*Day 117: Florida Freedom Summer of 2024: 20th Century emphasis by editors
on news has morphed into 21st Century control by publishers.*  No wonder
most voters don’t know what's going on really in this  2022 mid-term
elections season.

My first paid position as a journalist was as editor of the *Schofield News*
weekly, an army base publication in Hawaii. A lieutenant nominally was in
charge of our group but he provided little oversight.

I was allowed complete editorial control, as a private first class.  It was
assumed, rightly, that the paper would include only reports favorable to
the U.S. Army.     Moving on….

In civilian life, I became a general assignment reporter for the Decatur,
IL daily morning *Herald *working for City Editor Don Roberts.   He decided
the beats to which I and the other reporters would be assigned.  In the
same building, for same publisher, the *Decatur Daily Review* was
published.  The staffs were fiercely competitive, though we all worked for
the same publisher.

The publisher promoted me to be one of three editorial page writers for
five newspapers in the small Lindsay-Schaub chain in central Illinois,
including the Decatur dailies.  Ed Lindsay was the publisher.

I never knew a Shaub.  But my boss was Dave Felts, an editorial page
curmudgeon who led the morning meetings and assigned the editorials for the
day based on our suggestions.

The only publisher caveats I can recall is that the chain supported Adlai
Stevenson for anything and everything and we demanded recognition for Red
China.  Neither of those positions was welcomed in generally Republican
downstate Illinois.

I went from D league journalism to the majors, to New York City, as a
feature writer/United Nations correspondent for Scripps-Howard Newspaper
Enterprise Association syndicate providing features for 900 papers across
the nation and U.S. territories.  I worked for Bob Metz, the editor.  Boyd
Lewis, the publisher, was on the premises but had no authority over the
content, although he was the one who hired me, and later suggested I find
work elsewhere.

Bob Isaacs and Joe Odin, two Jewish publishers trying to be Connecticut
Yankees hired me to edit the Stratford, CT, News weekly.  They were
ecstatic about everything I was publishing until their advertising fell off
considerably, because of several controversial issues I raised, including
criticism of the pervasive anti-intellectual climate in a community which
was known worldwide for its summer Shakespeare Festivals.  Still they never
tried to question anything I published.

On my last fulltime job in journalism during the next 20 years,   I got the
first taste of the new form journalism would take in this Century.  I was
feature writer/copy editor under an editorial chief, and assistant editor
for *TV Age* trade magazine which was published twice monthly.  The
publisher Sol Paul was on the premises, but I never felt his iron grip for
the first 18 months.

The magazine published a subtle satirical article written by a colleague
spoofing a tour of CBS-TV led by producer Herb Brodkin, for a group of
Japanese television executive who knew little English.  The editors
published the report.  CBS-TV let Paul know that all of its advertising
would be withdrawn if the writer whose byline was not published did not
apologize in writing and the magazine did not issue an explanation
discounting the article as unauthorized.

Paul insisted on both requirements.  I, the author, a third reporter and a
receptionist, went out on strike, and picketed outside the building next to
Radio City Music Hall, across from the Time/Life Building.  Paul agreed to
settle the dispute by signing a declaration avowing the First Amendment
rights of journalists, and our control over our bylines, after the National
Labor Relations Board opined that to do otherwise would be a violation of
journalists’ working conditions.  We accepted severance pay and all four of
us no longer worked for TV Age.

But generally, the news and information flow were controlled by editors and
writers, not publishers,   Writers knew their limits, of course.  Jack
Gould, New York Times TV Critic, couldn’t publish a word about the greedy
broadcasting industry which had been lauded for taking huge losses on the
JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald assassinations over a six day period in the fall of
1963.,  The time could never be recovered under the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) Rules at the time.  What neither he nor anyone else could
write about for publication was the stuffing of commercials unlawfully into
every half hour in the spring until those public servants not only recouped
their losses but made significant progress.

Still investigative journalism then was hardly dead.

The 20th Century investigative journalist reports are epitomized in *All
the President’s Men*, about the *Washington Post’s* coverage of the
Watergate scandal, and the resulting resignation of Richard Nixon as
president of the United States.  Publisher Katherine Graham is consulted
but the actual shots are controlled by the newspapers’ charismatic editor
Ben Bradlee.

