Defenders of journalistic integrity are nervously gnawing at their fingertips now that the Dow Jones board has recommended accepting Rupert Murdoch’s offer to purchase their souls. All that remains now is for the Bancrofts to meet and then reveal their decision. They can still block the sale.

Observers say that it is too close to call. There are a few noble members of the controlling shareholders group that are standing firm against Murdoch. There are also those who are salivating at the thought of the new riches the sale will bring them. For the rest, they would do well to consider the prospects News Corp is floating for the editorial board that is intended to keep a distance between Murdoch and the Journal.

The Rogues Gallery:

Theodore B. Olson: Olsen was Assistant Attorney General under Ronald Reagan, whom he also defended in the Iran/Contra scandal. He went on to become Solicitor General in the administration of Bush, the Elder. Later he represented Bush, the Lesser in the Supreme Court case versus Al Gore.

Jack Fuller: Fuller was president of Tribune Publishing Company, and former editor of the Chicago Tribune. The Tribune Company is an unabashedly conservative enterprise and the Chicago Tribune is newsprint version of Fox News.

Thomas Bray: Bray is the former editorial-page editor of the Detroit News. He has a pre-existing relationship with the Wall Street Journal as a writer for OpinionJournal.com, which the Journal owns. At OJ he shared bylines with ultra-right wingers like Paul Gigot, John Fund, and Peggy Noonan.

Susan Hockfield: Hockfield is president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to her post at MIT, she was a provost at Yale where she was at the center of a bitter controversy surrounding the Graduate Employees and Students Organization and its unionization efforts. She was staunchly anti-union.

With this preview of what Murdoch is proposing for the entity that is supposed to prevent him from influencing newsroom operations, we can see clearly that he is not the least bit interested in keeping his word or adhering to the terms of the agreement negotiated to preserve editorial independence. I certainly hope that the wavering Bancrofts and other shareholders are paying attention.

Update (8/1/07): The latest roster for the board now includes Lou Boccardi, former head of the Associated Press, Jennifer Dunn, former Republican House member, and Nicholas Negroponte, founder of MIT’s Media Lab.

If this means that Olsen and Hockfield are gone, I’d call this an improvement. But Dunn, Fuller, and Bray, could still cause trouble.