RUTHFULLY YOURS

Both Meredith Chairman and CEO Stephen Lacy and its Chief Operating Officer Tom Harty have clarified that they will not be relying on their new partners for news judgment. According to the Journal:

Mr. Harty described the Koch investment as “passive” and said the firm “won’t have any influence on Meredith’s operations, including editorial.” Koch Industries, he added, has expressed no interest in acquiring any individual Time Inc. titles.

Mr. Lacy said he has never met with the Koch brothers. “They won’t have a seat on the board of which I chair,” he added.

The same message is coming from Koch Industries. According to the New York Times:

Steve Lombardo, a spokesman for Koch Industries, also said that the Kochs had no plans to take an active role in the expanded company. “This is a passive financial investment made through our equity development arm,” Mr. Lombardo said. The company’s role in the transaction, he said, was similar to that of a bank.

Mr. Lombardo said the company is constantly evaluating investment opportunities.

“We’re looking at deals across all sectors, all industries,” he said. “This just happened to be one that made sense.”

Readers would be unlikely to welcome any publication that simply parrots the opinions of its owner. They also may take issue with the views of entrenched editors. This deal is happening precisely because so many readers have rejected the once-popular titles in the Time stable, which include People, Fortune and Sports Illustrated, along with the eponymous magazine.

This is largely a story about the difficulty of traditional print publications navigating the new world of digital media. But as the new owners ponder ways to stem the decline, they might consider having these titles express a broader point of view. History suggests that Charles Koch would make a compelling columnist for Time magazine.

Time was one of the world’s great media empires and publisher of perhaps the world’s most influential publications when it was run by its co-founder Harry Luce, a passionate defender of free enterprise. He offered a new and engaging way for busy consumers to learn about their world—through a patriotic lens. Luce proclaimed an “American century” and did his best to promote the American ideal of constitutional democracy and economic liberty around the world.

The now-struggling Time magazine, no longer among the country’s most influential publications, flogs a somewhat different agenda. Whereas Luce was a passionate anti-communist, the magazine he built has in recent years published a series of largely flattering profiles of socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders.

A 2015 report called Mr. Sanders an “overachieving underdog” and a “breakout star” who “leads with his heart.” Last year, when Time designated Mr. Sanders one of the world’s 100 most influential people, it invited Berkeley professor Robert Reich to sum up the socialist senator. Mr. Reich offered an appraisal that was not exactly journalistic:

The intensity and steadfastness of his message that widening inequalities of income, wealth and political power in America are undermining our democracy and economy have inspired record numbers of young voters, independents and heartland Democrats to join his “political revolution.”

Sanders has shown it is possible to achieve all this with small contributions and a platform calling for single-payer health care, free tuition at public universities and a breakup of the biggest banks. His campaign has invigorated a new populist movement in America to restore democracy and create an economy responsive to the needs of ordinary people.

It’s fair to say that Luce would never have published such nonsense. And he didn’t have the advantage of seeing the full picture of all the misery that Marxism would impose on ordinary people over the past century. In 2016, Time published Reich’s howler while Venezuela’s experiment in socialism was already imploding in real time. CONTINUE AT SITE