From Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo, today:

Everybody seems to be reporting this morning that Judith Regan claims, in her $100 million lawsuit against NewsCorp, that an unnamed NewsCorp Executive told her to lie to and conceal evidence about Bernard Kerik from federal investigators to protect Rudy Giuliani.

Except the Wall Street Journal.

Even the New York Post has it.

From CNet News, yesterday:

Wall Street Journal to stop charging for Web content

Rupert Murdoch plans to give away the digital version of the Wall Street Journal, making News Corp. the latest company to give up on paid subscriptions.

"We are studying it and we expect to make that free," Murdoch was quoted by the Associated Press as he spoke to a group of investors in Australia. He said that "instead of having one million (subscribers)," the company will receive readers "in every corner of the earth."

Murdoch is banking that a free model for WSJ.com, which recently announced that it had topped the 1 million-subscriber mark, will send readership skyrocketing and that advertisers will then flock to the site.

According to the AP, the Journal's subscribers generated about $50 million in annual revenue.

Few online services have succeeded at making a go of paid subscriptions but the Journal was widely considered to be at the head of the pack. In September, The New York Times stopped trying to sell subscriptions to premium content.

Everyone knows that Murdoch is going to start slanting the Journal's coverage, omitting unfriendly stories and emphasizing friendly stories, just like he's done in every other newspaper he's ever purchased, regardless of promises not to do so. Murdoch, in turn, knows that no one is going to pay $50 per year for online access to slanted news. Before the number of people abandoning that service becomes embarassing to him, and an external verification of his pro-GOP, pro-Guiliani slant, he's announcing that it's a "better business decision" to drop the subscription fee.

Of course, since just about all of News Corp's newspapers already lose money in service to Murdoch's distorted agenda, it would be a "better business decision" to let real reporters do real reporting, regardless of where the truth leads, but Murdoch has demonstrated, very clearly, for decades, that losing money is far superior to printing unpleasant truths about his political beliefs.