Free the Free Press from Wall Street Plunder
EDITOR’S
NOTE: This column was censured by Hightower’s distribution company who did not
want it distributed because it would offend the mega-corporations who now
control most of the nation’s media. For that reason, many independent outlets,
like Progressive Charlestown, are proud to run this commentary. Will Collette
A
two-panel cartoon I recently saw showed a character with a sign saying: “First
they came for the reporters.” In the next panel, his sign says: “We don’t know
what happened after that.”
It
was, of course, a retort to Donald Trump’s campaign to demonize the news media
as “the enemy of the people.” But when it comes to America’s once-proud
newspapers, their worst enemy isn’t Trump — nor is it the rising cost of
newsprint or the “free” digital news on websites.
Rather,
the demise of the real news reporting by our city and regional papers is a
product of their profiteering owners.
Not the families and companies that built and nurtured true journalism, but the new breed of fast-buck hucksters who’ve scooped up hundreds of America’s newspapers from the bargain bins of media sell-offs.
These
hedge-fund scavengers know nothing about journalism and care less. They’re
ruthless Wall Street profiteers out to grab big bucks fast.
They
slash journalistic and production staff, void employee benefits, shrivel the
paper’s size and news content, sell the presses and other assets, and triple
the price of their inferior product — and then declare bankruptcy, shut down
the paper, and auction off the bones before moving on to plunder another town’s
paper.
By
2014, America’s two largest media chains — GateHouse and Digital First —
weren’t venerable publishers with any commitment to truth or civic
responsibility. Instead, their managers believe that good journalism is
measured by the personal profit they can squeeze from it.
As
revealed last year in an American
Prospect article,
GateHouse executives demanded that its papers cut $27 million from their
operating expenses.
Thousands of newspaper employees suffered in large part because one employee — the hedge fund’s CEO — had extracted $54 million in personal pay from the conglomerate, including an $11 million bonus.
Thousands of newspaper employees suffered in large part because one employee — the hedge fund’s CEO — had extracted $54 million in personal pay from the conglomerate, including an $11 million bonus.
The
core idea of the “civic commons” is that we are a self-governing people,
capable of creating and sustaining a society based on common good. A noble
aspiration!
But
achieving it requires a basic level of community-wide communication — a
reliable resource that digs out and shares truths so people know enough about
what’s going on to be self-governing.
This is the role Americans have long expected their local and regional newspapers to play — papers that are not merely in our communities, but of, by, and for them.
This is the role Americans have long expected their local and regional newspapers to play — papers that are not merely in our communities, but of, by, and for them.
Of
course, being profit-seeking entities, papers have commonly (and often
infamously) fallen far short of their noble democratic purpose. Overall,
though, a town’s daily (or, better yet, two or more dailies) makes for a more
robust civic life by devoting journalistic resources to truth telling.
Local
ownership matters, as some 1,500 of our towns have learned after Wall Street
demigods have swept in without warning to seize their paper, gut its
journalistic mission, and devour its assets.
For
example, Digital First, a huge private-equity profiteer, snatched the St. Paul Pioneer Press and,
demanding a ridiculous 25 percent profit margin from its purchase, stripped the
newsroom staff from a high of 225 journalists to 25!
As
the Prospect’s Robert
Kuttner reported, these
tyrannical private equity firms produce nothing but profits for faraway
speculators.
He
notes that the blandly named entities only exist “thanks to three loopholes in
the law.” The first lets them operate in the dark; the second provides an
unlimited tax deduction for the massive amounts of money they borrow to buy up
newspapers; and the third allows them to profit by intentionally bankrupting
the paper they take over.
Our
right to a free press is meaningless if Wall Street thieves destroy our
communities’ presses. The good news is that many enterprising people are
devising ways to rescue their newspapers. For more information, go to
dfmworkers.org.
Jim Hightower is a national
radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The
Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow. Hightower has spent
three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To
Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and
just-plain-folks.