Murdoch Marches the Wall Street Journal to the Right

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Two years after Rupert Murdoch won control of the Wall Street Journal, the paper's news pages have shifted to the right under the combined influence of Robert Thomson, the editor, and his deputy editor, Gerard Baker. David Carr writes in the New York Times that Thomson and Baker have shaped the paper's Washington coverage, "adopting a more conservative tone, and editing and headlining articles to reflect a chronic skepticism of the current administration." Carr writes that Baker, "a neoconservative columnist of acute political views, has been especially active in managing coverage in Washington, creating significant grumbling, if not resistance, from the staff there. Reporters say the coverage of the Obama administration is reflexively critical, the health care debate is generally framed in terms of costs rather than benefits — “health care reform” is a generally forbidden phrase — and global warming skeptics have gotten a steady ride." As the Center for Media and Democracy recently discussed the Wall Street Journal has become the "top" U.S. paper in circulation.