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To Protect Democracy, Newsrooms Must Choose Op-Eds Responsibly
Editors owe a duty to the public to avoid hyperbolic opinion writing and “doom looping” that advance the interests of a privileged few.
Apr 09, 2024
On September 21, 1970, The New York Times ran its first “op-ed” page. Short for “opposite the editorial,” this new feature provided space for writers with no relationship to the newspaper’s editorial board to express their views. Before long, other newspapers followed suit. More than 50 years later, in order to compete with electronic media news, traditional newspapers have come to utilize opinion pages as a means to attract and keep readers.
Newspaper editors understood the power of opinion pieces as early as 1921 when editor Herbert Bayard Swope of the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Worldsaid: “Nothing is more interesting than opinion when opinion is interesting, so I devised a method of cleaning off the page opposite the editorial… and thereon I decided to print opinions, ignoring facts.”
The pioneering opinion pieces Swope published were written by newspaper staff; and, while he may have ignored some facts in the opinions he published, contemporary newspapers claim to aspire to journalistic integrity. In its op-ed guidelines, The Washington Post, for example, notes that all op-eds are fact-checked. Post guidelines explain that authors with “important titles,” like “senators, business leaders, heads of state,” are held “to a particularly high standard when considering whether to publish them in the Post.”
Too often, however, the aims of consolidated, corporatized media, owned and operated by megarich individuals, supersede Fourth Estate journalistic ethics and democratic duties.
As competition for the public’s attention stiffens in a social media and online communications-saturated environment, it’s perhaps not surprising that conflicts of interest arise in the op-ed pages. In 2011, more than 50 journalists and academics urged greater transparency about conflicts of interest among New York Times op-ed page contributors. In an October 6, 2011 letter to Arthur Brisbane, the Times’s public editor, they criticized the practice of “special interests surreptitiously funding ‘experts’ to push industry talking points in the nation’s major media outlets,” absent reporting of those writers’ vested interests.
In their letter to the Times, the signatories called out the unreported bias of Manhattan Institute senior fellow Robert Bryce. The Institute received millions of dollars in funding from the fossil fuel industry. Bryce’s promotion of fossil fuels rather than renewable energy, they wrote, flew in the face of his “masquerading as an unbiased expert.”
Corporate media consolidation has strategically limited the diversity of perspectives and the quality of journalism and unduly influenced audience opinion. With a handful of large corporations controlling a majority of media outlets, content homogenization and profit prioritization often replace journalistic integrity. For instance, the acquisition of hundreds of weekly and daily newspapers by conglomerates like Gannett has led to a reduction in independent voices, an increase in editorial uniformity, biased editorials and op-eds, and news deserts.
The Sinclair Broadcast Group’s ownership of approximately 200 television stations has been criticized for mandating the airing of politically slanted content, including editorials and op-eds, across its network. This centralized control over broadcasting allows for the dissemination of partisan perspectives, undermining public access to balanced, impartial news coverage. Instead, viewers are fed one-sided opinions aligned with corporate agendas, rather than presented with a diverse array of viewpoints.
Editorials and op-eds can and often do have a greater influence on public consciousness than news articles. In best-case scenarios, they express a broad spectrum of opinions, provide in-depth analysis, advocate for specific viewpoints, and connect with audiences through emotion and ethos. Publications adhering to journalistic ethics feature opinions written in the public’s best interest and offer a range of well-reasoned perspectives that enhance good-faith debate.
Because the importance of an issue is often equated with the type and amount of media coverage it gets, high-profile publishers bear a greater responsibility in curating opinion pieces. When premier newspapers publish op-eds that are irresponsibly written—whether echoing government propaganda and political biases or corporate interests, lacking fundamental facts or historical context, or wielding accusatory or derogatory language and sensationalized headlines—they “signal boost” for a particular viewpoint or agenda.
This type of writing is irresponsible and counter-democratic for several reasons. Many news consumers skim headlines, only reading articles with gripping titles and subtitles. Reckless opining is equally irresponsible because many Americans have difficulty distinguishing fact from opinion. News consumers do not always make the necessary distinction between what’s published in the “news” section versus “opinion,” according to Marist College journalism professor Kevin M. Lerner.
When established reporters and purported experts voice their views as authoritative, their opinions are often perceived as news rather than opinion. Readers give them greater weight because of their credentials. Editors thus bear a greater responsibility to ensure that their opinion pieces adhere to the highest standards of journalistic ethics. Failure to do so can amount to a form of reader manipulation. Such lapses not only compromise journalistic credibility but do a disservice to the public and the democratic process.
