Following the board of Dow Jones endorsing Rupert Murdoch''s $5-billion takeover proposal, (See: Dow Jones board clears $5 billion News Corp bid, seeks Bancrofts'' nod) Dow Jones director Dieter von Holtzbrinck has resigned in protest, saying the takeover would threaten its journalistic values.

Von Holtzbrinck is the chairman of the supervisory board of his family firm von Holtzbrinck that owns a number of leading German newspapers.

In a letter to his fellow directors, von Holtzbrinck said the News Corp takeover bid was very generous in financial terms, but he was "very worried" about the impact of the bid on The Wall Street Journal and its editorial independence.

Though News Corp has pledged to fully respect and maintain The Wall Street Journal''s independence and that of the other business news services owned by Dow Jones, von Holtzbrinck is not reassured.

He said that while he could not prove whether his concerns were right, he was going by News Corporation''s past practices.

Some members of the Bancroft family, control 64 per cent of the firm''s voting shares are known to have reservations about the deal.