The Massachusetts GOP is becoming more extreme and authoritarian

This post was first published last Friday as part of the Media Nation member newsletter. In order to become a member for $5 a month, please click here.

As the Massachusetts Republican Party becomes more extreme, it’s moving further and further toward authoritarianism in order to intimidate those with whom its leaders disagree.

Just a few weeks ago it seemed beyond the pale when a member of the state committee, Deborah Martell, wrote emails in which she said she was “sickened” that a gay Republican candidate for Congress, Jeffrey Sossa-Paquette, had adopted children along with his husband.

Since then, the party has targeted a Drag Queen Story Hour at the Plymouth Public Library under the caption “Is this really the new normal?,” republishing the library’s phone number on its public Facebook page just in case anyone wants to, you know, express their constitutionally protected views. And last week the party revealed the shocking (!) information that Emma Platoff, a recently hired Boston Globe reporter who’s been covering the party’s meltdown, is a registered Democrat.

“The Boston Globe’s nonstop negative portrayal of Massachusetts Republicans sure makes sense now,” wrote party chair Jim Lyons in an email to members. “Today I learned that the reporter assigned to cover us is a registered Democrat. Journalists, registered as members of the Democratic Party, working in news media, covering Massachusetts Republicans. Well, knock me over with a feather.”

For more details, I refer you to this Twitter thread by Ed Lyons, a political activist from the moderate wing of the Republican Party. As Lyons shows, the GOP makes it appear that finding out Platoff’s party affiliation was as easy as plugging her name into an online form in Connecticut, where she used to live. In fact, you also have to enter someone’s date of birth and town or city of residence, raising the possibility that confidential information was used improperly in order to discover that she’s a Democrat.

https://twitter.com/mysteriousrook/status/1407670033514479616

Now, a few words about a reporter declaring a party affiliation. It’s no big deal. Ethical codes would forbid a journalist from serving as an active member of a political party by, say, serving on a city or town committee. We can’t make political donations, put political signs on our yards, or take part in any other partisan political activity. But a party affiliation is meaningless. We can declare ourselves as Democrats, Republicans, independents, Greens, whatever. We can vote, although some journalists choose not to.

Up until 2000, I was a registered Democrat. I switched my party affiliation to “unenrolled” that spring so I could take a Republican ballot in the presidential primary. I decided I liked it and never switched back. But it made no difference in how I reported on politics.

It appears that Lyons and company are attempting to intimidate Platoff, just as they were attempting to intimidate librarians in Plymouth. The goal is to divert attention from their descent into Trumpism.

From time to time I tweet a humorous (but serious) message that it’s time for Gov. Charlie Baker to leave the Republican Party. To his credit, he’s been critical of the Lyons wing. But he needs to say and do more.

Soon-Shiong ducks question on why he didn’t move to stop Alden from buying Tribune

Patrick Soon-Shiong. Photo (cc) 2019 by the World Economic Forum.

Billionaire Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong evaded the question when CNN’s Brian Stelter asked him on the new “Reliable Sources” podcast why he didn’t intervene to prevent Alden Global Media from acquiring Tribune Publishing.

Here’s the exchange:

Stelter: Patrick, there are people who want to know why, with the Alden deal, you didn’t step in. This is the deal where Tribune was being taken over by the hedge fund Alden Global Capital. You are the biggest outside shareholder. You could have stepped in. There’s questions about why you decided to abstain, why you decided not to stop that from happening. Can you share with us why?

Soon-Shiong: Well, look, you know, I was a passive shareholder, and it was really important for the board to do what it has to do with regard to the rest of the Tribune holdings. I’ve got my hands full and frankly, really committed to the LA Times and San Diego Union-Tribune.

A quick recap: Alden, the worst newspaper owner on the planet, paid $633 million last month to boost its share of Tribune’s nine major-market dailies from 32% to 100%. Soon-Shiong, who held 25% of Tribune’s shares, could have just said no and given Baltimore hotel magnate and philanthropist Stewart Bainum more time to pull together his own deal.

Instead, Soon-Shiong abstained, and he did it in such a way that the deal was allowed to go through. That is, if he had formally abstained, the sale would have been stopped.

And now Alden is decimating Tribune’s newspapers, just as it has with its 100-paper MediaNews Group chain.

Previous coverage.

Become a member of Media Nation for just $5 a month.

