Wall Street Journal

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The Wall Street Journal, an influential international daily newspaper published in New York City, is owned by News Corporation, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch. It typically misinforms its readers about climate change.

Ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council

The Wall Street Journal has been a corporate funder of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).[1] See ALEC Corporations for more.

About ALEC
ALEC is a corporate bill mill. It is not just a lobby or a front group; it is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, corporations hand state legislators their wishlists to benefit their bottom line. Corporations fund almost all of ALEC's operations. They pay for a seat on ALEC task forces where corporate lobbyists and special interest reps vote with elected officials to approve “model” bills. Learn more at the Center for Media and Democracy's ALECexposed.org, and check out breaking news on our PRWatch.org site.

Editors

As of January 2010:
On the editorial side are:

On the news side are:[4]

  • Robert Thomson, Editor-in-Chief, Dow Jones & Company; Managing Editor, The Wall Street Journal
  • Gerard Baker, Deputy Editor-in-Chief The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones & Company
  • Jeffrey Ball, Environment Editor and Columnist, The Wall Street Journal
  • Rebecca Blumenstein, Managing Editor, The Wall Street Journal Online
  • John Bussey, Washington Bureau Chief, The Wall Street Journal
  • Laura Landro, Assistant Managing Editor, The Wall Street Journal
  • Alan Murray, Deputy Managing Editor, Executive Editor, Online, The Wall Street Journal
  • Gerald F. Seib, Assistant Managing Editor, Executive Washington Editor, The Wall Street Journal


Ownership, circulation and history

The paper was owned by Dow Jones & Company until 2007, when that company was acquired by News Corporation. As of October 2009, its daily circulation is over two million, including over 350,000 electronic subscribers. Based on these new figures reported by Editor & Publisher magazine, its total circulation has now exceeded USA Today giving it the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States. USA Today remains number one in total print circulation, despite a 17% decline in the first half of 2009 to a circulation of 1.88 million.[5]

The newspaper has been printed continuously since July 8, 1889, and has won the Pulitzer Prize twenty-six times.

Subject matter

Nicknamed The Journal, this newspaper primarily covers U.S. and international business and financial news and issues. In fact, the paper's name comes from Wall Street, the street in New York which is the heart of the business district.

Climate coverage

An analysis of 86 editorials and op-eds about climate published in the WSJ between October 2008 and January 25, 2011 showed a "backward" mix, with the vast majority of columns opposing climate science.[6]

News vs. editorial

The Journal enjoyed the reputation of being a generally reliable source of news, though not for climate change.[7],[8],[9]. Its editorial pages are considered far less reliable on matters of fact [10] and solidly right-wing, although it regularly gives one weekly opinion column spot to an opposing view, as with the slot formerly held by the liberal Al Hunt and now held by a populist, Thomas Frank, who wrote What's the Matter with Kansas How Conservatives Won the Heart of America.[11] The editorial pages commonly publish global warming skeptic op-eds and pieces by U.S. and world leaders with conservative views such as Russian president Vladimir Putin and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

When it comes to the WSJ´s views towards Latin America, the paper features articles from Mary Anastasia O´Grady, who wrote reports published by the conservative Heritage Foundation. O´Grady often criticizes "populism" and "leftists" in Latin America.

WSJ´s O´Grady recently criticized the South American multilateral forum known as Unasur saying "(Colombian president) Uribe will be outnumbered by leftist tyrants" despite the fact that all countries of Unasur have democratically elected presidents. Amerian author living in Mexico Richard Grabman chracterized O´Grady´s columns at the WSJ as " a better barometer of what Latin Americans are NOT going to do than the Miami Herald’s Andres Oppenheimer" [1]

Political blogger Sabina Becker dubbed WSJ´s O´Grady as "a discredited hack parachuted in from the Heritage Foundation to promote far-right "values" at the expense of honesty and reality." [2], and Inca Kola News compiled a list of WSJ´s O´Grady inaccuracies [3] involving her stories on Bolivia, El Salvador, Honduras, and Ecuador, criticizing her "serial ignorance of Latin American affairs".

Ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council

Editorial Board Member Stephen Moore is also an American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) "Scholar." [12] On August 4th, 2011, he spoke at a Shell Oil-sponsored plenary session of the 38th Annual ALEC Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, along with fellow ALEC "scholar" Arthur B. Laffer.[13] Moore also participated in the 2011 ALEC Annual Meeting, speaking on a panel on corporate taxes in front of the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force.[14] Furthermore, he partook in the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force meeting at the 2011 ALEC Annual Meeting, leading a discussion, alongside ALEC Director of the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force, Jonathan Williams, about the 4th Edition of Rich States, Poor States.[15]

About ALEC
ALEC is a corporate bill mill. It is not just a lobby or a front group; it is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, corporations hand state legislators their wishlists to benefit their bottom line. Corporations fund almost all of ALEC's operations. They pay for a seat on ALEC task forces where corporate lobbyists and special interest reps vote with elected officials to approve “model” bills. Learn more at the Center for Media and Democracy's ALECexposed.org, and check out breaking news on our PRWatch.org site.

Contact details

Books

  • Francis X. Dealy, The Power and the Money: Inside the Wall Street Journal, Jr. Birch Lane Press, June 1993. ISBN 1559721189

ISBN 978-1559721189

Articles and Resources

Related SourceWatch Resources

References

  1. American Legislative Exchange Council, "Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force Meeting," agenda and meeting materials, August 4, 2011, on file with CMD
  2. Paul Gigot - News, Articles, Biography, Photos. WSJ.com. Retrieved on 2010-01-13. “Paul Gigot is the editorial page editor and vice president of The Wall Street Journal, a position he has held since 2001. He is responsible for the newspaper's editorials, op-ed articles and Leisure & Arts criticism and directs the editorial pages of the Journal's Asian and European editions and the OpinionJournal.com Web site. He is also the host of the weekly half-hour news program, the Journal Editorial Report, on the Fox News Channel.”
  3. 3.0 3.1 Op-Ed Guidelines for The Wall Street Journal. WSJ.com. Retrieved on 2010-01-13.
  4. CEO Council. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved on 2010-01-13.
  5. Andrew Vanacore, "USA Today to post 17 percent drop in circulation", "Associated Press", October 10, 2009.
  6. Scott Mandia (2011-01-31). Wall Street Journal: Selectively Pro-Science. Global Warming: Man or Myth?. Retrieved on 2011-01-31. “while the WSJ touts accurate science with regard to vaccines, the WSJ is anti-science when it comes to climate change. Read on for an analysis of the WSJ’s coverage of climate change and to read an excellent Letter to the Editor that was never published.”
  7. Joe Romm (2010-02-26). Michael Mann responds to the “false and misleading claims” in the error-riddled, defamatory WSJ piece by Jeffrey Ball and Keith Johnson «. Climate Progress. Retrieved on 2010-10-13. “Has the WSJ's vaunted 'firewall' between straight news and ideological-driven editorials been breached?”
  8. Richard Littlemore (2008-03-25). Wall Street Journal: Still Promoting Debate. DeSmogBlog. Retrieved on 2010-10-13. “WSJ juxtaposes three decades of warnings, from sources of integrity and obvious expertise...with 30 years of denial, from paid apologists for industry”
  9. Paul D. Thacker (2005-08-31). Dissecting the Wall Street Journal's Mannhunt: How the Wall Street Journal and Rep. Barton celebrated a global-warming skeptic: The untold story of how a front-page article and powerful U.S. politicians morphed former mining executive Stephen McIntyre into a scientific superstar.. Environmental Science & Technology. Retrieved on 2010-10-13. “ES&T asked Regalado and his immediate editor to respond on-the-record to the criticisms of the story and the paper's coverage of climate-change science, and were directed to set up an interview through Dow Jones & Co., the owner of the Wall Street Journal. After four days of phone calls and emails, Robert Christie, director of corporate communications for Dow Jones, responded by email: "We've made it clear [that] when you submit your questions, we'll be more than happy to provide written on-the-record answers." ES&T then emailed 19 questions and asked to receive a response within three days. Six days later, editor Bob McGough confirmed by phone that the questions had been received. ES&T has never received a response.”
  10. Paul Krugman, "Modified Goldbugism at the Wall Street Journal", "New York Times", October 9, 2009.
  11. Kathy G, "Thomas Frank Takes Spot at WSJ, Frost Reported in Hell", "Alternet.com", April 23, 2008.
  12. American Legislative Exchange Council, Board of Scholars, organizational website, accessed May 2011
  13. American Legislative Exchange Council, "Solutions for the States," 38th Annual Meeting agenda, on file with CMD, August 3-6, 2011
  14. [American Legislative Exchange Council, 2011 Conference Sponsors, conference brochure on file with CMD, August 11, 2011]
  15. [American Legislative Exchange Council, 2011 Conference Task Force Meetings, conference brochure on file with CMD, August 11, 2011]

External Articles

Wikipedia also has an article on Wall Street Journal. This article may use content from the Wikipedia article under the terms of the GFDL.