Via democurmudgeon.blogspot.com

As I posted the other day, the Koch brothers are trying to take control of what we see, hear, and read in the Los Angeles Times and about seven other media outlets. They actually said that they want to “make sure our voice is being heard” and that “they see the conservative voice as not being well represented.” I wish I were kidding.

I’ve written about this a couple of times, and now my pal Mark Karlin has his own piece about it in Your Daily Dose of BuzzFlash at Truthout:

The creditors apparently want to sell the unprofitable newspapers but keep the lucrative television stations, radio stations, real estate and other profitable and potentially profitable divisions of the Tribune Company. [...]

Harold Meyerson writes in the Washington Post a virtual R.I.P. to the Los Angeles Times, in which he laments:

… Their purchase offer won’t be buttressed by a record of involvement in or commitment to journalism on their part. But it will come complete with a commitment to journalism as a branch of right-wing ideology….

The bankers’ men on the Tribune board likely view the sale of the papers as a financial transaction, pure and simple. But Times readers (and the Koch brothers themselves) would view a sale to the Kochs as a political transaction first and foremost, turning L.A.’s metropolitan daily into a right-wing mouthpiece whose commitment to empirical journalism would be unproven at best. A newspaper isn’t just a business; it’s also a civic trust. [...]

Indeed, the sale isn’t final. In fact, negotiations are in the hush-hush/leak-leak stage. [...]

Furthermore, like the News World Media Development (a Unification Church affiliate) corporation-owned Washington Times and the Murdoch-owned New York Post, the Kochs can afford to run the papers at a loss in order to achieve their political goals through public influence. [...]

But there will be no question that with at least four major US papers potentially under the control of the Kochs, the national discourse will move even further to the right. And the Kochs can absorb the further financial losses incurred by increased cancelled subscriptions and the likely continued hemorrhaging of advertising dollars. Think of it as their “Americans for Prosperity” of the Fourth Estate. [...]

Just look what Americans for Prosperity and the recently shaken-up FreedomWorks accomplished: They put the House of Representatives under the control of a radical posse of Tea Party zealots in 2010, who block any legislation that can move the United States forward. Uh, that’s about as big a return on investment as one can get – and the Kochs got it.

Please read the entire post here.