Daniel Macy, senior associate in the Office of the Public Editor at PBS,wrote a defense of news editorial decisions. Too often, he complained, news audiences incorrectly believe that the media shape the news agenda. Macy claimed that the news media merely mirror the agenda. If audiences believe there’s bias, he continued, that’s due to the ever-present prioritizing system that each news consumer keeps in their head. At the end of the day, he affirmed, the editor decides what makes the news. “That sounds a little bit agenda-setting, but it’s not.”
Macy’s denial notwithstanding, establishment media has an agenda-setting function, and editorial decisions factor into the formation of public opinion and individuals’ voting decisions. Although the media cannot necessarily tell audiences what to think, they certainly have the power to inform what and who audiences think about. Take the 2024 report by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) that investigated biased articles on economic topics, such as inflation, recession, and government debt and spending.
Searches of the 2023 New York Times and Washington Post archives revealed excessive prognosticating about a recession that never materialized and simultaneously correlated this to companies’ unjustifiably inflating prices. This sort of signal-boosting whipped up “fears of recession, a fantasy problem,” and directed attention away from the facts. In March 2024, writing on the strength of the U.S. economy, Louis Jacobson explored why so many Americans believe otherwise. The “self-reinforcing doom loops of media coverage and partisan biases” are at least partly, if not wholly, to blame, he wrote.
Opinion pieces that serve corporate or political agendas exemplify irresponsible editorializing. Editors owe a duty to the public to avoid hyperbolic opinion writing and “doom looping” that advance the interests of a privileged few. Too often, however, the aims of consolidated, corporatized media, owned and operated by megarich individuals, supersede Fourth Estate journalistic ethics and democratic duties. Manufacturing Consent (1988), the seminal work of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, shattered the illusion that the establishment media serve as a reliable check on power. Rather, media empires prop up the status quo and repeatedly display an unwillingness to challenge the power structures from which they profit.
Case in Point: Genocide Perpetrators Portrayed as Victims
A brief survey of opinion pieces related to 2023 headline news stories illustrates how unenforced editorial standards turned op-eds into forms of political propaganda. In the case of Israel’s genocidal acts against Palestinians in 2023 to 2024, editorials and op-eds in U.S. newspapers largely portrayed Israel as a victim, despite overwhelming evidence to support South Africa’s charge in the International Court of Justice that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
The Interceptpublished an analysis of media coverage during the first six weeks of the Israeli assault on Gaza, which helps to quantify the misuse of op-eds. The open-source inquiry into more than 1,000 articles revealed coverage that regularly favored the Israeli narrative. Consistent bias against Palestinians in The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times disproportionately described Israeli losses in emotional, humanizing language.
By contrast, Palestinian deaths were downplayed, as were the devastating impacts of the unprecedented bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip. The killing of journalists and children was similarly minimized. Harking back to Manufacturing Consent, Herman and Chomsky demonstrated the notion of “worthy and unworthy victims.” Victims of enemies of the United States and its client states are “worthy victims.” Correspondingly, in MintPress News (February 27, 2024) Alan Macleod wrote that deaths will only be covered extensively and compassionately in the establishment press if there’s political and economic capital to be gained.
Time and again, Western establishment news media showcase Israeli government and military officials and “authoritative voices” sympathetic to Israeli and U.S. policies to comment on the conflict.
The Intercept’s analysis detailed asymmetrical reporting on acts of antisemitism versus anti-Arab and anti-Muslim actions, and concluded that “[a]nalysis of both print media and cable news make[s] clear that, if any cohort of media consumers is getting a slanted picture, it’s those who get their news from established mass media in the U.S.”
In February 2024, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting released the results of its analysis of opinion pieces in The New York Times and Washington Post that mentioned Israel or Gaza, as published from October 7 to December 6, 2023. FAIR determined that, although both papers included a few strong pro-Palestinian voices, opinions weighed heavily toward Israeli interests.
That was largely due to reliance on regular columnists sympathetic to Israel. Guest opinion editorials in both papers primarily featured the same old government officials (domestic and foreign, past and present) and attendant think tank experts uncritical of Israel.
To give an example of “op-ed abuse” that advantages U.S. pro-war policies, a study by the Quincy Institute found that the majority of think tank experts featured in the establishment press supportive of Ukraine were paid by the U.S. Department of Defense. Conflating national and international security issues with a feigned need for expert opinion is nothing new—newspapers of record have a track record of employing op-eds to justify war.
