Un giornale di mercato, sul mercato, per il mercato

L'acquisto di Dow Jones da parte di Rupert Murdoch riempie i giornali. In Italia, si scatenano i commenti. E' normale, in un Paese nel quale in molti (e molte persone intelligenti e perbene) sono convinti che il modo migliore per garantire l'indipendenza della stampa sia sostanzialmente evitare che i giornali possano essere contendibili.
Invece chi crede nel mercato si sente scaldare il cuore, leggendo l'editoriale che il Wall Street Journal stesso ha dedicato oggi al suo nuovo padrone. Questo il passo saliente:

Both the New York Times and the Financial Times have been especially aggressive in assailing the potential News Corp. purchase of the Journal. These also happen to be the two publications that Mr. Murdoch has explicitly said he might invest more to compete against. Readers can judge if the tears these papers and their writers claim to shed for the Journal's future are real, or of the crocodile variety.

The nastiest attacks have come from our friends on the political left. They can't decide whose views they hate most -- ours, or Mr. Murdoch's. We're especially amused by those who say Mr. Murdoch might tug us to the political left. Don't count on it. More than one liberal commentator has actually rejoiced at the takeover bid, on the perverse grounds that this will ruin the Journal's news coverage, which in turn will reduce the audience for the editorial page. Don't count on that either.

Such an expectation overlooks that the principle of "free people and free markets" promoted in these columns has an appeal far beyond this newspaper. We fill a market niche for such commentary that is too little met by other newspapers and media outlets. But we have every confidence that if we vanished, or let our standards fall, the marketplace would find an alternative. What ultimately matters are the ideas, and their basic truth.