By Michael Miner
Shaw said that though Tribune editors called the article a coincidence and though the reporter claimed he’d written it on his own initiative and hadn’t even known about the marketing partnership, “skeptical eyebrows were raised.” Shaw commented, “Where integrity is concerned, appearances can often be as important as reality, and many reporters worry about their credibility being undermined by just such inter-jurisdictional ventures.”
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To which the Rocky Mountain Media Watch’s Paul Klite replies, “The censorship defense is the knee-jerk reaction of journalists to criticism….But since stations are supposedly using the public airwaves in the public interest, we want the FCC to send them a message saying what they’re doing is harmful. Violent news is not just about news–it’s about manipulation. Violence is the best way to create what advertising people call arousal in audiences.”
Chapman didn’t name the four Denver TV stations Klite’s organization is threatening, and under normal circumstances there’d have been no reason to. His argument with Klite pits principle against principle. But one of the Denver stations, KWGN TV, belongs to the Tribune Company.
Last Thursday Tribune media writer Tim Jones published a business-section piece on the million-dollar promotional campaign that Britain’s Financial Times was launching in Chicago. “We’re a small-circulation daily,” editor in chief Richard Lambert told Jones, “but our readers are those that advertisers drool over.”
Rights of the Right
After the hearing board acted, columnist Eric Zorn reviewed the matter in the Tribune. He reluctantly gave Witteles credit for attaining the status of “legitimate right-wing martyr” and declared what should happen next: “This one calls for a quick resolution in favor of the paper imposed by the university brass.”
