"It's like a strong cup of caffeine in the morning," is how Rupert Murdoch once described the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal to me. "They confirm what I think and set me up for the rest of the day."

During my 11 years as editor of his Sunday Times of London (from 1983 to 1994), Murdoch would regularly cut out Wall Street Journal editorials and fax them to me for my attention. They were never accompanied with a command to toe their particular editorial line—Rupert is too subtle for that. But the implication was clear: This is what Sunday Times editorials should be saying too.

So at least for the opinion editors of the Journal, there is little to fear in a Murdoch takeover: Among those newspapers in the world Murdoch doesn't own (and there are still a few), the Journal's staunchly conservative, Republican editorial line most closely reflects the Australian-American media baron's own worldview. The editorial page is already on his ideological wavelength.

The other side of the newsroom, however, may still find itself on shaky ground. As part of his charm offensive to win the Journal and reassure those concerned about the independence and integrity of its news pages, Murdoch has been piously promising to keep the so-called Chinese wall between news and opinion intact. He might even mean it. But everything I know about the man and how he runs his newspapers makes me certain it will not survive for long.

Serious American journalists might regard the division between news and editorial pages in newspapers as sacred and holy, but Murdoch, as I remember, regards the Chinese wall as a peculiar conceit of American newspapers, especially of the East Coast establishment variety. Not one of Murdoch's newspapers in Australia or Great Britain that I know of—even the quality ones—has a Chinese wall.

The American way, he once told me, is a way of conning readers into thinking your news pages are objective and unbiased, when in fact they are subtly infused with values and opinion, and, he said, "invariably from the liberal left."

But don't expect the Journal's “Chinese wall” to be dismantled overnight. The transformation will be slow and insidious. It will begin with increased emphasis on editorial opinion and carry on through the appointment of reporters and editors who more closely hew to the Journal's (and therefore Murdoch's) op-ed worldview. One morning, the old Journal will simply be gone.

Editorial opinion will not necessarily dictate the news agenda, but it will surely influence it, determining what gets massive attention and what gets short shrift while shaping the tone and attitude of the news coverage so that it fits comfortably with what the paper believes. If you want to see this approach in action, look at his two London qualities, the Times and Sunday Times, whose news coverage doesn't reek of opinion but has clearly been influenced by the overall perspective of their editorial stances.

There's a second Chinese wall that will not survive a Murdoch takeover of the Journal: the barrier that ensures that what the paper writes is in no way influenced by the business interests of its owner. This seems not to exist in the Murdoch empire. Where there has been a conflict between honest journalism and Murdoch’s business interests, journalism has invariably lost. I have seen this firsthand—and even been on the receiving end.

In spring 1994, the Sunday Times of London, where I was editor at the time, published a series of investigations exposing corruption at the heart of the Malaysian government, involving payoffs from British construction companies. The Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohammed, an authoritarian leader with an anticolonial chip on his shoulder, was furious and made it clear that the chances of Star TV (a satellite-TV service in Asia) being allowed into Malaysia were less than zero. This made Murdoch even more furious, not with the Malaysian prime minister but with me.

He was soon bellowing on the phone to me, telling me not to run any more articles on the matter. He never once indicated that we were hurting his business interests—he simply claimed we were "boring" readers, which was a bit strange since the story was the talk of the town—but I was never in any doubt that this was the real reason for his anger. Within weeks he had flown to London to suggest, rather strongly, that I step down as editor and help him launch a new Fox newsmagazine in New York. Since I wanted out anyway (11 years is long enough to be a Murdoch editor), I obliged. As I had always anticipated, the newsmagazine never happened.

Not long after my departure, I learned what had actually took place. In the autumn of 1995, a British government minister whom I knew well dined with a senior British diplomat in Kuala Lumpur. He asked what had really happened. "The Malaysian prime minister made it clear that Murdoch would never do business in this country," the diplomat told the minister, who later told me, "as long as Andrew Neil was editor of the Sunday Times. Neil had to go; Murdoch obliged."

Then, as I was told, at a huge Murdoch corporate bash in Australia a few months later, the deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia turned up as Murdoch's guest of honour.

Murdoch's suppression of the press isn't limited to his newspaper holdings, however. And sometimes he'll even suppress some of his own views in order to keep business humming along.

The anti-Communist cold-war warrior of the 1980s, who once opined to me that Margaret Thatcher should never give Hong Kong back and even wanted the British prime minister to threaten to nuke Beijing should the Chinese try to take it by force, had by the 1990s become a serial kowtower to the Communist dictatorship in Beijing. Why? Not because he’d become soft on communism, but because by the 1990s he owned the Star satellite TV system, which was trying to make inroads into China.

In 1993, I helped draft a speech Murdoch gave in London in which he proudly proclaimed that satellite TV was "an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere." We had been influenced by the manner in which all the paraphernalia of the early information age—satellite TV, fax machines, mobile phones—had helped bring down Soviet communism and thought it might have the same beneficial effect on Chinese communism. But within months of Murdoch's "brave new world" speech, the Chinese government had moved to restrict the sale of satellite dishes within its borders. Murdoch was appalled and promptly dumped BBC World, the British Broadcasting Corporation's international news channel, from Star TV because its coverage of China offended Beijing's ruling clique. He sold the independent-minded South China Morning Post because it regularly crossed swords with Beijing, then forbade HarperCollins, his book publishing arm, from publishing the memoirs of Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, which contained (according to an internal Harper memo) too many "negative aspects" about China.