Caitlin Johnstone has written that “a jarring number of media executives and influential journalists” belong to the Council on Foreign Relations. The Washington Post’s former managing editor, Richard Harwood, reportedly commented that media involvement in the council aids the United States in formulating and promoting its policies and positions.
Indeed, who does the reporting and opining is as instrumental to a story as its subject and how a story is told, as media analyst Sana Saeed of Al-Jazeera+ has analyzed. Time and again, Western establishment news media showcase Israeli government and military officials and “authoritative voices” sympathetic to Israeli and U.S. policies to comment on the conflict. To state the obvious, stenography—that is, uncritically quoting think tank executives and government bureaucrats—is not journalism. Nor does it carry weight in constructive opinion writing unless, perhaps, it’s contextualized to validate an argument.
Modern Media’s Duty to the Public
Traditional media have long served as sources for citizens to learn about their political leaders, policies, and government. Citizens should be able to trust their nation’s premier newspapers to maintain professed standards of professional ethics and to offer a plurality of newsworthy viewpoints.
Biased reporting is a breach of journalistic ethics. The preamble to the Society for Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics, widely considered the gold standard of ethical journalism, states the belief “that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy,” and appeals to the integrity of every journalist, beginning with guidelines for seeking and reporting truth. A breach of ethics interferes with the public’s right to, and need for, accurate information.
Biased and propagandized publications may be thought of as a human rights issue too. According to Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression, which includes the freedom to hold opinions without interference, and to seek and receive… information… through any media regardless of frontiers.” Thinking in those terms, reporting that’s biased, lacks transparency, or presents decontextualized information impedes Article 19’s contention that information seekers have the right to obtain facts and bias-free information.
Even in the digital age, America’s legacy media bear a consequential responsibility to the public. At a time when democracy is under strain, opinion pieces in our premier newspapers run the risk of abusing their status to steer public debate against the public welfare—especially when written by influential individuals with vested conflicts of interest.
Considering the blurred lines between legacy media and social media and between news and opinion, editorial decisions do more than undermine the role and reputation of journalism in a democracy; they jeopardize democracy itself.
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The Right-Wingers and Billionaires Destroying the News in Baltimore and Beyond
The unchecked control of the media by corporate interests is the deeper issues, but let the billionaire owners be a warning to us all.
Feb 17, 2024
David D. Smith, leading stockholder of Sinclair, Inc., announced on January 15 that he was purchasing what is left of the Baltimore Sun, once regarded as the crown jewel of the Maryland city’s media (AP, 1/15/24).
Sinclair is a multi-billion dollar Fortune 500 company and one of the largest owners of television stations in the country. The company has been criticized for its conservative and not always accurate TV news coverage (Salon, 7/21/17; New Yorker, 10/15/18). In 2018, the company compelled local TV news anchors around the country to read on air the same copy parroting President Donald Trump’s claims about “fake news” (Deadspin, 3/31/18).
The decline of the Sun has been happening for years before Smith’s purchase. The outlet was purchased in 2021 by Alden Capital Group, a hedge fund, which cut newsroom capacity and output. The Sun’s previous owner, Tribune (formerly Tronc), had already been furloughing staff and cutting pay before Alden’s takeover.
Sinclair is a national media giant, owning 294 stations across the country, but it is also headquartered just outside of Baltimore. Smith said he purchased the Sun with his own funding, independent of Sinclair. The Sun (1/15/24) advertised the purchase as “the first time in nearly four decades that the Sun will be in the hands of a local owner.”
Numerous media outlets around the country have expressed concern about Smith’s purchase, with a focus on his right-wing political leanings and his outspoken disdain for print media (e.g., New Republic, 1/17/24; New York Times, 1/20/24).
“A local buyer taking over a struggling newspaper in the 21st century is normally cause for some celebration,” the AP (1/16/24) commented. “But the Baltimore Sun’s newly announced owner has a very specific political background, and some are concerned about what the 187-year-old publication could become.”
Yet the groundwork for Smith’s takeover of the Sun was laid by many of the same news outlets expressing concern about it. Media have created an environment that not only enables takeovers of newspapers by billionaires, but frequently celebrates such acquisitions as important for democracy.
What are billionaires really buying?
