The Wire creator David Simon doesn’t want The Baltimore Sun to fall into the hands of the Left’s number one and two enemies, the Koch brothers.
To do so, Simon is teaming up with the left-leaning Working Families Party to stop Charles and David Koch from buying Tribune Company, which would give them control over his old employer along with other city newspapers.
Simon, who worked at The Baltimore Sun for 13 years, says the news that the brothers are looking to buy Tribune Company was “the last nail in the coffin” for print journalism. Not the Internet, New Media or a disconnect with readers, mind you.
“That’s the end game … it’s not enough for you to lobby government or influence elections … the Fourth Estate is supposed to be outside of that,” he says in a video posted at the Working Families’ web site in which he asks viewers to sign a petition against the sale.
“It’s not about left or right, it’s about the community being served,” he later says, even though the paper hasn’t had local ownership in 20 years.
Simon doesn’t mention the hard-left bias of most media outlets, the fact that the public’s trust in the institution of journalism is sinking fast thanks, in part, to said bias, or that the press continues to give President Barack Obama a pass on so many issues it’s hard to count them all without losing one’s breath.
Would Simon be just as alarmed if, say, George Soros was looking to buy his old newspaper? Did Simon kick up a fuss when Ted Turner, an unabashed liberal, lorded over CNN? Is he furious that Soros uses his millions to do just what he accuses the Koch brothers of doing?
Liberals don’t like competition in the arena of ideas, and the notion that a libertarian-leaning duo could call the shots at several urban papers is simply unacceptable to someone who prefers the dying status quo.