The Wall Street Rag

Even at the hight of the scandal over the phonetapping by the News of the World, Murdoch had plenty of apologists in the media. Essentially, the defence was: well, yest, the News of the World and the Sun are tacky but they bankroll Murdoch's real passion, the so-called "serious newspapers, such as the Times and the Sunday Times in the UK, and - in the US - what one commentator characterised as the "über-respectable" Wall Street Journal.

The Times and the Sunday Times can only be considered as serious when compared to their tacky cousins but not when compared to the Guardian, the Observer, the Independent, the Independent on Sunday, the Daily Telegraph or the Sunday Telegraph. Note that I am not making a poitical point here - the Telegraph newspapers, whatever I think of their politics, are serious publications and can claim credit, among other things, for the exposure of the MPs' expenses scandal.

Irish commentators (such as Eoin Harris, writing in an Irish rag called the Sunday Independent) have cited the Sunday Times' pursuit of IRA men, who were masquerading as respectible members of the community, as an example of its courage. While the paper deserves some credit for this, given the high risk of a successful libel action in the Irish courts, it hardly counts as "taking on the establishment" in the way that the Telegraph did over MPs' expenses. Those of us who remember the Sunday Times in its pre-Murdoch days will remember a newspaper that showed real courage - one of the few, for eaxample in the UK that was prepared, in 1972, to challenge the Government's lies over the paratroopers' massacre of 14 innocent civilians in Derry.

However, even those papers are heavyweights when compared to the Wall Street Journal. I have been foreced, on rare occasions, to read the WSJ, usually when I am traveling on a plane and have run out of other things to read. How anyone can consider is as a serious newspaper is more than I know. It is flimsy and light - with only a few pages of real news content. What it does have is a strident, megaphone-style editorial tone. This is the newspaper that blamed 9-11 on Clinton's "Munich-like appeasement" of Yasser Arafat. This is the paper that was a cheerleader for Bush's invasion of Iraq. Essentially, it is just Fox News for people who can read; it pedals the same rabble-rousing, divisive editorial line and is just as economical with the truth.

I am not surprised, therefore, to see the WSJ in Europe now being accused of a scam to boost its circulation figures in order to enhance advertising; it is all I would have expected from that rag.

In the end, the WSJ is just another manifestation of Murdoch's shabby, grubby personality. The late Auberon Waugh (no left-winger, by any means!) put it perfectly when he described the man as "that prurient (by which I mean 'dirty', 'itchy-bottomed') Australian-American."