A number of members of the Bancroft family say they would not have sold Dow Jones, publisher of the
Wall Street Journal,
to News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch if they had been aware of the phone hacking committed by News Corp.’s News International unit, according to
a report by ProPublica,
a non-profit organization, that was co-published with
The Guardian.
Christopher Bancroft, a Dow Jones board member who had sole voting control of a trust that represented 13% of Dow Jones shares in 2007, told ProPublica that the allegations that have been made public “would have been more problematic for me. I probably would have held out.”
Other Bancroft family members expressing similar views included Lisa Steele and Elisabeth Goth.
Family member Bill Cox III said he was happy with the price the family got and was “pretty happy being out of the newspaper business altogether.” But he also emailed ProPublica to add, “We did a deal with the devil.” (Source: ProPublica, July 13, 2011.)
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