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June 08, 2004

LA TIMES Faces Layoffs: Is Their Biased News Coverage The Cause?

I was tempted to blog this the other day, but was waiting for some key info to appear. That info just arrived.

As you may have heard, LA TIMES editor John Carroll recently gave a speech in which he slammed Fox News as being biased. FOX chairman and CEO Roger Ailes responded in a Wall Street Journal article:

...Mr. Carroll essentially announced that the reason Fox News Channel is the No. 1 cable news network and is gaining viewers is because the American people are stupid and gullible.

...Mr. Carroll’s pathetic attempt to smear Fox News Channel will only drive his paper’s circulation down, as it should. Fox News Channel’s audience in Los Angeles is increasing daily. The Los Angeles Times is becoming less relevant in people’s lives, so Mr. Carroll is trying to flog health back to a newspaper by attacking television news.

Ailes was implying that the LA TIMES is being hurt financially by its policy of suppressing information favorable to political views it opposes. At the time, I could find no recent info to support the contention that profits at the LA TIMES were off.

That was just a few days ago. Now we see this (via LA Observed ):

Hammer hangs over LAT staff

Five Pulitzers or no, Tribune Publishing president Jack Fuller just threw a pall over the newsroom at the L.A. Times. While rumors swirl about 60 impending editorial department layoffs (and 120 overall), Fuller’s note to employees avoided specifics:

From: Corporate-Relations
Sent: Monday, June 07, 2004 1:39 PM
Subject: Message from Jack Fuller/Cost-Saving Initiatives
Dear Fellow Employee,

Today we released our summary of revenues for May and announced that we are reducing expenses across the publishing group through a series of cost saving initiatives. We’re taking this action because revenue growth at some of our newspapers has not materialized as fast as we had originally planned. While the help-wanted advertising category continues to improve and preprint advertising is growing, other advertising categories at some of our newspapers are experiencing difficulties. The problem is limited to a few newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times.

Failing to react to the revenue shortfall in publishing would cause a drag on the earnings of Tribune Company as a whole. By implementing expense control initiatives immediately, we can avoid that. Additionally, next year we expect to face continued expense pressure due to pension and retirement costs and a possible increase in the price of newsprint. The cost saving measures we implement now will help us deal with these 2005 issues, as well.

Implementation of expense control initiatives is being determined by each individual business unit and may consist of both staff reductions and other cost saving measures.

Sincerely,
Jack

So profits are indeed off. The question remains, is the LA TIMES offending its own readers with its biased news coverage?

We know that the TIMES itself admitted to losing at least 10,000 subscriptions due to its coverage of Schwarzennegger during his election campaign. Fox News, which supports America and wants to see us succeed in the war on terror, is the #1 cable news network. The slanting of news by the media is less of a secret now that we in the blogosphere are all over it.

I’ll conclude with this telling quote, again from Ailes’ Wall St. Journal article:

... He [LA TIMES editor Carroll] owes the fine journalists at the Fox News Channel an apology for his insulting comments. However, we will never see that. He treated Fox News Channel worse in his newspaper than he treated the terrorists who recently beheaded an American.

That’s a telling point. The LA TIMES was done with the Nick Berg story in record time; but for weeks it couldn’t print enough stories slamming Bush, the U.S., and U.S. soldiers over Fallujah. And when its editor gives a major speech, it isn’t to attack the forces trying to kill Americans—it’s to attack Fox News, which supports our efforts to save American lives.

Yes—that may indeed explain why they’re losing money.