More on Rupert Murdoch from Bill Moyers since my post the other day: "He is to propriety what the Marquis de Sade was to chastity."

In case you didn't know: Bill Moyers rules.

Just read Ken Auletta's analysis in the New Yorker of Rupert Murdoch's proposal to buy Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal. The burning question is, if he promises to keep the Journal independent as a condition of its purchase, can he be expected to keep that promise?

Auletta looks at his past newspaper acquisitions for the answer:

[Murdoch] persuaded the Carr family of London to sell him the sensational tabloid News of the World, and promised to run the paper in partnership with the family that had owned the paper for nearly eighty years; he abandoned this pledge after learning, he said, that to honor it would harm shareholders because the Carrs had created "a total wreck of a company." When he bought the New York Post from Dorothy Schiff, in 1976, he publicly pledged to leave its liberal editorial stance unchanged, saying, "The New York Post will continue to serve New York and New Yorkers and maintain its present policies and traditions" - and promptly reversed course.

And:

Within a year of acquiring [the Times of London and the Sunday Times] and promising not to interfere in the editorial operations, Murdoch fired Harold Evans as the editor of the Times and transformed the paper into an often-partisan voice on behalf of Margaret Thatcher. Evans had been the twelfth editor at the Times in nearly two hundred years; Murdoch hired and fired five editors in his first eleven years.

Said Bruce Page, formerly of the Sunday Times, "There's a lot to be said for Rupert Murdoch the man. There's nothing to be said for Rupert Murdoch the journalist."

The article has some pretty extensive documentation of just how far Rupert Murdoch has gone to protect his own political and economic interests, including some very questionable news coverage decisions in China. It's not surprising, or even new; the documentary Outfoxed has interviews from several TV journalists that describe how the management would dictate which stories were covered, and how they would be framed.

I don't particularly like the Journal - I'm not exactly a free-market capitalist with strongly right-leaning ideology - but I recognize that there is a big difference between the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post. There's enough consolidation already. Independent newspapers - regardless of ideology or affiliation - are absolutely essential to a healthy democracy. I will take an independent voice from the right over a conglomerate any day of the week.

If Dow Jones' shareholders care about the Journal's independence or journalistic integrity, they'd be crazy to sell to Murdoch. We'll see if they take a stand, or if it comes down to cash on the table in the end.