Talk about a vast right-wing conspiracy. Endorsing the Republican candidate for president, the Knoxville News Sentinel wrote in its lead sentence, “George W. Bush has a practical, principled view that the federal government’s role in American life should be restrained.”
The next day, on the opposite end of the state, The Commercial Appeal in Memphis also supported Bush’s presidential bid using a familiar argument: “George W. Bush has a practical, principled view that the federal government’s role in American life should be restrained.”
Although the two papers cover cities that are nearly 400 miles apart and vastly different politically, socially, and culturally, the Sentinel and CA ran identical editorials endorsing Bush. Actually, it was no conspiracy. The two dailies belong to the Cincinnati-based Scripps Howard media conglomerate. The company’s 20 newspapers are required to endorse the same candidate in presidential elections and print the same mass-produced editorial explaining why.
A Scripps Howard spokesman says the company’s practice of endorsing presidential candidates has a long history. Before each election, the editors, owners, and a few corporate executives all take a vote. The candidate with the most votes gets the endorsement. The company’s chief editorial writer then pens the endorsement for all the papers to use. Incidentally, the last time the chain endorsed a Democrat was in 1964—Lyndon Johnson over Barry Goldwater.
Alan Horton, Scripps’ senior vice president of the company’s newspaper division, recently explained the practice to the chain’s newspapers this way: “Scripps editors hope that by voicing their individual preferences at a get-together that the choice of a majority of them will be the best choice for the nation as a whole, and that what’s best for the country is also best for each community.”
Of course, that assumes that all of those communities are the same—a premise that underlies corporate chains from McDonald’s to Kinko’s to, obviously, Scripps Howard. But while cravings for extra greasy French fries exist from coast to coast, political opinions tend to reflect regional differences. What may make a candidate appealing in the Northeast—taking a strong position on gun control, for example—may also make him a pariah in the Southwest. Editorial boards in each city need at least to be cognizant of their readers’ perspectives when penning endorsements.
But with Scripps Howard, all 20 papers in its chain—from Denver’s Rocky Mountain News to Vero Beach’s Press Journal—had to run the company editorial in favor of Bush. That policy makes even less sense when applied to its Tennessee papers. Even if both dailies would have endorsed Bush anyway—although that’s not likely in Memphis—their editorial writers could have made localized arguments why, in their opinions at least, Gore is an inferior presidential candidate.
In any case, members of editorial boards at both the CA and the Sentinel—newspapers in Gore’s home state—should have deeper insights into the vice president than some anonymous editorial writer in Cincinnati.
Gang Green
If Al Gore does suffer the abject humiliation of losing his home state, he can’t exactly blame his old pals at 1100 Broadway.
The Tennessean ran a bizarre front-page story Saturday about an obscure Web site that is encouraging Democrats in overwhelmingly pro-Bush states to vote for Nader in exchange for Gore votes from Nader supporters in battleground states.
This anti-democratic gimmick is supposed to help Nader’s Green Party meet the 5-percent threshold for federal funding while not sabotaging Gore’s presidential chances. As if taking a cue directly from Gore headquarters, the paper even printed the site’s domain name, which probably has fewer visitors than the Three Dog Night home page.
On Sunday, the paper ran another weepy story—again on the front page—about local Nader supporters struggling over whether to vote their conscience, even if that might throw the election to Bush. Buried in that story, incidentally, was a quote from a Vanderbilt political science professor who dismissed the vote-swapping Web site’s impact as “small scale” and “sort of a fraud.”
It’s telling that a once progressive paper such as The Tennessean now only recognizes the Green Party when it starts snatching votes from its favorite candidate.
Working for whom?
Is it possible to have dimmer news judgment than WSMV-Channel 4? Last week, when Al Gore and Sen. Joe Lieberman spoke at a rally at TSU, channels 2 and 5 led the 6 p.m. news with the local appearance. Channel 4, however, led its newscast with a story about a dead dog in Cheatham County. It then broke to stories from Monterey and Cookeville before finally getting to Gore’s appearance.
Matt can be reached at MPulle@nashvillescene.com, or call him directly at 244-7989, ext. 445.
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