In 2015, a film about the *New York Times’* owned Boston Globe’s
investigation of the extensive network of Catholic clergy abusing children,
showed how such investigations were slowed down and avoided for decades. When
the Boston Globe's tenacious "Spotlight" team of reporters delved into
allegations of abuse in the Catholic Church, their year-long investigation
uncovered a decades-long cover-up at the highest levels of Boston's
religious, legal, and government establishment, touching off a wave of
revelations around the world.—Open Road
<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?plot_author=Open*20Road&view=simple&sort=alpha&ref_=tt_stry_pl__;JQ!!KOmxaIYkRmNA0A!U0zPR7qgTmQJNiEPIUQ0uLO5ivm90-L4HqUiEz3EFev5iqhShilWOYDqJU85fzxNZO7YFL9eL-6Z3oBUVxWSdr1y3Qg$ >
The cover-up was facilitated for decades by the publishers who worked with
those establishments to keep readers from knowing the worst.

By now such investigations seem unlikely because business oriented
corporations often are the publishers running the businesses.  They often
regard their properties as advertising vehicles, especially since
circulation dropped in recent years since the papers became accessible on
line.

  Broadcasters who were hampered until the Reagan Administration by the
Federal Communications Commission restraints on advertising have avoided
meaningful investigative journalism entirely and the networks have bleached
their products accordingly.

At the extremes, FOX News has gone to the far right, and CNN-TV and
MSNBC-TV, to the left.  In all cases on those networks, relevant facts may
be blended into massive talking head opinions.   Information seems to be a
forgotten commodity in the process, especially when commentators differ in
discussion about facts.

And what seems to worry publishers, those corporate execs, most is
controversy.  Elections are covered with little distinction between
candidates, unless a contest is between a 2020 election denier, and a
rational Democrat whose seat is endangered, or so polarized that the
freakiness itself becomes the story.

Coverage of local elections avoids ideas and candidate views which might
threaten the economic future of the community.  In my hometown of
Gainesville, FL for example a nationally covered controversy about the
hiring of a right wing evangelical Christian anti-gay, anti-abortion,
anti-China U.,S. Sen. Ben Sasse, a Republican, from Nebraska farm country,
as the new president of the University of Florida, was not considered
relevant for any discussion or debate between and among candidates for the
state legislature, the U.S. Congress, county and separately city commission
seats or the Board of Education.

And then last weekend, a long-simmering issue of black professional
athletes expressing and supporting anti-Semitism exploded in twinkling
lights on the Jacksonville Stadium after the traditional annual game
between Georgia Bulldogs and Florida Gators.

The sign explicitly stated “West was right about the Jews.”

That headline was repeated on a nearby bank.  Photos of an earlier banner
making the same statement was circulated widely throughout media.  Photos
are the new way of saying this is the news, without words.

Nightly newscasts of crimes committed that day are illustrated with the
mostly black mug shots of men who were arrested.  None of the names are
memorable, but the cumulative effect seems to foster the belief that crime
is over the top, and it is being committed by black me.  Local elections go
unmentioned while the visual obscenities permeate television news
broadcasts in this election period.

The “West” is the billionaire black entertainer Kanye West who now calls
himself “Ye.” Because of his unapologetic anti-Semitic remarks, companies
led by Adidas have cancelled contracts with  his businesses.

The West story was quickly compounded by support he received from Kyrie
 Irving, an NBA professional basketball star whose career already had drawn
political headlines for his refusal to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Kyrie, who plays for the Brooklyn Nets, in the borough with a heavy Jewish
population, continues to stand by his support of an anti-Semitic film,
although he has apologized for the support he gave to West, been fined
$500,000 and finally he was given a five game suspension by his team which
may be continued if he does not back down completely on the issue.

The National Basketball Association president Adam Silver has mumbled about
Kyrie, but the executive is Jewish and so….   Now the media still has not
gotten connected to the depth of this tension created by black athletes
fostering hatred and dislike NOT for white people in general, but only for
white Jews in particular.

