Suddenly, all self-respecting billionaires need to own at
least one newspaper.
What’s
the hottest trend among men who have it all?
Buying
islands and Picassos is out. Buying newspapers is in. We’re not talking about
subscriptions here. All self-respecting billionaires should own at least one
newspaper, preferably a big one.
Within
a single week, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos agreed to spend $250 million to buy The
Washington Post from the Graham family and Red Sox owner
John W. Henry declared his intention to acquire The
Boston Globe from The New York Times Co. for $70 million.
Earlier this summer, BH Media, the newspaper division of billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway outfit, said it was snapping up The Press of Atlantic City for an undisclosed sum. BH Media already owned dozens of newspapers, including theRichmond Times-Dispatch and the Omaha World-Herald.
Meanwhile,
the arch-conservative billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch are still
believed to be angling for the Los Angeles Times over the loud
objections of the newspaper’s own staff. If that doesn’t pan out, maybe the
less conservative billionaire Eli Broad — a supporter of both stem cell
research and charter schools —
will.
What
are these moguls after? How did newspapers become status symbols in the
Internet age?
It
can’t be profit margins or market growth. The Washington Post says
its operating revenue plunged 44 percent over the past six years. And its print
circulation contracted by 7 percent during the first half of this year alone.
Will
Bezos, who says he only reads the digital editions of newspapers, use the Post to
benefit Amazon? He denies it.
“The
paper’s duty will remain to its readers and not to the private interests of its
owners,”Bezos said on
the day his media splurge went public. “We will continue to
follow the truth wherever it leads.”
Sticking
with the status quo under new ownership probably beats what
would happen if the Koch brothers bought the Post and handed
editorial control over to the John Birch Society. But it’s hard to buy the
notion that the major media is totally smitten with a search for the truth.
The
major mainstream media are card-carrying members of the Brotherhood of Secrecy.
Like most TV, cable, and radio networks, big U.S. newspapers generally belong
to a small array of
companies whose profits depend heavily on advertisers and the
stock market. These aren’t institutions noted for heartfelt concern over
fairness or truth. And fairness and truth aren’t usually the keys to how
billionaires make their fortunes either.
Sure,
there are plenty of brave independent journalists who manage to do their work
in spite of the corporate menace. But neither the government nor Wall Street
has to worry much about the mainstream press joining their crusade.
Warren
Buffett appears to belong to a special breed of newspaper-buying billionaire.
In 1977, long before his ongoing newspaper-purchasing spree, he acquired The
Buffalo News. Even before that, he bought the Omaha Sun, a
weekly newspaper that won a Pulitzer Prize
for investigative reporting under his wing. Prior to the Bezos
buyout, Buffett was the largest investor in The Washington Post Co.
But
in general, it’s hard to deny that the mainstream press is owned and run by the
rich, largely for their own comfort.
Coverage
can suffer as a result of the marriage of media and wealth. Take Social
Security: News coverage and commentary both start from the corporate premise
that benefits must be cut, while advocates who stress the importance of closing
tax loopholes that benefit the wealthy are mostly left out of the conversation.
Shortly
before whistleblower Edward Snowden divulged that the National Security Agency
is spying on everyone’s phone calls and emails, the media discovered that it’s
facing unprecedented scrutiny.
This
creates a dilemma: How loyal should the media remain to a security apparatus
that snoops on them too? Unfortunately, the answer is probably plenty loyal.
Even without a billionaire owner at the helm, money usually trumps principle.
It’s just too expensive to get entangled in the truth.
Emily Schwartz Greco is the managing editor
of OtherWords, a non-profit national
editorial service run by the Institute for Policy Studies. OtherWords columnist William A. Collins is
a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk, Connecticut.
OtherWords.org