From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   A Salute to Rupert Murdoch   
   By The Editorial Board, Sept. 21, 2023, WSJ   
   Rupert Murdoch announced Thursday that he’s resigning as chairman of his two   
   media companies after seven consequential and highly successful decades. Few   
   entrepreneurs have had a bigger impact on public life across the world, and   
   allow us on the    
   occasion to say a word about his role at the Wall Street Journal.   
      
   Mr. Murdoch bought Dow Jones, the Journal’s parent company, in 2007 for what   
   critics said was the exorbitant price of $5 billion or so. The company and   
   publication are venerable names, but the digital revolution was taking its   
   toll. Most of the companyâ   
   €™s net profit was paid out in dividends, and there wasn’t much left to   
   invest in digital innovation and product enhancement.   
      
   News Corp invested in the Journal and has made it better. This includes   
   digital platforms like the iPad, the App and even print, but above all Mr.   
   Murdoch invested in journalism. International and other reporting expanded,   
   and the weekend edition added    
   coverage of business, arts, books and culture.   
      
   This was the opposite of the choice made by many other publications, and Mr.   
   Murdoch saved the Journal from a similar decline. The Journal and Dow Jones   
   are now more profitable, with growing readership and revenue, which is   
   important to maintaining the    
   ability to do independent journalism.   
      
   We’re especially grateful that Mr. Murdoch and other News Corp and Dow Jones   
   executives have supported us when we’ve come under political or other   
   pressure to change our views or our coverage. This is true whether the   
   pressure has come from the    
   Chinese Communist Party, business titans, woke journalists, or American   
   Presidents.   
      
   At his core Mr. Murdoch is a newspaperman. He likes the news business and   
   believes in its mission to inform readers and, if possible, make the world   
   better and freer for more people. In our personal experience over 16 years,   
   the coverage by our media    
   competitors of Mr. Murdoch as a Machiavelli telling his journalists what to   
   write couldn’t be further from reality.   
      
   He wants his journalists to be curious and energetic, but also to think for   
   themselves. As a former News Corp executive of long experience once advised   
   us, he wants to hear what you think, not what you think he wants to hear. As a   
   publisher he believes    
   in robust debate and challenging the conventional wisdom—a mission all the   
   more important these days when so much journalism is conformist.   
      
   As Mr. Murdoch put it with typical candor in his note to News Corp employees   
   on Thursday: “Self-serving bureaucracies are seeking to silence those who   
   would question their provenance and purpose. Elites have open contempt for   
   those who are not members    
   of their rarefied class. Most of the media is in cahoots with those elites,   
   peddling political narratives rather than pursuing the truth.â€�   
      
   Rupert Murdoch’s legacy extends far beyond the Journal, going back to his   
   roots in Australia, then to the United Kingdom, and then to other countries in   
   Europe, Asia, the Middle East and ultimately the U.S. He has extended the   
   orbit of liberty and    
   prosperity.   
      
   Mr. Murdoch is in good health at age 92 and will become chairman emeritus. Yet   
   even as he turns the helm of his companies over to his son, Lachlan, he said   
   on Thursday he will stay “involved every day in the contest of ideas.â€�   
   Let’s hope so.   
      
   https://www.wsj.com/articles/rupert-murdoch-retire-news-corp-wal   
   -street-journal-fox-news-bc053f0   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)