The AP News Trust's Pre-1990's Hidden History Revisited: Part 3

 

Wikicommons photo by Alterego

In the 1990s, among the Big Media representatives who sat next to each other on the institutionally racist AP board of directors to discuss how AP could best serve as a tool of their supposedly competing Big Media enterprises were the following wealthy people:

New York Times Company Director and Chattanooga Times Publisher Ruth Sulzberger Holberg;

Newhouse Media Conglomerate Advance Publications/Newark Star-Ledger/Parade magazine/Vogue/Conde’ Nast/New Yorker Owner Donald Newhouse;

Times-Mirror/Newsday Vice-Chairman and Los Angeles Times Publisher W.Thomas Johnson;

Knight-Ridder/Philadelphia Inquirer Chairman of the Board James Batten;

Cincinnati Enquirer Chairman of the Board and Fifth Third Bancorp director William Keating;

WJTV Broadcasters of Mississippi Chairman and United Missouri Bancorp Director David Bradley;

Providence Journal President and Director Stephen Hamblett; and

Hibernia Corp./Hibernia National Bank of New Orleans and South Central Bell-Birmingham Director Joe Dorsey Smith. Jr.

[And in 2007, the AP board of directors then included the following wealthy folks:

MediaNews Group Vice-Chairman and CEO William Dean Singleton;

McClatchy Company Chairman, President and CEO Gary Pruitt;

Chicago Tribune Company Chairman, President and CEO Dennis FitzSimons;

Hearst Corporation President and CEO Victor Ganzi;

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Publisher Walter Hussman Jr.;

New York Times Regional Media Group President and CEO Mary Jacobus;

Washington Post Publisher and CEO “Bo” Jones;

Lee Enterprises Inc. President and CEO Mary Junck;

E.W. Scripps Company President and CEO Kenneth Lowe;

Gannett Company Retired Chairman Douglas McCorkindale;

Newhouse Media Conglomerate/AdvanceNet Chairman Steven Newhouse;

ABC News President David Westin; and

Cox Newspapers President Jay Smith. ]

Although the Washington Post-Los Angeles Times News Service and the New York Times Service were supposedly set up to compete with A.P. for media outlet subscribers and readers, representatives of the parent companies of both the Washington Post-Los Angeles Times News Service and the New York Times Service also sat on the A.P. board of directors, ironically. And, coincidentally, neither the Washington Post-Los Angeles Times News Service nor the New York Times Service has apparently been too eager to provide their subscribers with news that is too critical of the A.P. News Trust’s special influence. 

Associated Press/AP Board of Directors in 21st-century

[In 2020, the AP now includes the following wealthy folks:

Newhouse Media Conglomerate Advance Publications Director and Senior Executive Officer Michael Newhouse, who also sits on the board of Charter Communications (which owns Spectrum Networks);

Hearst Media Conglomerate President, CEO and Director Steven R. Swartz (whose media conglomerate owns 33 television stations and at least three daily newspapers/newspaper websites);

E.W. Scripps Company Vice-Chairman Richard A. Boehne (whose media conglomerate owns 60 local television stations);

Gannett Company/TEGIA Inc. Media Conglomerate Former President and Director and Wellesley College Trustee Gracia C. Martore, who also sits on the corporate board of FM Global and the corporate advertising industry's Omnicom Group;

Graham Media Group President and CEO Emily L. Barr (whose media firm owns 7 television stations), who also is the National Association of Broadcasters Chairperson for Television; and

Cox Media Group Former President Bill Hoffman (whose former media conglomerate owns 3 newspapers and around 86 radio stations), who also is a  member of the National Association of Broadcasters TV, ABC News and the Zionist movement's Anti-Defamation League [ADL] Southern Region boards as well as the current president of Hoffmann Communications Inc.]

(end of part 3)

(The following article originally appeared in the July 7, 1993 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly, Downtown. )