
Wall Street Journal Investigation Into MySpace Was Quietly Killed - apu
http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/22/wall-street-journal-investigation-into-myspace-was-quietly-killed/
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alanh
The WSJ is a Murdoch rag and thus I assume it’s dedicated to nothing other
than profit and protecting the establishment.

 _Edit:_ Allow me to clarify. I’m just sharing how I view Murdoch properties
(incl. FOX, WSJ, and MySpace), and implying that this article is not
surprising. Still, I upvoted this submission, because we _should_ demand
ethical journalism; we _should_ report on the reporters.

~~~
kgrin
There may well be (and it appears quite likely is) a conflict of interest
here, but there are less obnoxious ways of pointing that out. Like, say, the
OP.

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_delirium
Hmm, Murdoch gave quite a few assurances when he bought the WSJ that they'd
maintain independence as a news organization, at least on the news side (the
op-ed page was already super-conservative, and basically a separate
organization). Would be problematic for their usefulness if that turns out not
to be the case.

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msy
Murdoch gave identical promises when he took over the Times of London, they
lasted all of about 6 months. The Times went from the most respected UK paper
to a downmarket broadsheet that toes the Murdoch line without fault in about 3
years.

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nkassis
Occam's razor suggest choosing the simplest reason. Sadly I think it's the one
where WSJ was told not to print something bad about MySpace. Knowing the
record of all other news corp subsidiaries this would not be at all
surprising.

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scott_s
A simpler - and more mundane - reason is that the story wasn't done yet. Maybe
it needed more research, more writing, or more editing.

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gruseom
You go, Arrington. Practice some more real journalism and hold their feet to
the fire.

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zaidf
Murdoch _really_ wants to kill the ad biz so everyone is forced to charge for
content. This is almost getting hysterical. Somewhere the former WSJ owners
are shaking their head.

~~~
krschultz
That is the reason I don't click through to anything at the WSJ anymore.

Although the Financial Times is blowing their oppurtunity to eat WSJ's online
market share, everytime you go to their website you are asked to log
in/register. Why do I need to register to read an article?

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InfinityX0
This kind of reporting is extremely, extremely dangerous. I'm all for this
kind of rumor-mill stuff, but, when placed on a site that's supposed to exist
as a newscenter, the lines can become incorrectly, and dangerously, crossed.

I'm not sure if it's the traffic success of Angelgate or what, but this kind
of rumor-mill junction is the type of libel that can drop stock prices and
damage the PR of a company - without any real facts. And that's obviously
wrong. That we allow million dollar swings to occur because of one man's
_reputation for fact_ alone is an absolute joke, and one that shouldn't be
stood for. If Arrington wants to run a tech gossip site, run it. _But don't
run it on a site that's meant for news_ \- and occasionally, opinionative blog
posts that clearly define themselves as such. And definitely, don't run it as
fact - with a "this is absolute truth" headline - without the substantive
evidence to back it up.

It's irresponsible. And irresponsible is a rather tame way to describe it.

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brown9-2
Techcrunch has seemed like a place for rumors and opinions for as long as I've
been aware of it. Are we reading two different sites?

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johnglasgow
Arrington loves writing link-bait articles. The WSJ just published an article
on My Space leaking user date to advertisers:

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230373850457556...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303738504575568460409331560.html)

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apu
Arrington notes at the bottom of the post that this WSJ article was published
_after_ the TechCrunch article and "was supposed to be published earlier this
week, and wasn’t". He goes on to say (and it certainly seems likely to be the
case) that it probably would not have been published at all had he not written
this post.

~~~
jessriedel
Another explanation is just that the article was going to be delayed for some
non-sinister reason. Then WSJ pushed it out the door in response to the
TechCrunch article because, had they published it in (say) a week, it would
have looked like they wrote the whole article to answer TechCrunch (as opposed
to now where is just looks like the released it to answer TechCrunch).

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scott_s
This is the same logic behind conspiracy theories: because this narration of
events makes sense, it must be true.

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brianbreslin
People still care about myspace?

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marcamillion
Arrington deserves a man hug. He has been on a role recently. Keep it up
please!

