Post-Election, Wall Street Journal's Identity Disorder Intensifies

It's been almost a year now since Rupert Murdoch took over the Wall Street Journal, and the paper's newsroom leadership, its reporting style, its size and its look have all had a makeover. Murdoch has left its editorial page alone, however -- it's still spouting green-bashing, extremist free-market opinion -- and now post-election, the great financial paper's identity disorder appears to have intensified.

In the absence of professional diagnosis, we can only speculate that the stress of being out of step with history, combined with the collapse of the global financial system, has further unhinged the edit page's grasp of reality and its inability to accept the news carried in the rest of the paper.

Compare the story "US Car Makers Fail to Improve Resale Value" with the editorial that warns against "making Detroit a subsidiary of the Sierra Club," and the profound depths of the edit page's denial become alarmingly clear. Why do their opinion writers refuse to read and believe what their own reporters write? That's a question Mr. Murdoch ought to address before it tarnishes the reputation and value of the flagship brand of his News Corp empire.

Denial is a defense mechanism in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.

The subject may deny the reality of the unpleasant fact altogether (simple denial), admit the fact but deny its seriousness (minimisation) or admit both the fact and seriousness but deny responsibility (transference). The concept of denial is particularly important to the study of addiction.

Perhaps even oil addiction?

Here's the news the Journal published about the declining resale value of Detroit's autos:

Kelley Blue Book, a well-known vehicle appraiser, plans to announce Wednesday its annual ranking of the top 10 brands for projected resale value -- and not a single one will be American. Kelley, which ran its calculations before the big car makers began pushing for government financial help, defines resale value as the amount of a vehicle's sticker price that is retained after five years of ownership. The typical Chrysler car, for example, is expected to retain just 24.2% of its original cost. By comparison, the top-rated Honda brand's vehicles are expected on average to retain 44.5% of their value.....

After the Honda brand, made by Honda Motor Co., Kelley Blue Book's top picks include the Toyota brand, made by Toyota Motor Corp.; Volkswagen AG's Volkswagen brand; the Subaru brand by Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd.; and Toyota Motor's luxury Lexus brand. Rounding out the top 10 are BMW AG's BMW brand; Nissan Motor Co.'s Infiniti brand; Honda's Acura brand; Volkswagen's Audi brand; and the Nissan brand.....

Detroit's auto makers have posted lower resale values over the years because they tended to overbuild vehicles to gain market share. They also paid less attention to building high-quality small cars in favor of larger, fuel-thirsty sport-utility vehicles.....

And here's what the paper's editorial page had to say, on the very same day:

If Congress wants to ease the immediate burden on Detroit, it could also ease the onerous fleet-mileage standards (CAFE rules) that force the companies to make cars domestically that are unprofitable.

And for good measure, Holman Jenkins, Jr. had this to say, also on the same day, in a separate piece that carried his byline:

But the really giant sucking sound is the auto sector, getting ready to gobble up whatever hopes Mr. Obama might have had for an ambitious, forward-looking presidency.

He and Nancy Pelosi naturally insist that any "bailout" must hit multiple bogies. They want UAW jobs to be preserved. They want the shibboleth of energy independence advanced. They want "green" cars to please the Tom Friedmans of the world. They want to tell taxpayers they're getting more for their money than just a bailout of Detroit.

This man's thought process appears to be tainted with paranoia, as well as denial of the facts as to why other automakers are making the cars with the best resale value. It's got nothing to do with Tom Friedman or environmentalism.

In all fairness, the editorial page does conclude with a rational proposal: let GM and Chrysler file for bankruptcy. It's hard to evaluate it though, because the precedent ranting undermines credibility and offers no palatable persuasion.

For that, you have to turn to the New York Times' op-ed page -- on the very same day, as it turns out. There you'll find a piece by Mitt Romney called "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt." He writes as the son of a man who actually ran an auto company and from the perspective gained in a career as a successful management consultant. I did not leave his piece persuaded by his arguments, but they certainly had merit -- without the blemish of paranoia or denial.

Detroit's great protector in Congress -- John Dingell -- has now lost his powerful and long-standing perch as chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, to Henry Waxman. This is sure to exacerbate the accelerating symptoms of delusion on the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, and shareholders should be pressing Mr. Murdoch to apply a cure before the damage hits the stock price.

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Comments

[angel12]

This split between Editorial and Reporters was even greater in the 70's and 80's. I used to wonder if Editorial even read the great, objective, writing of the tremendous staff they had back then. In the 90's Editorial lost its mind over Clinton---do they still have for sale the five VOLUMES (!) of anti-Clinton crap? I stopped reading it then; it had gotten to the point that I could not even trust their book reviews, as it was one hatchet job after another by right-wing hacks on objective historians/writers, and love letters for anything of the slightest conservative bent. It is ironic that the WSJ probably made more money under Clinton than since, or that they ever will again.

[ObjectiveRealist]

Great article! The idea that stodgy, careful, fact-based people think that renewable energy is "impractical" is absurd, but being spewed from a publication which had that reputation, before becoming a News Corp property. In fact, there is a lot of money in the petroleum industry, still trying to purchase influence and using most of it to smear all new would-be competitors in modern, non-polluting technologies, with fallacies like "making Detroit a subsidiary of the Sierra Club," which nobody but News Corp has in fact recommended.

[GodlessGurty]

How about calling it the WC Journal - Read and wipe...!
At least then, it will be good for something.

[mamacat]

Maybe the name needs to be changed? Instead of The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Murdoch could change it to The Back Street Journal, or The Sewer Journal, or The Wailing Wall Journal. Anything, but get rid of the name that represented pride in journalism. Keeping the old name is just too cruel.

[ObjectiveRealist]

[
Anything, but get rid of the name that represented pride in journalism. Keeping the old name is just too cruel.
]

That reputation is as obsolete as Wall Street itself. Fitting.