 

S.C. newspaper is being transferred from Gannett to local ownership

The weekly newspaper in Barnwell, South Carolina, is being acquired from Gannett by a local owner. The People-Sentinel reports:

Barnwell native Jonathan Vickery, who is currently the newspaper’s editor, has entered into an agreement with the current owner, a subsidiary of Gannett Media Corp., to take over ownership on July 1. The newspaper was last locally owned by the late Bob and Kathy Harris who sold the newspaper in 1983 to Community Communications Spartanburg and retired.

We need more of this. And check out the funky website.

Nikole Hannah-Jones won’t accept UNC’s job offer unless she is granted tenure

The Hussman School of Journalism and Media at UNC. Photo (cc) 2020 by Mihaly I. Lukacs.

Update: There’s a protest today, called by the University’s Black Student Movement. The dean of the journalism school has endorsed it.

Earlier: The fallout from the University of North Carolina’s refusal to grant tenure to New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones continues to spread. The latest development, reported by NC Policy Watch: Hannah-Jones has informed UNC that she will not accept its offer of a five-year contract, and will join the faculty only if she is granted tenure.

The UNC board of trustees has refused to act on her tenure case. A major donor to the journalism school, Walter Hussman Jr., publisher of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, pressured the board because of his objections to the Times’ 1619 Project, a retelling of American history helmed by Hannah-Jones with slavery as its central theme. NC Policy Watch has also reported that the university’s treatment of Hannah-Jones, who is Black, is among several factors in what threatens to become a mass exodus of people of color:

Last week the Carolina Black Caucus reported 70 percent of its members said they are considering leaving the university.

The school has lost multiple high profile Black recruits, faculty and staff members since the controversy began. Professors are also reporting they have spoken with Black students at the undergraduate and graduate level who have decided not to return to the university as a result of the university’s actions in the Hannah-Jones case.

Jon Allsop has a comprehensive round-up of developments in his Columbia Journalism Review newsletter this morning. Among them is an important opinion piece in The Washington Post about the role of the southern white press in re-establishing white supremacy after Reconstruction. Sid Bedingfield of the University of Minnesota writes:

This history highlights why African American journalists have been compelled to advocate for Black equality. They have often carried out their campaigns in the shadow of a much larger White press that was fighting for just the opposite. And as Hannah-Jones has shown in her reporting, the success of those White journalists decades ago has ramifications today, as the legacy of Jim Crow continues to shape fundamental inequalities in American society.

What a disaster. The worst part of this — other than the obvious racism — is that the trustees and other university officials lack the fortitude to stand up to a major donor. Given how damaging this has been, you would have thought that trustees would have done the right thing long before now.

Previous coverage.

David Baltimore says the Wuhan lab theory remains very much alive

Despite backing away from a quote in which he referred to evidence for the lab-leak theory of COVID-19 as “the smoking gun,” Nobel Prize-winning biologist David Baltimore remains convinced that the explanation remains viable. In an interview with the California Institute of Technology, reprinte in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Baltimore says:

Biologists have seen what evolution can create: the whole natural world around us. We believe that evolution can do anything. But the fact that evolution might have been able to generate SARS-CoV-2 doesn’t mean that that’s how it came about. I think we very much need to find out what was happening in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. I think that we can’t say for sure yet whether the SARS-CoV-2 virus came from natural origins or if it was genetically manipulated somehow.

Earlier coverage:

 

Ron DeSantis’ latest stunt would make Joe McCarthy proud

Joseph McCarthy. Painting via the National Portrait Gallery.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who’s running hard for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, signed a bill this week that is a masterpiece of performative McCarthyism. Ana Ceballos of the Tampa Bay Times reports that the legislation will require the state’s public colleges and universities to conduct an intrusive survey into the beliefs of students, faculty and staff.

The survey, Ceballos writes, will be used to determine “the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented” and whether “intellectual diversity” is supported on campus. The new law could be the basis for budget cuts “if universities and colleges are found to be ‘indoctrinating’ students,” according to Ceballos.

Become a member of Media Nation for just $5 a month

Josh Kovensky of Talking Points Memo reports that, at a news conference following the signing, DeSantis castigated many colleges and universities as “intellectually repressive environments. You have orthodoxies that are promoted and other viewpoints are shunned or even suppressed.”

DeSantis’ action, needless to say, is a grotesque violation of the First Amendment. But that’s nothing new for him, as I’ve written previously.

