Conservative leaning op-ed pages

When Copley owned the San Diego Union-Tribune, it was always conservative. Its longtime figurehead, Herb Klein, was former press secretary to Nixon.

Furthermore, Copley brass always insisted that the papers it owned in Peoria, Springfield and others endorse the GOP presidential nominee even if those papers were lib-leaning and those papers' editorial boards couldn't stand the idea of a GOP president.

 

Not covering your debt load isn't an accounting trick.

 

Our paper, like our whole chain, is ultra-arch conservative. Orders from on high.

Before our specific group got bought out by the chain several years ago, most of the papers leaned liberal.

Bang-zoom. All righty all the time.

It filters down into news headlines and story placement. Editors are reamed out for writing headlines not sufficiently critical of the "bad guys." Stories are edited so as to make them look as bad as possible for the "bad guys." One side is always depicted as desperate and disorganized; the other side is the "adults in the room."

Every day. 24/7/365.

 

That's been my experience. My first paper, publisher was conservative, but the op-ed and the reporting probably leaned liberal.

I always laugh at people who talk about newspaper bias. My first stop was hammered for that. I was the most conservative one in the building, and was asked to start writing op-eds (something usually only reserved for the ME and publisher) specifically because they wanted a more conservative voice in the paper. Six months later, I was editing the editorial page.

Most people who work at papers tend to be liberal. My guess, if more conservatives wanted to work in the newspaper business, there would be more conservatives there.

 

For the 100 largest newspapers:

Obama 65
McCain 25

Kerry 51
Bush 33

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/2008_newspaper_endorsements.php

 

Care to elaborate?

 

Our group was given an editorial endorsing McCain in 2008 from corporate headquarters in Wheeling and was ordered to run it.

They send editorials on a fairly regular basis. They aren't mandatory, but the phrase "Obama and his cronies" appears in them so often it's become a running joke in our newsroom.

 

You want conservative op-ed pages? Try Billy Morris' properties in the Southeast. Yowza.

And why should be reporting be liberal or conservative? I thought all that mattered was telling the people the truth? Why does it have to be liberal reporting or conservative reporting?

 

Marietta Daily Journal. (Natch.)