So, I just posted to Mr. Elliot's thread that was self deleted.

[OAITW r.2.0]

And it was deleted...

So, I will paraphrase what he asked. Our media has always been Republican. I differed. My reply-

Back 50 years ago....

I read the Boston Globe, every day, religiously. Front Page, particularly the Spotlight series, local....and, of course, the best written sports section in the country (IMHO).

Added-


We did have a huge liberal/progressive/social justice movement back in the early 70's, in New England. Don't know about other regions, but the Boston Globe was the paper thoughtful people read. The Boston Herald was the "Fox News" equivalent in their day. Without RW funding, it probably would have collapsed if it were reliant on subscriptions to survive.

[Doc Sportello]

1. The Spotlight series on priest sexual abuse was pivotal in bringing the issue to the fore

I don't know the Boston market or the point of the original post you are talking about, but anyone who tries to paint "the media" as a monolith is ignorant on the subject.

[OAITW r.2.0]

3. Spotlight was exactly what you'd think. If the Spotlight Team put you on the

Front Page....you were pretty well fucked. Because they were not about exposing good things....they were about exposing corruption. Their stories led to actual charges / indictments and incarcerations.

And not just about the sex abuse....although, fucking high credit due publishing this in a heavily Catholic oriented Boston. Proved that speaking truth to power is supported.

Today, with consolidations and focus on profits/shareholder payback.....papers are meh. Don't read them anymore. Yesterday's news. Hardly anyone worth reading. But I could be absolutely wrong and ignorant on my last point.

[Wicked Blue]

2. As someone who worked at newspapers starting in the early 70s

my take was that while the reporters and some editors might be liberal back then, the owners/publishers were generally Republicans/conservatives.

In general, I observed that reporters at smaller newspapers didn't get paid enough to think like conservatives. Young people who wanted to make decent salaries didn't go into journalism. But that's my own opinion.

Things changed in the 1990s when conservative/right wing groups began encouraging Young Republicans and the like to spend a couple of years slumming in the news business before going into lucrative careers. This was to squeeze out liberals in the newsroom or at least minimize their numbers.

I had the misfortune to write for a reasonably liberal paper in the mid-90s that got sold. The new owners brought in an editor who had Heritage Foundation connections. He found pretexts to get rid of every reporter who wasn't conservative enough to suit him. He monitored what the reporters were writing, word by word, and re-wrote sentences before articles were even halfway finished. He ordered me to start looking for dirt on elected officials in a liberal town. I quit and went into writing case studies about energy saving technologies.

And that editor ran the paper into the ground, almost certainly on purpose. It folded within a year.

[IbogaProject]

4. NY POST was very liberal b4 Murdock

NY POST was very liberal b4 Murdock took over in the 80s.