Thanks to our subscription at work, I have ready (and free!) access to the Wall Street Journal, which makes this the first period in my life where I’ve read it regularly.
Anyway, now that I have access to this fine periodical, I want to know how unbiased its reporting is. And as I’m assuming the answer is “not very,” I was wondering whether it tends to lean left or right. (Given the way it’s reporting reactions to Bush’s economic stimulus plan I’d guess left, but I could be wrong.)
IMHO, (cough cough) the WSJ news reporting leans a bit to the right and it’s editorial page is firmly right wing.
Don’t miss Peggy Noonan’s pieces. You may not agree with her, but she’s a really good writer IMHO (cough cough).
I’ll pretty much just second what Shiva said, adding that the WSJ reporting is solid and thorough, though certainly more interested in financial areas than in anything else, which in and of itself suggests a right-leaning bias, and that the ed/op pages are, as the saying goes, “just a little to the right of Jesse Helms”. That’s quite a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea.
I find their reporting to be fairly unbiased, but their editorial page runs heavily to the right. To their credit, though, they do run pieces from writers with opposing points of view, including letters from readers.
Everytime there is a Peggy Noonan piece, I first scan through it to see how far she got before taking a (rhetorical) shot at Hillary Clinton. For a while there it seemed like she couldn’t write three paragraphs without trashing Hillary.
(Laughing Lagomorph, who has read the WSJ pretty much every day for the last 10 years. And voted for Gore).
To echo what others have said, the reporting of the WSJ is some of the best in the country. Its editorial page (which includes the cultural reports in its “D” section) is so far over to the right that it would not be taken seriously on, say, a good message board. (LL, I did enjoy the Peggy Noonan piece on the State-of-the Union speech, which, at its end, praised G. W. B. exactly as if this were a considered and hard-to-admit conclusion on her part.) I can even remember, without being able to cite specifically, a time or two when the reporting on the front page directly contradicted an assertion in the lead editorial.
They are a business newspaper and devote little space to anything else. They are essentially pro-business and pro-capitalism even in their news articles, but come down extremely heavily on all offenders of the law and of sound business practices. I would shudder if I were the head of a company that the WSJ decided to feature in a front-page article. It might turn out to be positive, but far more likely would be devastating.
By the way KKBattousai, I got started reading the WSJ exactly the way you are…it was a free copy at work. Now my wife and I are subscribers! There is almost always something worth reading, and it really opened my eyes to the importance that economics, in the most general sense, has in practically everything that goes on in the world.
One thing I have found perplexing in their editorial position is their vocal support of people like Pat Robertson and other evangelical Christians. On the one hand the WSJ eds. extoll the wealth-creating power of well educated, intelligent human beings, and on the other they approve of a group of people who insist that evolution is a lie. Just seems internally inconsistent to me, but I suppose one could find similar examples in other editorial boards.
I would say the WSJ is the right’s answer to the New York Times.
I subscribed for 10 weeks and would also pick up the Times. It was funny to see the editorials take completely opposite sides on nearly every topic.
The Journal is very “anti-drugs” aswell, which I suppose could be classified as more of a “right-wing” attitude.
You know, with the boards going down and all, I almost totally forgot I had started this thread. (Of course seeing the WSJ again reminded me.)
As always, I’d like to thank everybody for their illuminating responses (I’ll keep a salt-shaker handy when going through the op-ed stuff).
You know, I was never that big on newspapers - they never seemed to be good enough to justify the cost - but I can see myself following in your footsteps here. I had always imagined the WSJ being a really dry, really technical, industry publication, but it isn’t. A pleasant surprise to say the least.
Going back to the left-right stuff for a sec, I’m a little surprised how critical their articles on the repeal of the tax on dividends was, considering their (newfound, for me) political leanings. Kinda makes me wish I read the op-ed pieces of the day…
(Of course it could be that I have a flawed understanding of what “left” and “right” really mean. I’m sure there’s a thread around here somewhere…)
Opposition to the dividend cuts, while theoretically a leftist position, is actually pretty bipartisan, what with the Republican chairmen of both the House and Senate tax committee coming out against it. The idea that the poor and destitute are undertaxed in any serious way was a pretty radical one amongst the right until just a few months ago.
–Cliffy
I fully concur that the WSJ’s editorial pages are extremely conservative (a plus in my book, if not in yours). However, but that has never been reflected in their news coverage, which strikes me as ever-so-slightly left of center.