The Foxification of National Geographic startled a few lemurs in the American media jungle last week. A new joint venture, built on an axis which takes the globally known magazine and its televisual and digital assets from the not-for-profit sector and puts them under the control of the Murdoch family’s 21st Century Fox, caused initial shock and dismay. While outside the US National Geographic might be best known to consumers as the source of monkey pictures in dentists’ waiting rooms, it is a significant investor in science and research; and while the Murdoch millions boosting the endowment are welcome, the shadow of a different editorial line is not. But maybe for once those fears are misplaced.

The surprise $725m purchase by Fox of a majority stake in the media assets of the National Geographic Society is the first major deal for James Murdoch since he became chief executive of the company in June this year, and an interesting statement of intent, perhaps, in terms of what he intends to bring to the division. The immediate and mainly negative reaction to the news from scientists and writers in the US drew attention to Rupert Murdoch’s tweeted climate scepticism, and Fox News’ editorial line, which has in general been hostile to data and argument indicating that climate change is real and caused by human activity.

While James Murdoch is as hard-edged a capitalist as you will find in any midtown Manhattan executive suite, he is a very different proposition to his father, and this might be good news for those fearful for National Geographic’s independence and commitment to scientific exploration and communication. As chief executive of Sky in the UK, Murdoch junior made the company carbon-neutral as early as 2006. Its headquarters are still identifiable by their wind turbine. In endless interviews about the greening of Sky, James Murdoch always made the point that the choice to make environmental responsibility part of the company brand was a “business decision”, but the policies were real and implemented.

When running BSkyB, James Murdoch became, at a young age, arguably the most successful media executive in Europe. He increased profitability and investment in original programming, brought internet service provision to the company and was genuinely outsmarting competitors on issues of digital distribution. Unfortunately his success in one part of the company led to disaster in another. His relocation (by his father) in 2007 to oversee all of News Corp’s UK businesses, including its newspapers, put him squarely in charge during the phone-hacking crisis. His mishandling of the affair saw him resign his executive chairman post in 2012 and relocate to the US where he has been extremely low-profile until the Fox announcement this summer. The lack of engagement (and judgment) James Murdoch showed in the hacking scandal is characteristic of how little he is drawn to editorial process or indeed journalists.

National Geographic has been one of the more notable and high-profile successes at digital experimentation. Now when detained by the dentist you can scroll through its enormously popular Instagram feed of monkey pictures, or read features on the social web, where it was a significant lead partner in the Facebook “Instant Articles” experiments. An early user of new sensor technologies and drones to aid reporting, and a successful innovator in video techniques, Nat Geo becomes arguably News Corp’s most innovating digital publishing asset.

When his father bought the Wall Street Journal for $5bn in 2007, it was amid howls of protest that the august news institution would be editorially ruined. Assurances were given and editorial boards were constructed to ensure “independence of editorial”; but Rupert Murdoch has never bought a newspaper in order to leave it alone, and immediately went about reconstructing a brand with imported editors and new initiatives.

James Murdoch has said simply of National Geographic that there will be minimal change, and the investment in the brand is to maintain its editorial approach and voice rather than to change it. The expectation, however, that the TV, magazine and digital income will be enough to cross-subsidise the National Geographic Society, which funds education and research, is an inversion of the existing wisdom. The media market, generally speaking, thinks charitable cross-subsidy needs to go into journalism rather than flow away from it. National Geographic is the second piece of non-profit media to disappear into a commercial company in as many months. In August, Sesame Workshop, the production company that makes Sesame Street, was bought by HBO. Here the reasons were starkly financial. With an $11m loss last year the production unit needed to find a buyer or cease production.

National Geographic’s financial situation is very different, but the instinct that scale is needed in digital publishing is the same everywhere. If James Murdoch is seeking to teach the market that he gets digital, is journalistically responsible, and can be trusted to be ethical with precious assets that even America’s unsentimental media hold dear, then he has picked the right deal.

• This article was amended on 21 September 2015. An earlier version said Rupert Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal for $5bn in 1997. That happened in 2007.

