For background, please see these three past items: first (illustrated at right), second, and third. They compare the play and headlines of stories in three major papers -- the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal -- and together suggest what was to me a surprising conclusion. Namely, that the WSJ's news coverage, which for decades has seemed independent from the Journal's editorial pages, is increasingly conforming with the editorial line. My China-beat buddies will recognize the term "harmonization" for this reining-in of unauthorized views.
- Hypothesis: Under the ownership of Rupert Murdoch and the editorship of Robert Thomson, the Journal is deliberately bringing its news operations into closer alignment with its editorial views.
- Sub-hypothesis: You don't see this shift in the line-by-line content of the stories themselves but rather in the headlines, subheads, and placement of the stories in the paper. That is, we're looking at editors' work rather than reporters'.
Being hypotheses, these are subject to testing and disproof. Toward the end of testing hypotheses, here is an interesting new data point.The first paragraph in a WSJ news story this weekend describes how the Obama administration is planning its next term:
The headline for this story uses a different verb to describe what the administration is up to.
The reporters write "plan," the editors say "plot" -- it's sort of the same, but not really. We'll see how the evidence adds up over time.
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James Fallows is a staff writer for The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He has reported extensively from outside the United States and once worked as President Carter's chief speechwriter. He and his wife, Deborah Fallows, are the authors of the new book Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America, which has been a New York Times best seller and is the basis of a forthcoming HBO documentary.