Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal continues to trip over its Karl Rove conflict of interest, with the paper's newsroom routinely failing to mention that the man who helped found an anti-Obama super PAC is also aJournal employee. Time and again this election season the Journal has reported on Rove's campaign work with American Crossroads, and time and again the newsroom has neglected to acknowledge Rove works for theJournal as a political columnist.
The very fact that the Journal hired Rove, a GOP fundraiser, to write columns about the races Rove is trying to win for the GOP represents a glaring ethical lapse. The Journal'srefusal to disclose those ties only compounds the problem; a problem that extends from the opinion pages to the newsroom.
Today's front-page Journal article examines whether conservative super PACs have been effective in denting the president's re-election chances. Rove's Crossroads group is featured as the pivotal conservative super PAC in the article. Yet nowhere in the piece is it reported that Rove also works for the newspaper.
That transparency failure has become commonplace. On September 6, the newspaper published an articleabout super PAC fundraising efforts by liberal and conservative groups and noted, "By contrast, American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, two Republican groups founded with the help of Karl Rove, have spent $67 million combined."
There was no mention that Rove's a Journal employee.
On Sept. 5, the Journal focused on the surprisingly tight U.S. senate race in North Dakota, and the amount of outside money pouring into the campaign:
Crossroads GPS, a Republican campaign fund co-founded by Karl Rove in 2010, and Majority PAC, a group that aims to protect Democrats' Senate majority, have spent heavily and run negative ads in the state.
No mention that Rove's a Journal employee.
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