DeSantis has also banned public school curriculum based on The New York Times’ 1619 Project, which he falsely calls “false history,” as well as instruction in critical race theory — an academic concept that, as Kovensky notes, has little to do with the diversity training and teaching about systemic racism that school systems actually engage in.

In a straw poll of potential 2024 candidates held last weekend at the Western Conservative Summit in Denver, DeSantis narrowly beat Donald Trump, according to The Hill. But first he has to win re-election as governor.

Florida had been trending bluish in recent years but appears to be moving back into the Republican column based on the past several elections. Still, a number of Democrats are lining up to challenge DeSantis, including Democratic congressman Charlie Crist, a former Republican governor himself.

The problem with McCarthy-style populism is that it’s popular — until it isn’t. We’ll see how DeSantis’ latest attack on freedom of expression plays with Florida voters.

Why revelations about Alden’s acquisition of Tribune should force a do-over

Photo (cc) 2012 by the Chicago Tribune

Could Alden Global Capital’s acquisition of Tribune Publishing be headed for a do-over? Julie Reynolds, who’s been reporting on the hedge fund’s evisceration of newspapers for years, has written a fascinating story for the Nieman Journalism Lab suggesting that the $633 million deal may have been illegal.

Alden, which already owned 32% of Tribune’s papers, pledged to pay $375 million in cash in order to bring its share up to 100%. But Reynolds reports that Alden didn’t actually have the cash, a fact that may have been known only to the three members of Tribune’s board who were affiliated with the hedge fund.

Become a member of Media Nation for just $5 a month

As soon as the transaction was consummated, Alden forced the papers to borrow about $300 million. That included $60 million from Alden’s other newspaper chain, MediaNews Group, at an eye-popping interest rate of 13%. As everyone predicted, Alden has gone on a cost-cutting rampage, offering buyouts throughout the chain.

Nieman Foundation curator Ann Marie Lipinski, a former editor of Tribune’s largest paper, the Chicago Tribune, tweeted, “The scale of talent leaving the Chicago Tribune is staggering.”

Reynolds also reports that the full Tribune board may have been left in the dark about a private meeting that Tribune board member and Alden founder Randall Smith had with Baltimore hotel magnate Stewart Bainum last year.

You may recall that Bainum had initially worked out an agreement under which Alden would buy Tribune’s nine major-market dailies and then sell one of them, The Baltimore Sun, to Bainum, who planned to donate it to a nonprofit organization. After Bainum concluded that Alden was trying to gouge him, he tried to put together a bid for the entire chain. Most if not all of the papers would have been spun off to local buyers. But he was never able to put together a firm offer, and the board went with Alden instead. Alden is keeping all nine papers, including the Sun.

As Reynolds notes, the Tribune board spurned Bainum’s higher offer because the financing was not in place — and ignored the reality that Alden’s wasn’t in place, either. She writes:

Given the healthy profits Tribune has generated over the last several quarters, the cuts are there for just one reason: to achieve higher margins for Alden. Randall Smith will get richer while communities served by Tribune are starved of the information they need.

If Reynolds is correct in asserting that laws were broken in order to pave the way for Alden’s acquisition of Tribune, then the punishment ought to be more than a fine and a slap on the wrist. The sale should be voided and the Tribune board should be forced to vote again.

Maybe this time Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, can be persuaded to stop Alden. As a 25% owner of Tribune before the sale, Soon-Shiong could have said no. Instead, he abstained, and did it in a manner that allowed the transaction to go through.

I’m also lighting up the Bat Signal again for Jeff Bezos.

Previous coverage.

A small example of how racially biased algorithms distort social media

You may have heard that the algorithms used by Facebook and other social media platforms are racially biased. I ran into a small but interesting example of that earlier today.

My previous post is about a webinar on news co-ops that I attended last week. I used a photo of Kevon Paynter, co-founder of Bloc by Block News, as the lead art and a photo of Jasper Wang, co-founder of The Defector, well down in the piece.

But when I posted links on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, all three of them automatically grabbed the photo of Wang as the image that would go with the link. For example, here’s how it appeared on Twitter.

I don’t know what happened. Paynter was more central to what I was writing, which is why I led with his photo. Paynter is Black; Wang is of Asian descent. There’s more contrast in the image of Wang, which may be why the algorithms identified it as a superior picture. But in so doing they ignored my choice of Paynter as the lead.

File this under “Things that make you go hmmmm.”