Corporation, who has been closely and directly linked to the shenanigans of the defendants. Steve Jobs once sent an email to James Murdoch of the News Corporation pleading for him to get HarperCollinns to “Throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream e-books market at $12.99 and $14.99.” This is as about as “horizontal” as it can get when it comes to price fixing, and solid evidence such as this is why I think Cote’s judgment will in all likelihood stand unscathed. . . . But back to the WSJ -- Given their relationship to some entities in the case, one can't really expect them to be objective at all.
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I don't believe that a conflict of interests alone resulted in
WSJ journalists spinning the Apple/HC story. The
WSJ's views on antitrust cases
always tend to skew in corporations' favor. They haven't been especially objective in their opinion pieces about climate change either.
I point this out not to say you're wrong about apparent bias but because I wouldn't assume that
any news publication with similar conflicts of interest would be unreliable as a matter of course.
I
do think it's possible for the editors of a publication to strive to cover the news fairly despite the interests of the parent company. I think it's important to allow for that
possibility.
I just haven't seen evidence that the ideal of fairness matters to the
WSJ. They publish useful information on investments and the stock market, but their reporters aren't winning prizes for principled tenacity w/r/t covering backroom corporate conspiracies (not the ones I've read, at least).