The Daily Pennsylvanian :: Brian Goldman | Preventing an unfree press

I don’t remember the first time I opened a newspaper, but I can recall the feeling of its ubiquity, its daily presence throughout my childhood.

Although those days often blended into each other, there was always The New York Times and Newsday sitting on the doorstep of my home in Queens, ringing in the new day.

When I got old enough to read, I’d flip through the back pages and the sports section. When I was old enough to care, I remember taking a leap of faith into the front sections, the Op-Eds and national news. I learned of the big, boisterous world through the Cheltenham font of The Times.

I’m sure there are many parallel stories in Philadelphia with The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News. But these papers are now on the precipice of a crisis. What’s at stake is not the physical paper itself, but its content and its unshakeable integrity.

The Philadelphia Media Network — which publishes the The Inquirer and The Daily News — is close to being sold to an investor group that is made up of a who’s-who in the city: Ed Rendell, former Pennsylvania governor leads the charge. He is backed by Philadelphia Flyers chair and Comcast executive Ed Snider and George Norcross III, a “Democratic powerbroker in South New Jersey,” as The Times described.

The group also counts “parking lot and banking magnate” Lewis Katz, and has recently tried recruiting union leader John Doughtery Jr.

Newspapers are not merely an avenue for free speech. They are an inseparable cog of any functioning democracy and are often-called the “fourth estate.” They provide a powerful and necessary check on corrupt government practices and big business malfeasance.

To allow The Inquirer and the Daily News to be gobbled up by the very people that should be kept under a newspaper’s microscope is an injustice of the first order. We are already beginning to see the repercussions of a newspaper guided by corporate and political interests.

As reported in The Times, Gregory Osberg, CEO of the Philadelphia Media Network, told the most senior editors of the company’s three publications that he would personally oversee any articles relating to the sale of the company. Editors would be fired if these orders were not followed. After initially denying that this meeting had occurred, Osberg admitted that it had in fact taken place.

According to The Times, “the management, while conceding that an article and blog post related to the sale had been killed, said those were mistakes that would not be repeated.”

Last week, nearly 300 editorial employees from The Inqurier, Daily News and Philly.com, including several Penn alumni, signed a petition protesting this interference.

This whole ordeal makes those involved in the buyout seem like a couple of children sitting around the kitchen table, denying they ate the cake while the icing hardens all around their mouths.

1976 College graduate H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger — journalist and author of Friday Night Lights — expressed these sentiments forcefully in an Op-Ed for The Times. Bissinger, a former The Daily Pennsylvanian sports and opinion editor, asserted that the papers, if sold to Rendell’s investor group, “will be owned by a group of power-hungry politicians and politically connected businessmen who, far from respecting independent journalism, despise it.”

If Rendell really hoped to fulfill a philanthropic duty — saving the city’s two cherished papers — then why did he reach out to a network of such politically entrenched figures? He raised millions to run for governor of Pennsylvania. Surely, he knew some other wealthy individuals.

In fact, other bids at buying the Philadelphia Media Network have been blocked. Recently, billionaire investor and 1966 Wharton MBA graduate Ron Perelman reportedly inquired into purchasing the company on behalf of his father, 1940 Wharton graduate Raymond Perelman. He was told “we’re not interested in selling to you,” Raymond informed The Times.

Newspapers are not going anywhere anytime soon. I have full confidence that the same feeling that I experienced as a child — of seeing the morning papers and all the information about the world they carried — will persist.

What I fear, however, is that the information within those papers, here in Philadelphia, will no longer tell the entire truth or even pretend to. Our view of the world will be narrowed, impaired and propagandized.

We need not take that risk. Newspapers are too vital to the lifeblood of this city. This train needs to be derailed before it carries the Philadelphia free press far, far away.

Comments (11)

Brian, If Ed Rendell shared your conservative views, you would not have written this article. Would you rather have Rupert Murdoch be the buyer. Yes everyone has a political side they favor, but if you don’t agree with that side, don’t always bash it.

Brian, do some reading on the history of newspapers. Newspapers ALWAYS have been owned by partisans of one part of the political spectrum. Moreover, there is nothing wrong about a political bent when it comes to editorializing and opinion writing (as opposed to you, who wrote a factual story about a personal experience that was not vetted by news first). As far as I can tell, it is the duty of the editorial staff to maintain the integrity of the investigative news process, not the ownership of the paper. And newspapers (even Murdoch ones, as opposed to Fox News, which makes a mockery out of fact reporting) do this job pretty well. If you are going to make this kind of blanket assertion that ownership taints true news reporting, give us facts to support that view rather than the Big Lie, which daily is false used against the “Liberal Mainstream Media.”

