THE DUAL PERSONALITY OF WALL STREET JOURNAL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403550004-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 26, 2012
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: October 1, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
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ARTICLc .
ON PAGE
WASHINGTON TIMES
1 October 1985
MEDIA ANALYSIS / Don Kowet
The dual personality
of Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
seems the picture of per-
fect health.
Nearly 2 million Americans
purchase the newspaper every day.
Eager advertisers queue up weeks
in advance.
But behind that ruddy-cheeked,
reassuring front page (still six col-
umns, no photographs), critics say
that The Wall Street Journal is suf-
fering from a severe case of
schizophrenia, one that threatens to
blur its identity as a newspaper.
The Journal, they argue, has
become a confusion of contradic-
tory voices, its traditional
Keynesian cant colliding against
the syllogisms of supply-side edito-
rials. Critics even claim to hear
Karl Marx babbling in the back-
ground. In mid-September, the
Soviet news agency Toss was crow-
ing over a Journal article alleging
that members of the Nicaraguan
resistance were committing
atrocities on unarmed Nicaraguan
civilians.
The seed of this schizophrenia
charge, said Journal editor Robert
Bartley in an interview, was sown
at "an acrimonious dinner I had
with the Washington bureau in
1980. The way I handled that was a
mistake, and it's spawned this end-
less series of stories."
At that dinner, members of the
Washington bureau accused Mr.
Bartley of heavy-handed editing of
their columns and keeping them
from his editorial pages.
Now, said Mr. Bartley, "We run
pieces by the Washington bureau
on our editorial page. You don't see
that in most newspapers.'
Mr. Bartley called the
"schizophrenia" charge "one of the
most overdone stories in the history
of journalism"
Yet others insist that the tension
between various parts of the news-
paper existed long before 1980 -
and persisted long after it. Earlier
this year, for instance, several Jour-
n7 editors and writers reportedly
wanted the newspaper to punish-
Gregory A. Fossedal, after the
young conservative editorial writer
had turned up `:across the table" at
a White House Star Wars briefing,
helping White House staffers.
As late as last week, a front-page
Journal headline blared "Military
Secrecy Rises, With Pentagon Hid-
ing Billions of Outlays." The article
charged that the Pentagon's "black
budget" (alleged secret expendi-
tures) "has shot up at least 50% for
fiscal 1986..:'
The specific source of this rev-
elation was The Center for Defense
Information, which Journal writers
Roy J. Harris Jr. and Robert S.
Greenberger identified as "an inde-
pendent research group often
critical of administration policies
:" Critics contend that if The Cen-
ter for Defense Information is an
"independent research group,"then
so is The Institute for Policy Stud-
ies. The Center is a spinoff of the
institute, which is putative father of
the fanatic Mother Jones and a
family of left-wing propagandists.
M r. Bartley and The Institute
for Policy Studies are
about as compatible
philosophically as Jack Kemp and
Fidel Castro.
Mr. Bartley, hired by the newspa-
per in 1962, worked as a reporter in
Chicago and Philadelphia, and as
an editorial writer in New York,
before being assigned to Washing-
ton, D.C.
At the time, recalled a former
Washington-based Journal staffer,
"everybody in Washington loved
everybody in New York. There
were no turf problems, mainly
because the editorial page never
left New York"
Both Washington and New York
shared a common world view,
added the source, - "the old guard
Republican view of the world."
Robert Bartley changed all that.
In 1971 Mr. Bartley moved to
New York. In 1972 he became edi-
tor of the Journal's editorial page.
He surrounded himself with con-
servative writers who were seeking
fresh solutions to the problems
plaguing the American economy. A
young Bartley prot6g6 named Jude
Winniski started shuttling between
New York and Washington.
"That was the first conflict that
Bartley had with Al Otten, the
Washington bureau chief:' Mr. Win-
niski recalled. "Otten protested that
'Winniski is going to Washington
once a month at least, and intrud-
ing on our turf: "
These rumbles over turf soon
turned ideological.. Mr. Winniski
was discovering, through the work
of others, supply-side economic
theory. At first Mr. Bartley was
skeptical. It took Mr. Winniski two
years to convince him, Mr. Bartley
said later, at the rate of "an inch a
day."
But once Mr. Bartley was con-
vinced that supply-side could be
the savior of America's sagging
economy, he would become its most
resolute prophet in print. The
Washington bureau refused to swal-
low the new editorial sacrament.
The schism was also aggravated
by Watergate.
(~~ artley decided that the
Washington establishment
was not giving Nixon a fair
shake, and more or less appointed
me to be Nixon's defense attorney
on the editorial page:' said Jude
Winniski. "That upset the guys in
the Washington bureau "
The special prosecutor's office
stopped leaking stories to the Jour-
nal's Washington bureau, reserving
its tips for the rival Washington
Post and The New York Times.
