People still want news. People still complain about the messenger, sometimes focusing on that more than the actual news delivered.
In Alabama, where I started my professional career in newspapers in 1982, I was regularly hit with criticism from readers that me or my paper, the Birmingham News, were not to be believed because we were the liberal media. I’m not into labels and that’s part of the reason I’m writing about this, but I think most objective observers would describe the Birmingham News during the time period I was there 1982-1986 as a ‘conservative’ paper.
I left the News in ’86 to go work for the Orlando Sentinel in central Florida.
Same thing in Orlando. In the 1990s, the paper, the Orlando Sentinel, was often described by people I encountered as “socialist” and “left-wing.”
Our key columnist at the time, was Charley Reese, a quixotic, quiet, friendly man with a national reputation who railed against Abraham Lincoln and praised Robert E. Lee.
It was said at the time that Pat Buchanan, a former Nixon speechwriter, once said Reese (RIP) was the only columnist farther right than himself.
I don’t even think it helped when I pointed out that at the time the Sentinel had endorsed Republican presidents for years.
But when I got to California it was a whole new ball game.
I became a ‘tool of the man’ and worked for ‘big corporate media.’