Much of the concern around Smith’s purchase of the Baltimore Sun has to do with his family’s legacy of influencing the news in the region. Over the last 20 years, Smith and his family have become increasingly powerful in Baltimore’s political, corporate and media landscape, and they have used their local media holdings to promote their agendas (Baltimore Sun, 1/18/24). The Sun has a history of reporting critically on Sinclair (9/1/22, 6/27/23, 8/2/23), a threat that has likely been neutralized by this purchase.
Observers are right to be skeptical of Smith’s promise that he is buying the Baltimore Sun out of an “absolute responsibility to serve the public interest” (AP, 1/16/24). But many of the same news outlets concerned about Smith’s influence over a longstanding daily newspaper have shown little concern about the influence of billionaire news owners in general—or they have shown selective concern.
When Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post in 2013 (Extra!, 3/14), he assured the public that he was only interested in its potential profitability and that the Post would continue to operate as an independent entity. There wasn’t widespread panic.
Some of the Post’s coverage has seemed to go out of its way to protect the explicit interests of Bezos and the billionaire class (CJR, 9/27/22). As FAIR (10/11/18, 11/21/18) reported, the Post’s coverage of the 2018 Maryland gubernatorial campaign was shockingly biased in favor of Republican Larry Hogan and against Democrat Ben Jealous, a Bernie Sanders supporter. Hogan was negotiating to bring an Amazon headquarters to Maryland, and Jealous had raised questions about the deal.
With some exceptions, like Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter (New York Times, 10/5/22; Newsweek, 10/28/22; MSNBC, 11/21/22), corporate media have covered billionaire takeovers of media outlets in a mostly neutral or positive light, at times portraying the wealthy owners as if they are saving a dying but essential industry out of the goodness of their hearts. That was the dominant tone of the coverage of Marc Benioff’s purchase of Time magazine (CNN, 12/30/19) and John H. Henry’s purchase of the Boston Globe (Reuters, 8/3/13), among others.
When billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong purchased the LA Times, the New York Times (2/7/18) described him as rescuing the outlet from corporate media hell and offering a “welcome alternative” to Tronc. Its article began with a staffer “popp[ing] a bottle of champagne.” Soon-Shiong had previously been Tronc’s vice chair.
To ‘save the news industry’
The New York Times (1/18/24) recently reported that the media outlets bought by billionaires have been largely failing financially—that the billionaires have failed to “save the news industry,” as if that were truly their goal. The Times didn’t consider that billionaires earn other dividends from controlling public discourse, for one.
The national media did exhibit more concern when billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a major casino owner (now deceased), bought the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2015. News stories highlighted his ties to the Republican Party, and some speculated that he would use the purchase to influence the 2016 presidential election (Guardian, 12/17/15; NPR, 12/17/15; Atlantic, 12/17/15).
There was far less concern over what it means, in general, for a casino magnate to own the news in Las Vegas (Common Dreams, 12/22/15). Would Adelson have faced as much pushback if he weren’t a Republican?
It seems that “liberal” establishment media are concerned about some wealthy corporate owners—the faceless hedge funds and those with far-right leanings—but not the problem of billionaire or corporate ownership in general and its corrosive effects on a free press. But it is the very unchecked environment of corporate news ownership that has enabled the wealthy far-right takeover of so much of it.
None of the billionaires buying up newspapers have offered clear policies and practices ensuring that they won’t be able to influence coverage, only tepid assurances. FCC or other regulations that might ensure news media are free from such conflicts of interest would require sustained public attention–and that would entail corporate media challenging the interests of their own owners.
Baltimore and the Smith family
Concerns about the Baltimore Sun becoming a blatant tool of the far right are warranted. Within Baltimore, WBFF-Fox 45’s racist and politicized coverage is notorious. Regular coverage fosters fear around Baltimore youth, progressive causes and public schools (e.g., 7/24/22, 1/25/24). In 2014, Fox 45 was caught doctoring footage of noted local activist Tawanda Jones to make it seem like she was saying “kill a cop” during a protest, when she was chanting about “killer cops” (Afro, 12/23/14).
Fox 45 has shown clear favoritism to local politicians. For years, it supported a scandal-ridden candidate, Thiru Vignarajah, in his repeated failed bids for state’s attorney and mayor. Smith family members were prominent donors to his campaigns, and Fox 45 has hosted him in the studio far more than other candidates.
This year, the Smith family has shifted its financial support and airtime to candidate Sheila Dixon, who was previously Baltimore’s mayor but resigned in 2010 after pleading guilty to perjury and embezzlement. Smith’s partner in his deal to buy the Sun, conservative Sinclair commentator Armstrong Williams, hosted a one-hour, flattering interview with Dixon last June.
