Gannett Demonstrating Some Seriously Poor Judgment In Its Newspapers

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The Ganett chain of newspapers, which includes the awful USA Today and The Arizona Republic, has demonstrated some seriously poor judgment in its newspapers.

Another Gannett chain newspaper, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune actually published an op-ed from a woman defending the Proud Boys – the domestic terrorist organization which acted as Donald Trump’s private militia to overthrow the U.S. govrnment on January 6, 2021, and is currently being prosecuted for seditious conspiracy. What the Sarasota Herald-Tribune failed to disclose is that the author of the op-ed is the wife of a Proud Boy member.

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The Huffington Post reports, Florida Paper Retracts Column Defending Proud Boys After Omitting Key Detail:

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune, a daily newspaper in Florida, was forced to issue an apology and retract a column defending the Proud Boys, a violent white nationalist group, following public outrage and a revelation that the author is married to a member of the extremist organization.

In a message to readers from executive editor Jennifer Orsi on Monday, the paper admitted that the guest column did not meet its editorial standards despite running Sunday in print and online.

The opinion page should not “provide a forum for support of the Proud Boys, an extremist group that promotes white nationalist views and which has been labeled a terrorist group by two countries and has top members under indictment on charges of seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack,” Orsi wrote.

“To do so is antithetical to our values as an organization and is outside of our responsibility to provide a fair forum for different points of view,” she continued.

The guest column ran with the headline “Attacking Proud Boys does disservice to caring parents” and was a rebuttal to a previous column calling on the Sarasota County School Board to condemn the Proud Boys. In the deleted column, author Melissa Radovich wrote: “When I think about the Proud Boys, I think of fathers, business owners and veterans. These fathers have spoken at many School Board meetings. They are concerned about the direction that their local schools are heading in, and I commend them for coming to School Board meetings.”

Notably, the column did not disclose that Radovich is married to a member of the Proud Boys ― something journalists at other outlets quickly discovered and revealed on Twitter.

Orsi wrote Monday that the Herald-Tribune decided to give Radovich a platform because the previous column condemning the Proud Boys criticized her and “an editor felt it fair to give her a chance to respond.” However, the editor’s note did not explicitly acknowledge Radovich’s undisclosed relationship to the Proud Boys.

“We will continue to publish varied opinions from across the political spectrum on important local issues,” Orsi vowed. “But this decision fell short of our standards, and we apologize to our readers.”

Which brings me to the Arizona Republic fka the Arizona Republican -and yes it is still a Republican Party mouthpiece, always has been.

Recently long-time pseudo-intellectual GOP apologist and former flak for the “Kochtopus” Goldwater Institute and the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Robert Robb, unceremoniously announced his retirement from the Arizona Republic.

Did The Republic even do a piece on Robb retiring? Did I just miss it? Did his colleagues give him a retirement party? Or was it like so many reporters at The Republic in recent years – clear out out your desk into a cardboard box, and be escorted out the building by security?

It appears that Robert Robb’s regular opinion column space has been filled by previously infrequent opinion columnist Phil Boas, a right-wing polemicist and propagandist. The Republic’s opinion pages have never been good, but Boas is a substantial downgrade from Robert Robb – something I never imagined I would ever say. At least Robb would pretend he was being thoughtful and reasonable in his opinions.

Not Boas. Here is a recent example. Rusty Bowers would vote for Trump again. What that tells you about the new left:

Bowers told the Associated Press, “If (Trump) is the nominee, if he was up against Biden, I’d vote for him again. Simply because what he did the first time, before COVID, was so good for the country. In my view it was great.”

It was a moment of stunning honesty. And it came at a cost. It silenced a lot of the applause he enjoyed from his testimony. Establishment media railed:

“(It) is sort of like defending Mussolini by reminding people that before he teamed up with Hitler, he made the trains run on time,” wrote Vanity Fair’s Bess Levin.

Note: when it comes to political opinion, Boas is not in the same league as Bess Levin. He can’t even carry her … purse?

If an honorable man like Rusty Bowers would still vote for Trump over Biden, it may tell us less about Bowers and more about the unbridgeable gulf between Republicans and Democrats.

The left has a clear sense of the awfulness of Donald Trump. I share it. What it lacks is a clear sense of its own prominent defect – its growing condescension.

Today’s left is a cross hatch of competing interests all fighting to advance their own particular agendas. Tribalism is promoted. Differences are celebrated. Many have worked up a religious fervor to hate the heretic – the conservative American.

“White supremacy” was an expression once reserved for neo-Nazis and skinheads. Now many Democrats use it to describe anyone who votes Republican.

As Democrats concentrate on the excesses of Trump, blue cities in America turn their jails into turnstiles and their streets into hellscapes. The party’s own economists warned that lavish spending would feed inflation; now we have $6 gas and $4 milk.

Rusty Bowers must have noticed. So have many Republicans. And even worse for Democrats, many of their long-standing constituencies – working people, unions, Latinos and older feminists – are noticing as well.

Did I mention that he is a right-wing polemicist and propagandist?

Rusty Bowers recently gave an interview to The Deseret News in which he walked back his statement in support for Trump in 2024, which provided the basis for Boas’ column. Q&A: Rusty Bowers opens up on Trump, the Jan. 6 committee and his Latter-day Saint faith:

DN: I wanted to ask you about Mr. Trump. In your testimony, you said that his efforts to overturn the election were “illegal” and the effects were “horrendous.” You spoke about some of his supporters harassing you and your family, and just recently, Trump called you a RINO and endorsed your challenger. But you also recently said that if Trump is the GOP nominee in 2024, you will support him. Why is that?

RB: That’s a false choice. Why would we focus on that? And I’m not gonna let you box me. I am a conservative. I have a heart that wants to help people in need and feel that we should do that. I want a candidate who has character, who wants to help other people and still maintain their principles, and who is an upright individual. After Trump’s childlike behavior in the first debate (in 2020), many Arizona women wouldn’t vote for him, and he lost the election. That election wasn’t stolen. He lost it. And they went, they voted in Arizona, 60,000ish of those women, 18 to 40, with small children. They just said, “We just can’t do it.” So they voted down-ballot Republican, but they didn’t vote for him. Or some of them even voted for Biden.

I don’t want the choice of having to look at (Trump) again. And if it comes, I’ll be hard pressed. I don’t know what I’ll do. But I’m not inclined to support him. Because he doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the morals and the platform of my party. And I just see it more and more all the time. That guy is just — he’s his own party. It’s a party of intimidation and I don’t like it. So I’m not going to be boxed by, “Who am I gonna vote for?” Because that’s between me and God. But I’m not happy with him. And I’m not happy with the thought that a robust primary can’t produce somebody better than Trump, for crying out loud.

Will the Arizona Republic now be forced to issue an apology and retract the column by Phil Boas? How about replace him?

And what about this recent example of flawed “bothsiderism” editorial board decision making, similar to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune?

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