How Now Dow Jones?

Mediabistro reports on Hollywood Reporter Paul Bond’s take that Bill O’Reilly’s slamming of GE corporate and its management led to its financial problems.

According to Mediabistro, while Keith Olbermann of MSNBC (which is owned by GE) attacks Bill-O personally, O’Reilly won’t go after “He Who Shall Not Be Named” and directly targets the company and its president Jeffrey Immelt.

Bond writes when a emailer thanked O’Reilly for convincing him to sell his GE shares, O’Reilly said, “We knew what would happen to GE, and it has happened. You were smart to listen.”

However, another cable news blog, Inside Cable News, points out that O’Reilly does not have that much power. That the dimming performance of GE is more due to slides in its financial unit, hard hit as any money company, than to Bill-O’s digs.

But Olberblogger wonders — could Bill O’Reilly or Faux Noise really have some impact not only on GE’s financial situation, but the USA’s as well? 

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp owns Dow Jones the publishers of  the Wall Street Journal, America’s financial bible and proprietors of the hallowed Dow Jones Industrial Averages.

The Wall Street Journal editorial pages lean extremely right as does Fox News and other Murdoch media, which have gone out of its way to blast Democrats, “liberal elite media companies,” their corporate bosses, personalities, et al.

Now, as David Letterman says, “I’m an ignorant person.” I’m very stupid about the economy, financial politics and anything to do with math, so I do not understand how Dow Jones interacts with Wall Street. 

Therefore, my question:  

Could Rupert Murdoch and/or his minions manipulate the Dow Jones, and thus Wall Street, to create or make worse our current financial crisis? Could such a thing be done to make the Obama Administration look ineffective as well as abort any opportunity to focus on other problems due to the bail-out requirements?

Please, wiser and truly informed folks, enlighten me?

Thanks!