Former Wall St Journal Owners: 'We Wouldn't Have Sold If We Had Known'

Guardian (UK) ^ | July 13, 2011

[Steelfish]

Former Wall St Journal Owners: 'We Wouldn't Have Sold If We Had Known' Bancroft family members, who controlled Dow Jones & Company, say they would have resisted Murdoch bid in 2007

Richard Tofel, ProPublica 13 July 2011

A number of key members of the family that controlled the Wall Street Journal say they would not have agreed to sell the prestigious daily to Rupert Murdoch if they had been aware of News International's conduct in the phone-hacking scandal at the time of the deal.

"If I had known what I know now, I would have pushed harder against" the Murdoch bid, said Christopher Bancroft, a member of the family that controlled Dow Jones & Company, publishers of the Wall Street Journal.

Bancroft said the breadth of allegations now on the public record "would have been more problematic for me. I probably would have held out.'' He had sole voting control of a trust that represented 13% of Dow Jones shares in 2007 and served on the Dow Jones board.

Lisa Steele, another family member on the board, said "it would have been harder, if not impossible'' to have accepted Murdoch's bid had the facts been known. "It's complicated," she added, and "there were so many factors" in weighing a sale. But she said: "The ethics are clear to me – what's been revealed, from what I've read in the Journal, is terrible. It may even be criminal."

Elisabeth Goth Chelberg, a Bancroft family member not on the board who had long advocated change at Dow Jones, expressed similar sentiments. Asked if she would have favoured a sale to Murdoch in 2007 knowing what she now does, she said: "My answer is no."

[coydog]

Heh, consider the source of this one.

[2ndDivisionVet]

The hacks at the Guardian must be loving this. I would advise people who live in glass houses to avoid rock throwing.

[Beaten Valve]

Yeah, right...

[Trajan88]

they took the money when they sold their interest... case closed.

[FlingWingFlyer]

Assange-Hero

Murdoch-Villian

Okay. I've got it now.

[saltus]

Just wait when this undermines Fox News and all their “contributers”/pundits get implicated.

Van Sustern, BO’R, Hannity are back pedaling like mad now.

But they are trapped between their own values and being loyal to Murdoch.

Hypocristy cometh forth.

[Bobalu]

Some idiots left the bluetooth password on their phones set to the defaults of 0000 or 1234.

Too stupid to deserve any privacy.

Always shut off bluetooth and set the passphrase to something obscure.

BTW...didn’t all the liberal rags stand up for those two in Florida a few years back when they recorded a senators cell phone call?

[newzjunkey]

Even per this hit-piece, Murdoch has not been implicated as knowing of or approving the News of the World's phone hacking.

Attacking him is like blaming shareholders in then CBS parent company Viacom for Dan Rather's memogate in '04.

This UK tabloid scandal is absolutely irrelevant to FOX, FoxNews, WSJ, London Times or Murdoch's other independent media operations.

[personalaccts]

sure.

[scooby321]

I remember the sale, they got a look at a 40 million dollar legal bill either selling or not and they sold it to pay the legal bill.

The cost of outside advisers–including some of the biggest names in law–may have persuaded reluctant members of the Bancroft family to approve the sale of Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch, CNBC is reporting.

Fees to legal and financial advisers could amount to at least $30 million, the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.) reports. Law firms providing counsel include Boston-based Hemenway & Barnes and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.