General Electric, Pearson Mull Deal to Acquire Dow Jones. Rupert Murdoch Can't Be Happy.
Reported by Marie Therese - June 18, 2007 -
CNBC and other financial news outlets are reporting today that Pearson, publisher of the Financial Times, has entered into talks with General Electric, parent company of NBC and CNBC, to discuss a possible joint venture to acquire Dow Jones from the Bancroft family. Dow Jones publishes The Wall Street Journal. The Bancrofts were approached over a month ago by unwanted suitor Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corporation, parent company of FOX News Channel, and have been sending persistent signals that they'd prefer offers from business entities more friendly to their historic "hands off" approach to news collection and reporting at the WSJ. According to some sources, there are distinct issues between the Bancrofts and Murdoch, a man notorious for tailoring the news to fit his agenda. With video.
FOX News Vice President for Business Neil Cavuto briefly mentioned this story on his show, Your World, last Friday.
It was the topic of discussion this morning on CNBC's Squawk Box (video below), amid news that mergers & acquisitions (M&A) activity has fallen off sharply recently.
COMMENT
We News Hounds sincerely hope that this new joint venture bears fruit and that the Murdoch offer is rejected. As we've said before, there are few truly independent newspapers left. It would be a shame to lose The Wall Street Journal to a tabloid huckster like Murdoch. One has only to read our many posts about what passes for "business news" coverage on FOX News to understand why we have our fingers crossed hoping that Rupert Murdoch's bid goes down in flames.
