While the widening News Corp. phone-hacking scandal sent Rupert Murdoch and son James in front of a U.K. parliamentary committee and unseated senior officials at the company and Metropolitan Police, the media empire found an aggressive defender in the Wall Street Journal’s opinion pages.
Among at least seven opinion pieces published so far this week supporting the newspaper’s owner were three signed by editorial board members. A fourth, a 1,000-word lead editorial, said media organizations commonly “pay sources for information” and “skew their coverage” to influence public affairs. The piece, titled “News and Its Critics,” added that it was “up to British authorities to enforce their laws.”
