Controversy as Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newsroom confronts its publisher [View all]

[babylonsister]

#RESIST!!

https://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/pittsburgh-post-gazette-newsroom-racist-editorial.php

Columbia Journalism Review
Controversy as Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newsroom confronts its publisher
By Michael A. Fuoco
January 22, 2018


Like a hurricane, it was coming our way and we could neither stop nor escape it. Many of the staff of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette knew The Blade, our sister paper in Toledo, had run a vile editorial several days earlier and it would soon be printed in the Post-Gazette as well. The goal of the piece was to provide cover for and support of Donald Trump’s bemoaning that Haiti and African countries were “shithole” places of origin for many immigrants to America. “Calling someone a racist is the new McCarthyism,” the editorial opined. “Calling the president a racist helps no one—it is simply another way (the Russia and instability cards having been played unsuccessfully) to attempt to delegitimize a legitimately elected president.” And, it asserted, “There are nations that are hellholes … It is not racist to say that this country cannot take only the worst people from the worst places.” Post-Gazette staffers awaited the inevitable landfall in our newspaper, well aware of the damage that could come to the 231-year-old institution and its journalists.

John Robinson Block, publisher and editor-in-chief of the Post-Gazette and The Blade and a strong Trump supporter, had asked a willing editorial writer in Toledo to pen the piece. And he demanded it run in both newspapers. Our dread was well placed: Days after it ran in Toledo, there it was, published as the Post-Gazette’s lead editorial on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, of all days. By any objective measure, the editorial was intellectually dishonest and racist, twisting itself in knots in a colossally failed attempt to defend the indefensible. It was headlined “Reason as Racism,” but, in truth, the piece advocated for racism as reason. Leaders of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, which represents about 150 Post-Gazette newsroom employees, knew we had to do something on behalf of our members, our newspaper, our community.

In the end, we decided to break precedent set during the 84 years of the Guild’s existence at the Post-Gazette and write a letter to the editor decrying an editorial. In the letter, signed by all 11 members of the local’s Executive Committee, we noted that Guild members were “collectively appalled and crestfallen by the repugnant editorial ‘Reason as Racism’”:

As a matter of course, the Guild does not weigh in on editorial positions, but this piece is so extraordinary in its mindless, sycophantic embrace of racist values and outright bigotry espoused by this country’s president that we would be morally, journalistically, and humanly remiss not to speak out against it.

This editorial is a blight on the 231 years of service the Post-Gazette has provided its readers. Over its long history, it has railed against racism and supported civil rights and justice for all. Given this history, the shameful and unconscionable editorial…is an abomination that cannot go without condemnation from journalists committed to fairness, accuracy and decency… [We] stand together in solidarity against the bigotry, hatred and divisiveness it engenders.

The Guild letter was an attempt to let the public know that the editorial did not represent the views of our members—or even Post-Gazette managers, for that matter—but represented Block’s racist leanings. This was not an editorial supporting President Trump’s tax bill, for example, about which we might disagree but wouldn’t publicly challenge. This editorial was an outright call for racism.

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Denied publication in our own newspaper, we provided the letter to traditional media and shared it on Twitter and Facebook. The reaction astounded and buoyed us, commending us for taking a “courageous stand.” Politico, Newsweek, the Associated Press, the Poynter Institute, journalism professors and individual journalists, among others, weighed in, acknowledging the uniqueness of the entire episode. We were comforted by the overwhelming support, which provided much needed light during dark days at the Post-Gazette. Looking back on a dizzying, tumultuous week, we had no other option but to stand on the right side of history—the history of our nation, our newspaper, our profession. We would do it again in a minute.