Le WSJ marque son territoire

Le WSJ marque son territoire

Le Wall Street Journal (WSJ), fleuron qualitatif des possessions Murdoch aux USA, marque son territoire, – c’est-à-dire qu’il prend de plus en plus ses distances du même Murdoch. On avait déjà signalé cette tendance (le 21 juillet 2011). Un article du Guardian, le 25 juillet 2011, la confirme. L’article analyse la critique que fait le “comité spécial” (comité rédactionnel) du WSJ d’une interview de Rupert par le WSJ, jugée trop peu incisive, et aussi de la couverture du “scandale Murdoch” qu’a fait le WSJ.

Il s’agit, pour le WSJ, d’affirmer son indépendance rédactionnelle vis-à-vis de Murdoch, au moment où le groupe Murdoch est en pleine crise. Le WSJ préfère manifestement sa réputation à la stricte conformation à la “ligne Murdoch”. C’est une tendance parmi d’autres, en cours actuellement, du démantèlement progressif de l’emprise de Murdoch à l’intérieur de son groupe, notamment sur les organes de presse disposant en eux-mêmes d’un statut et d’une réputation forte qui leur sont propres. Cette démarche participe effectivement à cette évolution capitale qu'est le mouvement général d'affaiblissement de l'influence de Rupert Murdoch, dans ce cas au travers des publications qu’il possède.

«The Wall Street Journal “could have done a better job” when it published an interview with proprietor Rupert Murdoch in which he said News Corporation had made only “minor mistakes” in managing the phone-hacking scandal, according to the paper's special editorial committee.

»In a report published in the Journal on Monday designed to answer critics of its phone-hacking coverage, the committee – set up when Murdoch bought the paper in 2007 – admitted that its journalists failed to cover the scandal as promptly as its rivals. It also offered criticism of a one-sided interview earlier this month, just 24 hours before News Corp lost two of its most senior newspaper executives, including Les Hinton, who was responsible for the Dow Jones newswires.

»“[The Journal] could have done a better job with a recent story allowing Mr Murdoch to get his side of the story on the record without tougher questioning,” the report said, adding “We have discussed this with the involved editors.” However, in response to a political request for evidence that the US journalists were not involved in wrongdoing last week, the committee found “nothing to even hint that the sort of misdeeds alleged in London have somehow crept into [WSJ publisher] Dow Jones”.

»In one critical paragraph of the Journal's coverage of a scandal that has rocked the company, the UK political establishment and police authorities, the committee wrote: "The Journal was slower than it should have been at the outset to pursue the phone-hacking scandal story, in our opinion, though it is doing much better now with aggressive coverage, fitting placement in the paper, and unflinching headlines.”»

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