Exclusive – Howie Carr Chronicles Journalism’s Shift from Blue-Collar to Elitist Trade: ‘They’re Writing for the Powers That Be’

Syndicated Boston radio host Howie Carr appeared on Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Saturday, where he offered his perspective on how the news industry has moved from a working-class trade, in which reporters worked their way up from local outlets to larger platforms, to one that is now dominated by elites who serve as lapdogs to those in power. 

Carr spoke with Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle about his freshly published memoir, Paper Boy – Read All About It, in which Carr recounts his legendary career in journalism, radio, and television. Boyle asked Carr, the preeminent conservative voice in Massachusetts for decades, to explain what he has “seen happen to the newspaper industry” since he got his start.

“I mean, the, you know, newspapers in the old days, it was a sort of a working-class, blue-collar trade,” Carr explained. “And after Watergate, it just the sort of the upper classes, the elites, the legacy started moving into it, and it’s totally different now. As I say in the book, there used to be a farm system. You know, I started out at the Winston-Salem Journal, worked my way up back to Massachusetts, and Tom Wicker, who worked for the New York Times, he came out of the Winston-Salem Journal too and worked his way up, but now, Matt, as you know, I mean, there is no farm system. If there’s a farm system, it’s, you know, you work as an aide to a coat holder on Capitol Hill to the Democrats.”

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Carr pointed to multiple prominent cable news hosts, including CNN’s Jake Tapper, NBC News’s Chuck Todd, and ABC News’s George Stephanopolous, highlighting their past work for Democrat politicians. 

“Jake Tapper, you know, he worked for Chelsea Clinton’s mother-in-law, and she was married to a corrupt congressman, and she was a congresswoman,” Carr said of Marjorie Margolies. “Or you have been Chuck Todd, who worked for stolen valor, Tom Harkin, a senator, or Stephanopoulos, who ran the bimbo eruptions unit for the Clinton campaign in ’92. I mean, that’s the farm system now… It’s not just the internet that’s destroyed newspapers. I think that there’s just nobody, there’s nobody left who — forget going to church or being in the military, these people don’t even know anyone who goes to church or is in the military.”

Reporters nowadays resemble lapdogs who do the bidding of those in power rather than holding them to account, in Carr’s view. The Brothers Bulger author recalled wanting to serve the working class audience throughout his career, including those he rode the train with and saw at bars. 

“You know, the thing is, as I said in the book, you know, like, I wanted to impress the people I was riding on the Orange Line with, who I saw reading the paper in the morning, or who were sitting, standing at the bar at J.J. Foley’s in the south end at night, who were reading the first edition;  you know, the pressmen, the cops who were just getting off duty,” Carr recalled. “People like that. I wanted to see them smiling and… I want to see them say, ‘Yeah, that Howie, you know, he thinks like I think… and I can call him and give him a tip, and he’ll follow through on it.’”

“And again, Matt, I know I sound like an old fart saying this, but I don’t see that anymore with 99% of reporters… they’re writing for the powers that be, for the comfortable, you know, they’re… afflicting the afflict[ed] and comforting the comfortable… That’s, I think that’s why, you know, not just newspapers, but you know, just media in general have atrophy,” he continued. “That’s why there’s room for a Breitbart.” 

Carr highlighted one story he says was in the Boston Herald on Saturday about Norfolk County District Attorney Michael Morrisey “attacking the coverage, basically, of one guy on a murder case in Norfolk County.” 

“I mean, you know, in the old days, the Globe and the Herald would have been all over this case,” he said. “It’s too complicated to get into, but there’s this one guy who’s been, like, exposing what’s been going on, and it’s the same guy who exposed the state police earlier in a bunch of scandals.”

Carr was seemingly referencing Aidan Kearney of the blog Turtle Boy Daily News, who has been covering the Karen Read murder case. He alleges she is innocent and the victim of a cover-up at the hands of the local law enforcement authorities in Massachusetts. 

“And, you know, it’s like one-man bands now. It’s guerrilla journalism is what it is, and it’s really unfortunate,” Carr said. “And, you know, people like us, I think… we’re voices in the wilderness to a degree. I mean, again, I know we’re on satellite right now, and everybody in the world can hear us. I have a radio show that everybody can hear at HowieCarrShow.com, and I got the book out and all this, but you know, it’s not like the old days when everybody could read an opposing viewpoint. You gotta go seek it out now, unfortunately.” 

Carr’s memoir Paper Boy – Read All About It! is now available at HowieCarrShow.com. It chronicles his career as a broadcaster and columnist, “from City Hall to local tv news, his battles against Whitey Bulger, the Kennedys, the bow-tied bumkissers, and then finally taking ownership of his own show,” his website notes.