Murdoch and his apologists have dubious explanations for each of these acts designed to refute the claim that they were done to protect or further his business interests. But the charge sheet against Murdoch in this regard is so long that his excuses don't carry water. The Times of London avoided Murdoch's ire over China simply by slashing its coverage from Beijing and Hong Kong. Six years ago, his second son, James (who has been involved in negotiations with the Bancrofts over the Journal), voiced strong support for Beijing's crackdown on the Falun Gong, a Buddhist sect, and attacked the Western media for portraying a "falsely negative" view of China.

Clearly the only Chinese wall that matters in the Murdoch empire is the one that deters its journalists from doing serious investigative reporting and fearless commentary on the Middle Kingdom, just at a time when it is emerging as the new superpower of the 21st century and we need accurate and honest reporting about it more than ever.

Rupert Murdoch is many things, but stupid he is not. He knows the future financial success of the Wall Street Journal depends on a continued reputation for accuracy, honesty, and integrity in its journalism. If he were to turn the Journal into a more up-market version of the business pages of the New York Post, the Journal would quickly cease to be credible among those who read it. A Murdoch Journal would never be so blatant.

Instead, he will move cannily, gradually putting his folk into the positions that matter to do his bidding while all the time promising to honor their editorial independence. Murdoch gives his quality-paper editors far more latitude than his tabloid editors, whom he expects to do as they’re told. He does not run his quality papers with an iron fist. His editors do not always have to be on the same continent as he is on every issue, but they will only survive if they are on the same planet.

Murdoch has the knack of picking people who know how to second-guess him (and second-guessing the boss is the biggest industry inside News Corp.). Though no command came down from on high, every one of the newspapers in Murdoch's huge stable, in Great Britain, Australia, and the U.S., enthusiastically supported the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003—a degree of unanimity in the Murdoch empire which even the Bush administration could not match.

The Murdoch empire may be a one-party state when it comes to ideology and policy, but the boss still insists his editors are completely independent. Why, he is even willing to prove it to the Bancroft family by establishing a board of independent editorial directors to protect the Journal's editors from his interfering ways. Those of us who have watched how a similar arrangement has operated in London (or not operated, to be more accurate) can only chuckle at the gullibility of those taken in by this.

Murdoch's experience of an "independent editorial board" includes one mandated by the British government in 1981 for the Times and Sunday Times. In 26 years, this board has not proven its worth to either paper’s editorial independence, perhaps because of the way it is formed: For a start, Murdoch fills the board with Establishment worthies and people of a like-minded persuasion. Few are inclined to cross him. For example, when he forced Harry Evans out of the editor's chair at the Times in 1982, they sat on their hands. Ditto when Frank Giles was told to resign from the Sunday Times in 1983. A truly independent board would at least question such decisions rather than simply rubber-stamp them.

When I hit my little Malaysian difficulty in 1994, it never occurred to me to appeal to the so-called independent directors: I knew it would be a waste of time. In any case, no editor can long survive without the confidence of the proprietor—anywhere. For two and a half decades, Murdoch has hired and fired editors at will and the independent directors have played no part, other than the pro forma validation of his decisions after he has taken them. I doubt it will be very different at the Journal.

But it will be different in other ways. Murdoch has long coveted a global business brand and has huge plans for the Journal. In the 1980s, he tried to buy the Financial Times but, unusually for the wily colonial boy, was outwitted by the ruling patricians and had to dump his 20 percent stake. He has always had his eye on the Wall Street Journal, which he regards as badly run and underexploited but brimming with potential.

So what will he do? Like many people, I expect Murdoch would behead much of the existing management, take an ax to the bureaucracy, roll up his sleeves once more, and get stuck in himself. At 76, this is his last great media play, and he will want to leave nothing to chance. The new Fox business channel would become, in effect, the station of the Wall Street Journal, going head-to-head with CNBC and would be as heavily promoted in his various newspapers across the world as his British satellite channels are in his British papers. He would beef up the European and Asian editions of the Journal and take a run in these markets at the Financial Times, which he thinks is run by a bunch of lazy pinkos. Dow Jones and Journal copy would start appearing in all his other titles across the globe.

Most important of all, web-savvy Murdoch would roll out WSJ.com as the world’s premier business site online for the 21st century global elite, sitting nicely alongside his social site, MySpace. It will be a roller coaster of a ride, exciting for some, unnerving for most. There will be blood on the carpet and the walls, but I believe the Journal will emerge as a much stronger, if not necessarily better, global brand as a result. And to those who think Murdoch will be so busy with the business strategy that he will not interfere in the editorial side of the paper and that it will continue much as it is, remember this: When it comes to shaping editorial content to his liking, he just can't help himself.