Mr. Bartley became editor of the
newspaper in 1979.
In 1983, Peter Kann became
associate publisher and Norman
Pearlstine his new managing editor.
The Journal's internal structure
only added to the confusion. Unlike
other periodicals, such as The New
York Times, where A.M. Rosenthal
is editor-in-chief of all the newspa-
per, "Bartley and Pearlstine are on
the same level of the organizational
chart," a source noted. "They can't
pull rank on one another. If they
have a conflict they have to take it
outside of the Journal to Dow-Jones
[owners of the Journals and of
course that almost never happens."
Worse, under Mr. Kann and Mr.
Pearlstine The Wall Street Journal
was about to assume a brand new
persona, swelling, say the critics,
the symptoms of psychosis.
Continual
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The New York Times had both
enlarged and improved its business
section, as had The Washington
Post, and the Times-Mirror and
Knight-Ridder newspaper chains.
Business Week was resurgent,
Forbes was booming. Dozens of
specialty publications were begin-
ning to intrude on the Journal's
franchise.
Mr. Kann and Mr. Pearlstine
began a balancing act, attempting
to list their ship far enough to port
to allow a broader base of readers
to be hauled on board, while keep-
ing the Journal's elite cargo of
movers and shakers lashed
securely to the deck.
New features were added to the
"second front" page, including
more personal-finance stories
aimed at democratizing the news-
paper's readership. News columns
began bemoaning the plight of the
poor and the unemployed.
Sections of the newspaper
seemed to be splitting at the seams,
drifting left or right, wherever the
current of commerce flowed fast-
est. And from every ideological
vantage point, the Journal was
slinging insults at the stunned,
stranded "empire makers ... who,
an ad boasted, "lead the largest
corporations" Mobil, after an arti-
cle it deemed unfair, announced a
boycott of the newspaper, refusing
to give the Journal interviews or
advertising dollars.
The newspaper's growing
identity-crisis was com-
pounded by continuing inter-
nal friction.
In Septem r 1983, Mr.
Pearlstine app inted Albert Hunt
as chief of the per's Washington
bureau. Mr. Hunt, a 20-year Journal
veteran with high-visibility in
Washington (he is married to PBS
correspondent Judy Woodruff) and
a personal friend and political ally
of Mr. Pearlstine, used his clout to
carve out space on the Journal's
back page, where his writers could
publish their opinions, on occasion
contradicting Mr. Bartley's editori-
als.
Earlier this year, the Washington
bureau was complaining again,
after Mr. Bartley's editorial staff
retained Fred Barnes (a
Washington-basedwriter) to write
an article about a Washington
political figure.
"The split [at the Journal] really
reaches beyond the [political] par-
ties," said Mr. Barnes, now a senior
editor at The New Republic mag-
azine. "It's a question of whether
you view the world the way the
Washington establishment does, or
the way the conservative visionar-
ies do:'
Nowhere is that visionary view
more blatant than in the ideological
marriage-of-convenience between
Mr. Bartley and Journal investiga-
tive reporter Jonathan Kwitny, who
on occasion has sent out soft Valen-
tines about Cuba.
In 1984, Mr. Kwitny published a
book called "Endless Enemies;' in
which he reviled American foreign-
policy makers in general, and the
Reagan administration in particu-
lar, for their failure to permit for-
mer Third World "colonies" to
develop their own resources and
become self-sustaining nations free
of crippling debt.
Mr. Kwitny, a 1960s Peace Corps
graduate, revealed his Marxist
slant in an interview session with
Publisher's ee y magazine.
"... There's a widespread
impression here that when Third
World countries can't repay their
debts to American banks and the
IMF,"' said Mr. Kwitny, "they're rip-
ping us off. But it is in fact the
banks and the big international
manufacturing companies that are
ripping us off ... We help set up
those one-party governments over-
seas, all in the name of fighting
communism.. International corpo-
rations imposing themselves on the
world with our assistance - I don't
like that any more than I like
socialism."
According to his critics, Mr.
Kwitny'ss front-page Journal ieces
could have run uncensore in
of er Jones or Counter-Spy,? the
defunct publication of turn-
coat Phillip Agee.
n act r. witn 's critics
charge, one o is most publicized
articles was base on material bor-
rowed from Mr. gee. Mr. Kwitny
wrote a Journal article in T9$i d'is-
cre it~m~a -1-ate Department
"Whiite Pa eSr on Salvador
(which revea e t at t e ovtets
and their satellites were supplying
clandestine mi ita ai to a va-
doran guerrillas). Mr. Agee owfed
fat Mr. Kwitny a cribbed tTie
criti ue of t the white Paper rom
the Counter-Spy c one, The Covert
Action Information Bulletin, with
-
out giving Mr. gee proper credit.
