A SENIOR EXECUTIVE in Rupert Murdoch’s media empire has been forced to resign over allegations in the Guardian newspaper of a circulation-boosting scam at the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
The Guardian’s Nick Davies reports that 31,000 out of the 75,000 European edition WSJs were in effect sponsored by companies who paid low prices for the newspapers and then gave them out to students for free.
The paper also alleges that companies who took part in the scheme were given favourable editorial by the paper which eventually ended up buying copies of its own editions when one of the sponsors threatened to pull out.
The allegations have led to the resignation of Andrew Langhoff, the managing director of the European operation of Dow Jones and Co which is the parent company of the paper owned by Murdoch.
The allegations are also likely to further damage Murdoch whose News Corporation has been under fire over the phone hacking scandal in the UK.
The Guardian further reports that the incident will add weight to the belief amongst some shareholders that News Corp has become what it terms a ‘rogue corporation’.
The Wall Street Journal reported the resignation of Andrew Langhoff, managing director of Dow Jones and Co in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, this week but said only that the resignation was a result of an investigation into two published articles which featured a company contractually linked to the paper’s circulation department.
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