Slants

Murdoch Pushes WSJ Rightward

Washington reporters complain about new bosses.

Two years after Rupert Murdoch bought The Wall Street Journal, has the media mogul tainted the newspaper with his outspoken conservative politics, as many feared he would? Several current and former employees of the Journal’s Washington bureau tell The New York Times’ David Carr that the Journal’s top editor, Robert Thomson, and its deputy managing editor, Gerard Baker, have taken a more conservative tone, editing headlines and articles to take on the Obama administration. Reporters in Washington complain that, under Baker, the health-care debate has been framed in terms of costs instead of benefits—the phrase “health care reform” is “generally forbidden,” writes Carr—and there’s been an open ear for climate-change skeptics.