Responding to C ’78, I suggest that the Gregory Osberg meeting is proof that C ’78 is wrong when he assumes that the editorial staff is in charge of news policy. When the CEO of the paper tells the editors that they’ll be fired if they print anything not passed first through him, it’s clear who is really in charge of the news.

That meeting shows precisely the opposite. The CEO insisted only that discussions concerning the newspaper’s proprietary business discussions, which would be jeopardized by disclosure and probably are subject to a nondisclosure provision be kept confidential. This shows that it was an exception to the general news policy, which left all other editorial decisions to news. I see nothing at all wrong with this, especially to promote the Big Lie that the media is politically biased because of ownership. If anything in this country, there is no true leftist voice. Go look at the Guardian or Independent of London (considered moderate) and tell me where the Left Wing Media bias is in this nation. It doesn’t exist—-if anything the reverse is true, but wherever it exists (again, with the exception of Fox News), it is in the editorial, rather than the news reporting side.

Go figure that the same Goldman- who on one of the wealthiest, finacially and politically connected campuses on the planet would write about being a “conservative” as if he is some discriminated minority (btw if you cannot be a comfortable Republican at Penn, than what place is wealthy or right-wing enough for you?)- would also be so blind in his typically banal observations about media power in the US.

Media in the United States has always just reflected the interests and concerns of wealthy privledged people. From Hearst to Murdoch, the press is a tool for the powerful in order to propagandize their interests. It’s not a revelation.

Goldman is absoultley correct to be concerend about the confluence of concentrated moneyed interests and the news media, however he betrays his true concern when he bemoans the fact that Billionaire Perelman wasn’t allowed to buy up the paper outright.

So, you rightfully condemn a corrupt concentration of power setting the agenda in the media, but then your solution is to concentrate this power even further by just turning over the media to Billonaires with bottomless pockets? How is that supposed to be “independent”? Do billionaires like Shelly Adelson just float angelically above politics and ideology?

Even more damaging to our democracy than the situation Goldman describes is his suggestions for what to change. As we can see by the terrible effects of thugs like Murdoch polluting the corporate airwaves with political propaganda designed to advance his own interests and taint our political process. In fact, every four years the 400 US billionaires should just convene a meeting themselves and decide all the laws and media coverage. It would be alot more efficient!

Americans are not stupid, it’s just the information we get from the lap-dog press is awful and the solution to this issue is not to vest even more power in the people who already have just bought our political campaigns outright. The lack of self-awareness by Goldman is amazing sometimes.

“I can recall the feeling of its ubiquity”…dude, my coffee came out of my nose when I read this line. Dude, Goldman, you are trying way too hard.

Hahahhaaaaaaaaaa. This is amazing, Brian Goldman. You have just written an opinion piece lamenting “truth in journalism”—three weeks removed from writing one of the most unfortunate op-eds anybody has ever written for the Daily Pennsylvanian, a piece which itself became part of the national news story because of your delusional take on the story, and subjected you to embarrassment and ridicule. And you are lamenting a lack in truth in journalism? How bout writing that much anticipated follow-up to your Flash Mob article, think we’re all waiting for the explanation.

Karma is a bitch, buddy.

Brian,
I think this is a great article, and I always enjoy reading your column. Keep up the hard work, and try to avoid all the haters. You have a real talent.

I was really surprised at the comments after reading this column— I thought it was a very well written piece, spot on, as Mr. goldman usually does. powerful written voice. Brian Goldman, I am a fan of yours.

Funny to see a so-called ‘open minded,’ ‘progressive’ students at Penn defend corporate $ and influence. i thought this piece was actually a defense of liberal paradigms-freedom and fair press etc. I suspect much of the reaction has more to do with people trying to vainly and shamelessly criticize Brian Goldman than criticize his points.

It doesn’t reflect well on my (our) alma mater

To Paul S:
Still referring to the Flash-Mob article ?
Maybe when you graduate High School and thru some miracle get into college, you can put yourself out there and write articles for a college newspaper like a big boy.Meanwhile stop your childish rantings…
Go play games on your XBox

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