Ethical journalists leave Carpenter Media outlets over MAGAT editing

 Well, well, well. If there was any doubt that the second oldest newspaper in Texas has become a MAGA-supporting rag, we now have a New York Times article and two stories from Alaska Public Media to thank for confirming it. Victoria, we too, are part of the new corporate owners propaganda ecosystem. Harsh words to be sure. Bear with me on this.

The stories out of Alaska report that four journalist from three newspapers have resigned penning a joint letter to Mary Kemmis, a senior vice president and group publisher of — are y’all ready for this? — Carpenter Media Group. That’s right. It’s the same outfit that bought The Victoria Advocate. What happened was that the corporate bosses caved to a clearly right-wing know-nothing Alaska state representative over the content of an article covering a Sept. 17 memorial service for Charlie Kirk, the right-wing provocateur murdered last month. What was Rep. Sarah Vance’s beef with the newspapers’ story about Kirk’s memorial?

Vance objected to the original story’s second paragraph correctly characterizing Kirk as a “Christian Nationalist icon” and accurately reporting that Kirk was a defender of racist views. Even worse, in my view, she did so on her official stationery and her official Facebook page, according to Eric Stone of APM. Further, Stone reported, “Vance accused the paper of bias and said she was ‘aware of’ a campaign to boycott Homer News advertising.”

On her official Facebook page (yes, I checked), she called the description of Kirk as “vile and slanderous.” Never mind, poor Sarah, but you can’t slander a dead person.

Clearly, this type of political meddling is unacceptable. Bowing to pressure such as that wielded by Vance and others of her ilk places the First Amendment at risk. In the current political climate, honest and accurate reporting are facing a clear and present danger.

Which, of course, brings us back to Victoria where we can mourn the death of a newspaper and start referring to it as a propaganda outlet. In this climate, it seems fitting to replace the editorial page quote of our First Amendment with a quote attributed to the Third Reich’s minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, stating, “It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion.”

I doubt, with an installed a MAGA supporting managing editor, we’ll see this kind of upheaval here. After all, he has joined with the other MAGATs in canonizing Kirk as their martyred saint. Just see his column admiring Kirk as he joins the well-known chorus of repeating lies over and over and over until people start to believe them. Yes, the Advocate is now part of the Christo-fascist echo chamber purveying fêtes, fluff and political falsehoods.

I’ll do my own repetition: I’ve said it before and I”ll say it again, Victoria deserves better.