CAN NEWSPAPER EDITORIALS BE HONEST?

Submitted by Roldo on Sun, 10/25/2009 - 11:47.

I’d have to agree with Elizabeth Sullivan’s Sunday column saying newspaper should take the responsibility of endorsing candidates and issues. I don’t agree, however, that they do it because they “care.” That’s giving them a little too much credit.

 

I think unfortunately that the closed way they make their endorsements are a disservice to the public.

 

The Pee Dee and other papers are always calling for “openness” from others. However, the decisions of the Pee Dee editorials provide no “openness.” They are closed about it. Kept mysterious as electing a pope.

 

We don’t know who wrote them. We don’t know if there was a vote, as we understand there is on certain matters. We don’t know if it was a 5-4 vote or a 6-0 vote. The score would make a big difference in how a reader would interpret the endorsement.

 

We don’t know, for example, whether Editor Susan Goldberg put any pressure for an Issue 3 editorial supporting the casino gambling issue here. My suspicion is she did. The fact that we don’t know the vote creates mistrust. The Pee Dee can’t afford any more mistrust.

 

We don’t know if Kevin O’Brien wrote a particular editorial. We could judge by the strong hints of immaturity in the writing. His columns, for example, are more jokes than considered conservatism. He is a disservice to real conservatives.

 

I’ve been going over a lot of personal history as I pass my 50th year of some of kind of reporting. What became clear to me is that I became disenchanted with newspapers very early in that time. My distrust came quickly.

 

Newspapers – or as some call them now, MSM (mainstream media) – long ago destroyed much of their credibility. They became voices of the establishment. They reflect conventional corporate ideas and values. They fail miserably to support of the needs of the poor, the poorly educated, and the unfairly treated.

 

They have upside down coverage of the most powerful, favoring the influential almost automatically. So-called objectivity substitutes for truth-telling. The scales were rigged, it was clear to me early on.

 

Newspapers cannot survive if they continue to represent those interests and values.

 

The New York Times last week said that it had more revenue from subscribers than advertisers. That’s really how it should be.

 

Newspapers would begin possibly to reflect the interests of readers. What a thought!

 

Boy, would that be a change. Maybe the only chance newspapers have to survive.

 

Why don’t they try it? I would not bet on it. Would you?

 

 

 

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I would not bet on it - RIP, PD

I'm glad you took this editorial statement on, Roldo, as you know the seedy world of MSM best.

I was troubled greatly by this uninformative and disingenuous cover-my-ass piece by likely to be soon unemployed PD editorial director Elizabeth Sullivan, as well. Perhaps her next employer will buy her, if there is an industry interested to employ her... the PR firms are pretty filled-up with ex-journalists, these days.

I'm thinking of relocating to Atlanta, and their newspaper just made that seem far more desirable. The PD is a major reason I am considering leaving Cleveland.

Another reason to leave Cleveland is the glut of unimpressive journalists fired from our mainstream and alternative media here who are not leaving Cleveland and are now screwing up Northeast Ohio in new and distracting ways... has anyone reflected on the harm to be caused by old economy dinosaurs extending the ice age here for more years, through their roles in future industry sectors here... PD journalists becoming planning pundits, for example, as seems the career path ahead for Steven Litt. Each one must find their new home in the new economy, after the PD is gone.

Until the PD is gone, I'd like to see a complete profile of each member of the editorial board and their votes on each issue. Then, we may determine if any of these people in any way represent our interests, or even our character, and should be viewed as useful visionaries for us.

I doubt I would chose anyone from the PD to think or speak for me, in any case - the last PD journalist whose work I cared for there was Tom Brazaitis, RIP.

Disrupt IT

Cleveland needs another

Cleveland needs another newspaper to keep the PD honest.  But, at least we have the internet to get other points of view.  I am glad I found this site; I found it while reading cleveland.com comments.  If it wasn't for that I would have never known it existed.  So sometimes the MSM aka the PD gets useful information out to the public.  Just a thought. 

I believe the PD has been very untrustworthy about New Media

The PD has been trying to figure new media out since the 1990s, and failed. They may have allowed a few mentions of REALNEO to slip through Cleveland.com, but I am certain the company has taken a stand against promoting new media not profitable to them, which I consider a violation of real inti-trust laws.

I am waiting for the FBI to come down on the PD and their owner, Advance Communications, for antitrust in the age of new media, and I hope REAL COOP may be one of the lead plantiffs against Advance Communications, finally bringing them to justice.

They have been an insult and harmful to the entire REAL COOP and REALNEO community. We are the most innovative and exciting thing to happen in NEO this decade, despite the anti-trustful treatment of us by the Main Stream Media.

That is economic corruption harmful to our regional new economy, and far more newsworthy than any German solar exeuctives who supposedly moved here and then left, a year later, if ever really existed at all.

I'm glad Cleveland.com tripped you our way, and that you are here, but I am not thankful for the PD in any other ways.

Citizens must replace the PD and must do so well... the writing is on the Web.

If they (the FBI) can break

If they (the FBI) can break open the PD, they can get to the core of more of the corruption schemes and make a lot more connectons through the web system that seems to be linked directly and through the PD.