Google research revealed a similar controversy in the summer of 2020,
during the presidential election. NFL football player Desean Jackson, a
member of Louis Farrakhan’s Muslim brotherhood,  and former NBA player
Stephen Jackson were getting comparable national attention for their
anti-Semitic comments.

Any editor and journalist I knew in print, in broadcasting, would have
found any excuse to become a part of this controversy erupting between two
groups which have had a love-hate relationship certainly since the brief
moments of solidarity in the civil rights movements, before black power
took African-Americans in a different direction, and Jews became among the
loudest vocal opponents of affirmative action, because they envision such a
requirement as resulting in a return to old Ivy League policies of quota
limits for Jews.

*The Gainesville Sun*, my hometown newspaper, is owned by Gannett
Newspapers/Gatehouse Media the largest newspaper chain in the nation.  Each
*Sun* edition on-line is accompanied by several pages of the USA Today
paper published by Gannett.    Remarkably in an election season, Doug Ray,
long time editor of the *Sun* and the neighboring *Ocala-Star Banner, *was
terminated, for no apparent scandal or similar reason.  To compound the
matter, he has not been replaced.

Instead, Nathan Crabbe, the choir boy editorial page director, has been
instructed to oversee newspaper operation.   By-lines of two veteran
reporters have disappeared.  Perhaps that turmoil might explain to some how
the “West’ banner story in Jacksonville on the day of the prestigious game
involving the Florida Gators fell between the cracks.

The banner story was not covered in any way by a *Sun* news or sports
writer.   Yesterday, the *USA Today* section covered the five-day
suspension of Kyrie by his team.   The in-depth account hardly suggested
how widespread Kyrie coverage has been since last weekend.

National print and broadcasting media have blasted Kyrie at every turn, and
covered twitter exchanges between him and popular former NBA Star and
current TV sports analyst Shaquille O’Neale, and a widely publicized demand
in google headlines for further Kyrie punishment by another former NBA Star
and commentator Charles Barkley.  But no significance has been attached to
the brouhaha.

Whites either appear to be silent or they are not asked to comment by
journalists or both. The silence becomes deafening when political
candidates are not asked about their views of incipient black
anti-Semitism.

No one appears willing to touch at all on the issue of blacks who perhaps
personally and in the voting booth regard their Christian religion as more
important than their race.

In Florida, Nikki Fried who clearly bested her rival former Gov. Charlie
Christ (D-FL) in their one debate, easily was defeated by him in the
party’s gubernatorial primary.

Until this election, Ms. Fried was the brightest star in the future of the
state for Democrats.  Fried was the only Democrat in a statewide office, as
Secretary of Agriculture.  Her experience and volunteer work are all
pluses.  She is a member of Florida Blue Key (FBK), the prestigious mostly
legal University of Florida fraternity.

Her one major drawback in the context of this account is she is now and
always has been Jewish, and involved with a Jewish business person in the
fledgling marijuana issue.  She is the first Jew elected to statewide
office in decades, the first Jewish woman ever elected to statewide office
in Florida.   That seems to have turned out to be a liability rather than
an asset.  But we will never really know, because no journalist has ever
covered the issue.

So it seems neither a story about a Jew or about a black anti-Semite, and
the effect of either or both on the coming election, holds any interest for
any mass medium.  The slightest coverage of either or both would not have a
positive effect on the bottom financial line, for the media or for their
communities.  Black teenagers may regard them as role models.

And now just before the mid-term election, the richest man in the United
States, Elon Musk, appears to be treating his purchase of Twitter,  as if
he had bought a coffee chain, and needs to cut down on its losses
immediately regardless of the constitutional protection for extensive
coverage of any kind.  Hate speech?  Crying fire in a crowded theater?

For better or worse, Twitter should be popping about every issue at stake
in this election, but the medium has become the message and the content is
being drowned out by business decisions, e.g., the laying off of half of
its staff.

So the question remains: Where have all the journalists gone? a few days
before our 2022 Midterm election?

Gabriel Hillel for Florida Freedom Summer of 2024

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