Since I’m reawakening my blog anyway, what the heck; I’ll rant a bit.
Mastadon has been blowing up lately about the respective owners of the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post stopping their editorial boards from endorsing vice president Kamala Harris for president. The Times was even gonna do a whole series leading up to it, called “The Case Against Trump,” no doubt explaining in detail why former president Donald Trump is senile and evil. But owner Patrick Soon-Shiong shut it down. Three editorial board members have quit in protest—editor Marial Garza, and writers Karin Klein and Robert Greene.
The Mastodon posts have largely been about how awful it is that these feckless billionares are interfering with free speech, and speculating the owners are probably doing it because they’re either Trump supporters, or expect him to win… and if he’s gonna go full fascist on everybody (and he can now that the Supreme Court has removed the guardrails), they wanna remain standing as he vengefully retaliates against all the media that previously opposed him.
I actually don’t think it’s that. I don’t think politics are the motivator so much as the money is. “Follow the money,” remember? And according to the money, editorial boards and political endorsements are bad for business. If your paper endorses Trump, it’s not the fear that Trump’s coming to getcha; it’s the fear Trump fans, and they are legion, will pull all their advertising.
Same with endorsing Trump: Harris fans will pull all their advertising. Same with endorsing a proposition which certain big businesses oppose: They’ll pull their advertising. Editorial opinions have a cost, and while the editorial boards might think that cost is totally worth it, ’cause free speech, the billionaire who actually owns the newspaper, who’s already agitated by the fact print media is a dying industry, might decide it’s way cheaper to keep all the advertisers… and get the editorial board to resign in protest, and that way he doesn’t have to pay ’em severance.
And if he happens to also be a Trump supporter, that’s just a bonus.
A month and 26 years ago, my aunt and I started a newspaper in rural Nevada County. One of my editorial policies going in, was the paper wouldn’t endorse candidates. We were here to report news, not take political sides.
Believe it or not, this was actually my idea. Yep, me. The opinionated guy. Voluntarily stifling his own opinion.
It was for a couple reasons. The most obvious is I was brand-new to the county. I moved there in August 1998, and we cranked out the first issue on 3 September. I didn’t know any of the local issues. I was still getting to know them. Can’t comment on what you don’t know. Not that this stops certain people!
The other was I didn’t wanna alienate anybody. This was a brand-new newspaper, and I wanted the locals to see it as their newspaper, and it wasn’t gonna happen if we were some political rag. I didn’t want half the population hating us. I wanted all of them on board. Well, not the Nazis, but everyone else.
Oh, I knew I was gonna alienate some people anyway. Reporting the truth, when certain people would really rather we report nothing, was gonna anger people. Running corrections was gonna anger people who didn’t wanna be corrected. Certain letters to the editor were gonna enrage people—and did. Our first piece of hate mail came from someone who was furious we ran a hunting photo. There are always gonna be haters. I just wasn’t gonna troll for more haters by taking political sides.
And for the most part it worked. The paper was a hit with the public. Was till I left, anyway.
People, especially conservatives, see the American media as “the liberal media” because of their editorial boards.
Yeah okay, sometimes it’s the liberal bias in the articles. Sometimes. If you didn’t know the editorial board of the medium was liberal, and didn’t already stereotype the medium as “liberal,” most of the time you wouldn’t even know there was any liberal bias; you’d think it was an accurate piece about a hurricane, or a campaign stop, or corruption in the state capitol, or corruption in a business, or a profile about a newsmaker. Most of the time the question won’t even be, “What politics does this reporter have?” but “Did the reporter get the facts straight?” (Usual answer: Well, sorta. Superficially. There’s a lot more depth to this story, left unreported.)
And sometimes it’s the news judgment: Which stories did they prioritize? Liberal reporters like to expose corruption; conservative reporters like to expose vice. I could always count on my local conservative TV news channel to have lots of crime stories. (Plus it’s way cheaper to listen to the police scanner all day long, than to investigate politicans that are cheating the taxpayers, and businesses that are cheating the customers.)
But usually it’s the pundits. Fox News isn’t considered “conservative news” because of all the conservatives who work in their newsroom: It’s the blowhards on their hour-long talk shows, ranting about immigrants and spreading conspiracy theories. It’s the pundits who get the ratings; it’s the pundits who set the tone. It also helps makes Fox News’s newsroom become even more conservative, ’cause if you’re a conservative reporter who doesn’t wanna work for a “liberal” outlet, you’re gonna want to work there.
There’s certainly money to be made if you’re a biased news medium. Plenty of conservative companies are quite happy to advertise on Fox News. Well, until Fox News does something to piss ’em off, like fact-check Donald Trump the way journalists are supposed to fact-check politicians. Like I said, there are always gonna be haters. But if Fox News keeps their feet firmly planted in conservative nationalism, even at the expense of actual news, for the most part they’re gonna appease their audience and advertisers.
But that’s the part I object to. News should never be compromised by your politics. Truth is truth, and if it doesn’t neatly, conveniently fit in your conservative (or liberal) worldview, tough crap: That’s what happened. Your job is to report what happened.
Otherwise you’re not news anymore. You’re entertainment. Which is really what all partisan media is, whether it’s World Net Daily or the Huffington Post. It’s keeping the partisans happy by telling them, “Relax; you’re right; the world is exactly what you think it is; we’re not here to challenge you in any way. Keep on hating the opposition.”
Back to the Post and Times. What you’ve got in both cases is an owner or
Would they have decided the same thing if these were gonna be Trump endorsements? Maybe not! Maybe they didn’t like that their editorial boards were going “astray,” and struck back with naked partisanship. And y’know, it’s entirely their right to do so. Billionaires have the same right to free speech as do the editorial boards. True, billionaires are more likely to be wrong, because their money creates hugely different self-interests from the common folk, insulates them from real-world problems, and mammonism in general corrupts them in all sorts of ways. True, their wealth, and the fact they own major media, makes their voices seriously disproportional. Even so: If I had their money and platform, and my editorial boards were saying stuff I greatly disagreed with, exactly why should I put their stuff in my paper? They can leave, go get Substacks, and say it there.
Or they can start a newspaper. I’ve helped start two. It’s not hard.