I n the current Columbia Journal-
ism Review, responding to a
critical letter to the editors
from Accuracy In Media chairman
Reed Irvine, Mr. Kwitny said that,
"When Agee raised the issue of pla-
giarism, I did not even remember
that a paper he wrote was in the
voluminous file I had assembled on
the White Paper."
More recently, Mr. Kwitny tus-
sle with two other leading con-
servatives. An Aug. , article
Z
he wrote (part of a series) sug-
gested complicity by Michael
een, o the Center tor rate is
and nternationa totes at
Georgetown University, and author
Claire Sterling in an a ege CIA
scheme to get a met Au i Agca to
sa t at t e Soviets and Bulgarians
were e m the plot to kill the
pope.
On Aug. 26, the Journal printed
letters of denial from both Mr.
Ledeen and Mrs. Sterling, followed
by an editor's note stating that,
"The Journal stands by its stories:'
Last Wednesday, however, in an
article about the Agca affair writ-
ten by editorial writer Gordon
Crovitz, managing editor Norman
Pearlstine admitted that Mr.
Kwitny had erred. Mr. Pearlstine's
statement was couched in unmis-
takable lawyer-ese.
.. One article in the series"
said r. Pearlstine, "may have left
the unintended and erroneous
impression that Mr. Pazienza (the
prime villain in Mr. Kwitny's CIA
scenario] supplied information to
Mrs. Sterling regarding the
attempte assassination o the
pope. t e extent t at sucTi an
impression may have 66n-created
Ire ret and a ogize for tt .:
i onat an Kwitny's appar-
ently inaccurate reference to Mrs.
Sterling, following on the heels of
his controversial piece last year on
Rep. Geraldine Ferraro (tainting
the Democratic vice-presidential
candidate with tales of her late
father-in-law's Mafioso contacts)
lower his stock at the newspaper?
Not likely.
"Kwitny," said Jude Winniski, "is
no problem to the editorial page.
Bartley is one of his defenders. The
Wall Street Journal editorial page
is not 'conservative,' " Mr. Winniski
added. "It's a radical page in every
sense."
"Jon did a pretty good job for us
on the Ferraro story," said Mr. Bart-
ley, "and took a lot of heat for it. I
think he ran into a little trouble
here with the Pazienza story," Mr.
Bartley added, "but who's fault that
was is still in question. You have to
figure out what kind of game
Pazienza's playing."
But despite Mr. Bartley's pre-
dictable public defense, an inside
source insisted that Mr. Bartley
definitely is no admirer of Jona-
than Kwitny.
What kind of game is The
Wall Street Journal play-
ing?
Sources said that Mr. Kwitny's
article on Mrs. Ferraro was orig-
inally destined to appear in a page-
one news column. When news
Continued
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staffers compiatnea that it was a
smear, Mr. Bartley put it on his edi-
torial page. Mr. Bartley, in that
instance (and in others), found Mr.
Kwitny useful to the editorial page.
The radical visionaries "don't
like foreign aid," another conserva-
tive writer explained, "and Kwitny
says that foreign aid's been bad,
although not for conservative rea-
sons"
"In some ways," said Mr. Bartley,
"it would be easier to live in two
different worlds and never talk to
each other. I think the real story is,"
Mr. Bartley added, "that this is one
of the few papers in the United
States where the editorial writers
and the news department do talk to
each other."
But is that noisy dialogue really
the sharp debate that it seems, or is
there a hidden harmony beneath
the counterpoint?
Mr. Bartley is a radical critic of
bail-outs and protectionism and
anything else that cramps purist
free enterprise. He believes that
unbridled economic growth is the
path to salvation, and criticizes
businessmen who put their self-
interest before their free-
enterprise principles, complaining
about their "lack of ideological
seriousness, a kind of hypocrisy."
Mr. Kwitny's own radicalism (his
scathing Journal catalogues of
capitalism's flaws) highlights that
"hypocrisy" from another angle, as
do the occasional columns contri-
buted by Alexander Cockburn.
Mr. Cockburn, in a Sept. 12 Jour-
nal article on a Castro-hosted
conference on the Third World debt
crisis, urged readers to recognize
that Fidel Castro was right when he
said that the debt should be can-
celed.
Mr. Kwitny might argue, as he
did in "Endless Enemies," that the
Third World debt crisis is a piece
of villainy concocted by interna-
tional bankers and manufacturers.
Mr. Bartley's editorial page
might argue that the international
financial community shouldn't have
thrown good money after bad in the
first place. A Journal editorial last
week in no way contradicted the
analyses of Mr. Cockburn and Mr.
Kwitny, calling the debt crisis a
"do-it-yourself project" for the
debtor nations and calling on the
Reagan administration to introduce
"the marvel of supply-side reforms-
... to the countries that need them
most"
The viewpoints fit one on top of
the other, like the layered skin of an
onion.
Somehow, on the pages of The
Wall Street Journal, the right has
met the left at the point where the
political spectrum turns a full cir-
cle.
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