How Murdoch Will Weaponize the 'Journal'

In an earlier post, I predicted, somewhat tangentially, that Rupert Murdoch will ramp up media coverage in The Wall Street Journal's business pages. This was a bit of tea-leaf-reading on my part; to the best of my knowledge, he hasn't stated as much in the way he's said that he'll boost political and international coverage. In a comments thread, I elaborated, saying he'll want to see more critical coverage of CNN, The New York Times and other outlets that compete with News Corp. properties.

A couple of commenters took issue with my prediction.

WSJer wrote:

I know these facile comments about WSJ doing Murdoch's bidding seem innocuous to you, Jeff, but we're not going to be covering other media companies as "News Corp. rivals," and we're not going to slack up on covering News Corp. Don't insult our professionalism, please.

And exwsjer wrote:

Berco, do you really think he'll cheapen the paper he just bought for $5 billion (yeah, there was some other stuff in there too) by risking reporters leaving over being forced to write nasty things about competitors? I don't.

To answer these objections: I don't think it will be as blatant as all that, no, but I do think Murdoch will get what he wants. He's plenty smart enough to know how to get reporters to serve his agenda without making them feel compromised.

Here's a scenario: Let's say Fox News chief Roger Ailes were to inform his boss that Lou Dobbs had made contact to inquire into jumping ship from CNN, but the talks went nowhere. "CNN Star Seeking Deal with Rival Network" is a scoop any TV-beat reporter would be eager to have.

In the past, Murdoch might've channeled such a tidbit to reporters at the New York Post; looking ahead, it'll probably to to the Journal. Some Journal reporter gets a juicy news break, and no one's been forced to write anything they didn't want to write, or anything untrue.

And when it's a straight-up smear job like this Murdoch wants, well, that's what he has the Post for.