An owner “most properly, considers his newspaper as a plain business proposition.” WSJ, 1925Anyone considering the absurd talk of editorial strictures being put around the Wall Street Journal prior to its possible purchase by Rupert Murdoch might want to look into the Journal’s own archives.

Back in January 1925 it published an op-ed titled, “A Fictitious Public Interest.”

According to the Journal’s leader writers then:

A newspaper is a private enterprise, owing nothing whatever to the public, which grants it no franchise. It is therefore ‘affected’ with no public interest. It is emphatically the property of its owner, who is selling a manufactured product at his own risk.