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.