In the coverage of Rupert Murdoch’s bid to acquire Dow Jones and other recent media-ownership struggles, much has been made of family ownership of news businesses and so-called family values. People on either side of the debate are equally guilty of hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty. At one extreme are the hedge fund managers and shareholder activists who argue that families controlling media companies are guilty of harming the interests of public shareholders. At the other extreme are those who view family ownership as an important societal value that should be protected. The truth, as usual, lies somewhere in between and hinges on the changing nature of both the families involved and the businesses they control. In the context of this debate, it is worth taking a closer look at what counts as a family, which values are worth protecting, and who should bear the burden of protecting them.

When the Tribune Co. announced its acquisition of Times Mirror from the Chandler family in 2000, the late Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham spoke for many when she argued passionately that “family ownership makes a difference.”

“I don’t think it is an accident,” Graham noted, “that the papers best known for quality in the country…are, or were until recently, family controlled.” But the problem with this observation is that most newspapers are family controlled, so it’s no surprise that many of the best—as well as many of the worst—fall into that category. The Los Angeles Times, the flagship newspaper of the Chandler family empire, is a perfect example of the irrelevance of the family-ownership argument: It has been among the best and worst papers, depending on which generation of Chandlers was in charge.

When it comes to the News Corp. bid for Dow Jones, one must remember that the Murdochs are no less a family than the Bancrofts. Rupert Murdoch cuts a profile akin to William Randolph Hearst and the other legendary patriarchs who founded the newspaper dynasties of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, unlike the current generation of three dozen adult Bancrofts, almost none of whom have any active involvement with the day-to-day operations of Dow Jones. This is not to suggest that Murdoch’s record and intentions are not worthy of close examination, but cant about family values in criticizing his purchase of Dow Jones is misplaced.

The question of family values came to the fore in 2000, when newspaper businesses started changing hands with disturbing rapidity. In that year alone, three major family owners sold their holdings in multibillion-dollar transactions: the Chandlers, who sold the Times Mirror Co.; the Thomsons, who parted with 100 U.S. community papers; and the Pulliam, who sold The Indianapolis Star. Until then, family-owned newspapers could be expected to stay, well, family-owned. Only the occasional major sale took place, such as with the Binghams of Louisville, Kentucky, in the 1980s and the Cowles of Minneapolis in the 1990s.

It was no coincidence that families started selling out in 2000. That year, after a decade of outperforming their sexier media peers, newspaper companies hit their high watermark of profitability. So why the families’ sudden urge to sell? Despite all the happy talk at the time about how well positioned newspapers were to take advantage of new online opportunities, it had become clear that the internet was a lethal weapon aimed directly at the economic heart of newspapers. For a business highly dependent on classified advertising, newspapers have been no match for the Web’s efficiencies. Savvy family owners saw the writing on the wall and began to consider the benefits of financial diversification.

But even after all of 2000’s activity, family ownership levels have not changed all that much, and neither has overall consolidation. Many buyers as well as sellers were families, and a number of new, locally focused players have come into the market. The 20 largest-circulation U.S. newspapers have 15 different proprietors, and other than two papers owned by leveraged-buyout investors (in Philadelphia and Minneapolis) and six owned by various broadly held public companies (a number that will shrink to four when Sam Zell takes over Tribune Co.), they are all family controlled.