Publishers As the Ultimate Gateway

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

I've already mentioned Upton Sinclair's 1934 run for governor of California. Having finished the book on which that post was made, I stumbled across a few facts which reinforce the message of that last post. Recall that Sinclair had inspired the EPIC plan; others later organized around the message EPIC presented and started a daily newsletter, which became quite popular, especially in Los Angeles where it was published. Remember also that, other than Sinclair, incumbent Republican Frank Merriam and a third-party candidate named Haight also ran that year.

According to one tally, 92 percent of California's seven hundred newspapers supported Merriam, 5 percent backed Haight, and the rest were neutral. If any paper besides the EPIC News had declared for Sinclair, no one knew about it. The anti-Sinclair press had a stranglehold on virtually every major city; few papers even acknowledged EPIC activities.

(Greg Mitchell, The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair's Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics, Random House, 1992, p. 225, I emphasized.)

I mention this because of the oft-tossed trope that accuses the media of being left-leaning politically. Sure, this reporter or that might hold less reactionary views; but they are reporters. They don't get to decide what to publish, even if they thought the message they wrote was the most important in the world. If you, for example, worked for the Los Angeles Times in 1934, your political editor would have this attitude:

At dinner, [NY Times writer Turner] Catledge asked L.A. Times political editor Kyle Palmer whether he knew where Sinclair was. [The L.A. Times printed almost no news of Sinclair's campaign.]

"Turner, forget it," Palmer replied. "We don't go in for that kind of crap that you have back in New York—of being obliged to print both sides. We're going to beat this son of a bitch Sinclair any way we can," the curly-haired, bow-tied reporter explained. "We're going to kill him."

(Mitchell, ibid, p. 429.)

This wasn't published in the LA Times, mind you, so if you as a reader in 1934 picked up the paper you would have to infer the publishers' intentions (not that it would be that difficult, given the LAT's printed invective against Sinclair).

But what if a publisher just avoided mention of topics or positions he or she thought offensive, spiking stories where they could? Ah, that brings us to today. Click through the link and read of a movie reviewer who asked his new publisher, innocently enough, why the man wanted to review content before it was published. Unlike most publishers, this man actually provided a written response. It had to do with "powerful" women:

I don't want to publish reviews of films where women are alpha and men are beta.

where women are heroes and villains and men are just lesser versions or shadows of females.

i believe in manliness. . . .

they seem to like critiques from an artistic standpoint without a word about the moral turpitude seeping into the consciousness of young people who go to watch such things as snow white and get indoctrinated to the hollywood agenda of glorifying degenerate power women and promoting as natural the weakling, hyena -like men, cum eunuchs.

the male as lesser in courage strength and power than the female.

it may be ok for some but it is not my kind of manliness.

If you care to write reviews where men act like good strong men and have a heroic inspiring influence on young people to build up their character (if there are such movies being made) i will be glad to publish these.

i am not interested in supporting the reversing of traditional gender roles. . . .

it is my opinion that hollywood has robbed america of its manliness and made us a nation of eunuchs who lacking all manliness welcome in the coming police state.

(Spelling and punctuation copied verbatim.)

So there you go.

Personally, I have no problem with publishers having opinions. I would simply like for them to be open about these opinions, rather than have to reconstruct every edit by taking in the entirety of their publication and distilling their unsaid biases. I know that's too much to ask, especially in the age of advertising. Even threats from advertisers can be powerful. Who cares about the truth, wrote Sinclair after his defeat, "when the lies have several million dollars behind them to promote their circulation." (Mitchell, ibid, p. 491.)

Of course, with inflation and all, today that should read "several hundred billion."

Comments

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

I think there's enough blame at all levels to go around. TV journalists have a bit more say in what gets on the air than print journalists have say in what gets printed. The blame can be spread around to a lot of parties.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

From what I've heard from journalists themselves, I would doubt that. (Wife worked in telly for a over a decade.) Who pays the bills calls the shots with very, very rare exception.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Truly left leaning publishers in the US went out with Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine. What Hannity calls "far left" seems more like the left end of the conservative spectrum.