The Smith family also has a notorious reputation locally for the practices of its restaurant company, Atlas Restaurant Group, which has been aggressively buying up struggling restaurants and other properties. The company has faced controversy for policies that restrict service based on racist and arbitrarily enforced dress codes.
Smith has been less shy than his counterparts in other cities about his plans to influence the Baltimore Sun’s coverage. Sun employees shared anonymous accounts with outside reporters (Baltimore Banner, 1/16/24) of a closed door meeting in which Smith reportedly admitted to wanting to remake the Sun to be more like his local TV station, including featuring unscientific polls on the front page.
The Sun mythology
As part of catastrophizing Smith’s purchase of the Baltimore Sun, media have promoted the newspaper’s legacy as if it were unquestionably vaunted, setting up a good/evil binary. In reality, there has long been substantial local criticism of the Sun, including its coziness with powerful interests, its legacy of problematic hero-reporters, and its negative characterizations of Baltimore’s Black and other marginalized communities.
The Baltimore Banner (1/16/24) brought up the the Sun’s credentials in challenging Smith’s characterization of the newspaper:
Asked Tuesday during the meeting whether he stood by [negative] comments [about newspapers] now that he owns one of the most storied titles in American journalism, Smith said yes. Asked if he felt that way about the contents of his newspaper, Smith said “in many ways, yes,” according to people at the meeting.
The Baltimore Sun won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting.
The Banner article was written by three reporters, all of whom previously worked for the Sun.
The Pulitzer Prize was invoked again by the Washington Post (1/17/24) as prima facie evidence of the Sun’s intrinsic goodness. The Post recounted an exchange in which Smith suggested to his new employees that the officers involved in Freddie Gray’s death in 2015 were innocent. A staffer challenged him on the point.
“You may believe that they killed somebody,” Smith said. “I’m not here to tell you they did or didn’t.”
The Sun was a Pulitzer finalist for its coverage of Gray’s death.
I previously wrote for FAIR (9/22/23) about how the Sun’s coverage of Freddie Gray’s death leaned almost entirely on the statements of police and promoted police officers as heroes, while marginalizing or ignoring the statements of witnesses, who were the Black residents of Gray’s former neighborhood. The Sun has refused to share new evidence that has emerged in Gray’s death since 2015, failing to correct the record on its mistakes, despite the case being one of the biggest stories in Baltimore’s history.
Likewise, the Sun’s coverage of the riots in Baltimore after Freddie Gray’s death was barely distinguishable from how Fox 45 reports on Baltimore’s youth. As FAIR (4/29/15) reported at the time, Sun reporters (4/28/15) repeated a false police story that teenagers had been planning to “purge” that day and attacked police, “pelting officers with water bottles and rocks,” as if unprovoked. The Sun missed the real story of how police fomented a riot by locking down teenagers after school and not letting them return home (Mother Jones, 4/28/15), among other provocative actions.
The Sun has continued to portray Baltimore’s Black youth as de facto criminals in many stories (e.g., 9/15/20), often hiding the racism behind a sheen of “both sides” reporting.
Conversely, although Fox 45 has been an easy target for liberal reporters and politicians, not all of its coverage has been as supportive of powerful interests as the Sun’s reporting. Fox 45 (3/19/21) was aggressive in its effort to expose corruption by Nick Mosby, the current City Council president, and former state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby—a Baltimore power couple who recently divorced. (She filed an FCC complaint against the station, accusing it of racist coverage.) Marilyn Mosby was ultimately indicted and convicted by the federal government for perjury and mortgage fraud.
By contrast, the Baltimore Sun published several editorials in support of the Mosbys and minimizing their scandals, including one (3/23/21) arguing that the federal investigation into their possible crimes was “not good for Baltimore.” (One member of the three-person editorial team at the time, Andrea K. McDaniels, is married to a long-time vocal Mosby supporter, Zach McDaniels, who helped Mosby on the Freddie Gray case. Andrea McDaniels is now managing editor of the Baltimore Banner.)
Banner escapes scrutiny
As for the Banner, the Sun’s chief competitor, it has adopted a superior tone in its coverage of the Smith takeover (1/16/24, 2/5/24), but it has its own ties to the Smith family. The Banner has held events in partnership with Atlas restaurants, which are owned by the Smith family, and published article after article that cover Atlas, a Banner advertiser, in a favorable light (e.g., 7/11/23, 10/2/23, 10/18/23).
