Who Owns Your Newspaper?

Today's SteemIt blog challenge asks for people to write about their local news media. As people discuss the news, I hope they pay close attention to who owns the paper.

The image above is a screen shot taken from a web site called Newspaper Ownership. This incomplete site shows ownership of some major newspapers. This site has the top Google spot, but appears to be woefully incomplete and only shows media in the US.

Fortunately media ownership is a topic of great interest around the world and there are thousands of organizations that analyze media ownership.

Since newspaper ownership is a primary concern of the political class, you will find articles on Wikipedia about the history of most news outlets.

When I researched the history of different papers, I was disappointed to learn that a large number of major newspapers were created by politicians and not intrepid journalists seeking the truth.

I happen to live in Salt Lake City, Utah. Most of the large media outlets in the valley are owned by the Mormon Church. The Mormon Church's media empire includes an impressive portfolio of newspapers, TV and radio stations. Brands include The Deseret News, KSL, KBYU and numerous other stations.

The primary opposition paper is The Salt Lake Tribune. This paper was founded in 1868 by a group of businessmen who left the Mormon church and were opposed to the heavy handed policies of the church leadership. The newspaper was extremely critical of the theocracy that ruled the state. The Tribune was purchased in 1901 by Thomas Kearns (R) who continued the paper's liberal bent.

(A quick note: the term "Liberal" used to refer to the ideals of the US Founders. Liberalism used to refer to people who believed in limited government, freedom of religion and free speech. The Republican Party used to be the liberal party. The meaning of the term changed.)

The Deseret News is owned by a church that has a financial war chest with several hundred billion dollars in assets and is running quite strong.

The Salt Lake Tribune was dependent on local subscriptions and local advertising. The newspaper fell into bankruptcy and was briefly owned by the Deseret News. The tribune was recently purchased by the Huntsman family. The Huntsman family built a fortune by making the Styrofoam trays used to serve food at McDonald's. They branched into making other plastic products.

Huntsman's chemicals stopped producing Styrofoam trays when they realized that the products were causing substantial environmental damage.

John Huntsman, jr became the Governor of Utah. He ran for the president of the United States in 2012. He served as the the Ambassador to China, and is now running for the position again. Huntsman is currently running for the governor seat again.

To recap, Utah's media tends to be dominated by a culture war between church which owns most of the media and the people who aren't in the church. The primary opposition paper has been owned by a variety of political interests including Senators and Governors.

Sadly, most of the media in the US has been closely aligned with political movements.

As you research local news in #the100daysofsteem, be sure check out who owns your local paper.