Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Staffers: Bosses Edited Our Reporting to Be More Pro-Trump

[babylonsister]

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Staffers: Bosses Edited Our Reporting to Be More Pro-Trump
‘EMBARRASSING’
Reporters told The Daily Beast that the papers’ editors are “manipulating reality” on behalf of an ownership family that is rabidly Trumpist and believes the election was stolen.
Maxwell Tani, Media reporter
Updated Jan. 08, 2021 4:41PM ET / Published Jan. 08, 2021 12:16PM ET


Journalists at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and sister publication the Toledo Blade say the papers’ top bosses edited coverage of this week’s right-wing riot on Capitol Hill to appear more favorable to Donald Trump, reflecting ownership’s rabid support for the outgoing president.

“You have management manipulating reality, and it’s just so unbelievably unethical,” Jay Skebba, a reporter at the Blade, told The Daily Beast in an interview on Thursday evening. “To know that managers in the newsroom with decades of experience would ever allow something like that to happen is so embarrassing. I’ve worked here for seven years, today was the most upsetting.”

In a news conference on Friday organized by the NewsGuild, the union representing staff at both outlets (as well as others like The New York Times and The Daily Beast), Blade reporters said their editors made specific changes to soften language about the outgoing president’s involvement in inciting Wednesday’s riots on the Capitol, which left five people dead, including one police officer.

According to Skebba, the paper could not refer to the rioters as “Trump supporters,” or “Trump protesters,” which reporters viewed as an editorial attempt to distance the president from the riots that followed an event in which he encouraged his fans to march to the Capitol and “fight” for him.

Staffers said that the paper’s managers also “inserted the qualifiers ‘a majority,’ ‘mostly,’ and ‘some’ in front of references to Trump supporters, both in wire copy, wire photos, and a story written by a Blade reporter”—an implication, staff said, that seemingly hinted at the right-wing conspiracy theory that the mob was infiltrated by left-wing political activists.

The edits, staffers at both papers said, stemmed from ownership’s zeal for Trump.

more...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/pittsburgh-post-gazette-and-toledo-blade-staffers-bosses-edited-our-reporting-to-be-pro-trump?ref=home

[orwell]

1. Hmmm...

...I guess this is what they mean by "fake news."

Who'd a thunk it?

[DeminPennswoods]

2. The Block twins, John jr and Alan, who now

run the Post-Gazette are rabid Trumpers. They make their competition, the Pgh Tribune-Review, a paper founded and owned by Richard Mellon Scaife(!), look sane by comparision. In 2016, the editorial page was forced to run their presidential "endorsement" which was supposedly a comparison of Trump and Clinton and was just full of the lies believed in TrumpWorld. This year's endorsement of Trump was more of the same.

They've been fighting with their union over a new contract for years now, too.