The Banner has also escaped any scrutiny of its own ownership model. As I previously wrote about for FAIR (12/21/23), the Banner is nominally a nonprofit organization—an “independent” outlet, according to Nieman Lab (1/22/24)—but it is owned by Stewart Bainum, Jr., the very wealthy CEO of Choice Hotels and a nursing home chain, as well as a one-time state politician. He established the Banner after failing to purchase the Sun.
A Democrat, Bainum was described by the national press as the “savior” of Baltimore media (Washington Post, 2/17/21), but the Banner’s board and staff are almost entirely made up of people from the corporate world, its content is buried behind paywalls, and it has platformed right-wing sentiments, including transphobia (9/20/22). Also, like the Sun, it has a habit of parroting what police say (8/27/22) and not offering retractions when those stories turn out to be false (8/30/22).
Smith obviously poses a real threat to the possibility of fair and accurate Baltimore news. At the same time, he serves as a convenient scapegoat for a much deeper and broader problem: the unchecked control of the media by corporate interests, sometimes in the form of what seem like wealthy benefactors.
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New Right-Wing Owner to Baltimore Sun Reporters: 'Go Make Me Some Money'
"The Sinclair TV owner bought The Baltimore Sun for the same reason Elon Musk bought Twitter," opined one critic. "Power."
Jan 17, 2024
New Baltimore Sun owner and right-wing media executive David D. Smith raised eyebrows and ire in media circles and beyond following a Tuesday meeting at which he reportedly insulted journalists at his new acquisition and told them to focus on profit.
Smith, the multimillionaire head of the Sinclair Broadcasts Group—a network notorious for its fealty to former U.S. President Donald Trump—purchased the Sun, along with a bevy of other Maryland papers, last week for what The New Republicdescribed as an "unspecified, nine-figure" amount from Alden Global Capital, an investment firm known for its cost-cutting ways.
Sinclair started out in Baltimore and the Sunreported that it's the first time in nearly four decades that the paper will be locally owned. However, NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik atold "All Things Considered" host Juana Summers that Sun staffers left the meeting with Smith "fairly on edge."
Smith "said he's only read [the Sun] about four times, which is kind of astonishing for a guy whose family has been there for more than a half-century," Folkenflik said, adding that the new owner also argued that the paper "just isn't offering people news that is holding local government actors accountable."
"This," Folkenflik added, "for a newspaper that, you know, revealed corruption by the then-mayor of Baltimore that led to the Sunwinning a Pulitzer just a few short years ago."
The once-venerable Sun has, in fact, won 16 Pulitzer Prizes over its storied history.
Folkenflik, who once worked for the Sun, noted:
It has a really proud heritage going back to 1837. The story of the Sun, nonetheless, is kind of the story of modern American newspapering. Alden is the latest in a string of big corporate owners that has, you know, time after time, decade after decade, whittled down or slashed its staffs and its ambitions. The paper has shrunk pretty sharply.
Media accountability advocates expressed alarm and concern over Smith's purchase of the Sun. Popular Information publisher Judd Legum noted that the paper's new owner is a donor to far-right groups including Project Veritas, Turning Point USA, and Moms for Liberty.
"Sinclair Broadcasting, which is controlled by the Smith family,
forces nearly 200 local TV affiliates to run right-wing pro-Trump political commentary," Legum said. "Sinclair affiliates have also promoted right-wing conspiracy theories, including claims that [Democratic National Committee] staffer Seth Rich was murdered by a hitman as payback for sharing sensitive emails to WikiLeaks."
Sinclair and Smith have been closely aligned with the Trump family. Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner has admitted that the former president and 2024 GOP front-runner's campaign
struck a deal with Sinclair in 2016 for access in exchange for more favorable coverage.
"We are here to deliver your message," Smith
told the Trump campaign. "Period."
Smith is also openly inimical toward the mainstream media—including the
Sun. According toThe Baltimore Banner, he told New York Magazine in 2018 that he viewed print media to be "so left-wing as to be meaningless dribble."
Pressed during Tuesday's meeting whether he still believed this, Smith answered in the affirmative. Asked if that included the paper he just bought, he replied, "in many ways, yes."
Sun staffers present at Tuesday's meeting told Folkenflik that their new boss seemed especially focused on the paper's bottom line.
"Smith told his new staffers that, you know, the
Sun was profitable but that he meant to make it more profitable," Folkenflik told Summers.
According to the Banner, he told them to "go make me some money."
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