Funny how liberal media critics are proven right, over and over again

Back in 2007 when Murdoch sealed perhaps the worst media deal in the history of media deal-making (i.e. when he bought the WSJ for top dollar just before the newspaper industry collapsed), progressives warned that when a open partisan like Murdoch got his hands on the Journal, the mighty newspaper would never be the same. That Murdoch would infect the news hole with politics and, just like he did with the once-mighty Times of London, he'd turn a great newspaper into a just an okay one.

Well, voilà! mission accomplished. Murdoch has dumbed down the Journal news team in the pursuit of partisan reporting. On Monday, the New York Times' David Carr noted how the Journal's news was now “tilting rightward.” And today, Politico's Michael Calderone calls attention to the Journal's No. 2, Gerald Baker, an Obama-mocking British columnist (and Weekly Standard contributor) who Murdoch hired.

I've been noting all year how the Journal's D.C. reporting has, at times, been spectacularly bad. (See exhibits A, B, C, and D.) And bad because it seemed to be stretching so hard to make gotcha, partisan points. Now we're beginning to see that perhaps editors and reporters are being pressured by Murdoch's Obama-mocking team to make those misguided points.

But isn't it all very interesting that when liberal media critics raised these very warnings about a Murdoch-owned Journal at the time when he was making his pitch for the paper, they were often called naive and pollyannish. The smart, savvy media people insisted that Murdoch would never tamper with the Journal; that he'd be a fool to mess with the newspaper's winning news formula. (The WSJ's editorial page was already home to the `wingers, of course.)

As I pointed out back then, Rupert Murdoch does not buy news properties in order to keep his hands off them. He has very little history of that. So of course he was going to meddle with the Journal, and of course he was going to hire his men to turn the whole enterprise to the right. And of course he was going to dumb the newspaper down.

Fact: It's very hard to find news properties that Murdoch has acquired and improved, journalistically. It's rather easy though, to find examples of news outlets he has dumbed-down.

The Journal's days a sterling news gathering operation were numbered when Murdoch purchased the daily, and now the newspaper's decline is on full display. Can't can't say we're surprised.