Protests over Kochs' newspaper takeover

[cratehorus]

Protests have erupted in cities where the chain owns newspapers, including Chicago and Orlando. The chain includes the Chicago Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel, the Baltimore Sun, the Hartford Courant, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Baltimore Sun, Daily Press and The Morning Call.

Unions are supporting the protests because (a) the media outlets would become potent anti-union propaganda tools under the Kochs, and (b) union retirement plans are heavily invested in the current ownership of the Tribune, making a sale to the Kochs an enormous conflict of interest.

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi explains:

The Koch brothers have always taken powerful and unequivocal stances against public sector unions and their retirement plans. They were primary financial backers of Scott Walker's anti-union movement in Wisconsin, where the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity group engaged in massive ad buys and signature-collecting campaigns to back Walker's play to crush collective bargaining rights for public workers. Through direct donations and support of groups like the conservative state policy group ALEC, the Kochs have taken aim at public unions, public union lobbying and public pensions in multiple states across the country, among other things spending $4 million in California to support Prop 32, a state ballot measure restricting union political activity.

http://teamsternation.blogspot.com/2013/...mored.html

The Kochs are major funders of the American conservative movement, funneling tens of millions of dollars every year to build a right-wing infrastructure geared toward reducing the size and impact of government. As the Times detailed, at a 2010 convention of like-minded political donors, the Kochs "laid out a three-pronged, 10-year strategy to shift the country toward a smaller government with less regulation and taxes." Part of the stratgy called for investing in the media.

And that has staffers at Tribune Company newspapers -- several of whom requested anonymity for fear of losing their jobs -- nervous about the possibility that a Koch takeover could bring with it an ideological focus on the news that risks turning the papers into what one reporter calls a "conservative mouthpiece."

According to those staffers, such concerns are rampant at the papers. "Nobody I know in the newsroom would find it a happy event to have the Koch brothers owning the paper," said one longtime Chicago Tribune staffer, who suggested that the purpose of the takeover is so that the brothers can use the publications to "promulgate their political views."

"I haven't heard anyone here who has welcomed the idea of the Koch brothers... the Koch brothers, that scares people," added an LA Times scribe.

"I think we all have concerns when you think an owner might try to influence editorial content," explained Angela Kuhl, Newspaper Guild unit chair at The Baltimore Sun. "That is sort of contrary to what the newspapering business should be about, free press. You don't necessarily want owners and publishers dictating content."

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/15915...mouthpiece

[Minimalist]

Sssh....can't you see the "invisible hand of the market" grabbing us by the balls?

[cratehorus]

Sssh....can't you see the "invisible hand of the market" grabbing us by the balls?

it's sickening and disgusting the way conservative groups are blatantly controlling media sources......... too their own gain..... at a certain point it no longer beomes republican v. democrat but simply the rich v. the poor.... these people have such an intense hatred for the well being of americans (or non-rich the world over) they have a "plan" too control the media that may even outlast their own lives

[Minimalist]

at a certain point it no longer beomes republican v. democrat but simply the rich v. the poor

A point which passed generations ago.

You know when Lincoln said "government of the people, by the people and for the people?" It wasn't true then, either.