Journalists from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and sister publication Toledo Blade say the newspapers ‘top chiefs edited coverage of this week’s right-wing uprising on Capitol Hill in an attempt to favor Donald Trump, drawing the owners’ rabid support for the outgoing President.
“Management is manipulating reality and it’s just incredibly unethical,” Jay Skebba, a reporter for Blade, told The Daily Beast in an interview Thursday night. “To know that newsroom managers with decades of experience would ever allow this to happen is so embarrassing. I worked here for seven years, today was the most annoying. “
In a Friday press conference organized by NewsGuild, the union that represents workers in both branches (as well as others like the New York Times and The Daily Beast), Blade reporters said their editors had made specific changes to mitigate the language of the outgoing president’s involvement in inciting the riots at the Capitol on Wednesday in which five people died, including a police officer.
According to Skebba, the newspaper failed to label the rioters as “Trump supporters” or “Trump protesters,” which reporters saw as an editorial attempt to distance the president from the riots that followed an event in which he marched his fans encouraged go to the Capitol and “fight” for him.
Staff said the newspaper’s executives added “the majority,” “mostly,” and “some” of the qualifiers before references to Trump supporters, in both wirecopy, wireframe and a story written by a Blade reporter “- An implication, said staff members apparently hinting at the right-wing conspiracy theory, that the mob was infiltrated by left-wing political activists.
The changes, said staff at both newspapers, came from the owners’ eagerness for Trump.
Opinion sides in both newspapers endorsed Trump for re-election, but journalists expressed concern that respect for Trump has penetrated editorial coverage. The newspaper’s editor, John Robinson Block, openly supports Trump after flying his campaign jet with him during the 2016 election cycle and posing for photos with the president. And according to Open Secrets, people listing Block Communications, the owner company, as an employer donated nearly $ 60,000 to Trump and loyalist candidates and Hill committees in the 2020 election cycle.
For the past several years, Post-Gazette staff have argued with the company’s property over how the owner’s political findings affected the publication. In particular, employees wrestled with Block when he asked them to remove a reference to Trump’s description of places like Haiti and Somalia as “crap places” and protested when the publication fired a cartoonist whose anti-Trump cartoons were spiked . Staff were also appalled when the joint editorial site of Blade and Post-Gazette released an unmarked statement in 2018 complaining that the author had publicly overused the term “racist”.
In a statement later Friday, the paper denied the changes that stemmed from political prejudice. “The Blade’s reporting was thorough, complete, accurate, and met our standards for impartial reporting of facts,” said a spokesman. “Ultimately, it is the right and responsibility of the owner to ensure the accuracy and protect the journalistic integrity of the content of our newspaper – not the Toledo News Guild CWA Local # 34043.”
Still, employees of both Blade and the Post-Gazette said they were particularly appalled and that they would be encouraged to act this week by a Facebook post from a family member of the owner’s family.
On Wednesday, John Block’s sister-in-law Susan Allan Block posted an all-caps screed on the social media platform following the violent MAGA mob that challenged the legitimacy of the 2020 elections.
“NO PEACE! NO UNITY! NO CONCESSION! NO LEGALITY FOR A STOLEN ELECTION! THERE ARE 70 MILLION TRUMPLE SUPPORTERS THAT DO NOT FALL DOWN THE LINE. There will be no cure,” she wrote. Vice President and all Democrats dragging through the same shit they’ve been dragging through President Trump and his supporters for the past 5 years. “
While a spokesman for the newspaper said Block’s comments did not reflect the company’s views, the post angered journalists for the newspaper, who said the remarks reflected the openly pro-Trump sentiment that had invaded the coverage.
“Calling our new vice president a whore is more than pale and perpetuates the sexism and racism that plagues our society and this nation,” said Ashley Murray, a reporter for the Post-Gazette, on Thursday evening.
She added: “In recent years, extremists have been encouraged to threaten journalists. Susan Allan Block sells the very conspiracy theories and rhetoric that endanger the people employed by Block Communications. “
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In this article, Susan Allan Block was previously referred to as the wife of John Robinson Block. She is his sister-in-law. We regret the mistake.
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