“New” U-T? Same as the old U-T: Local Daily Blacks-out Rally By Hundreds of San Diegans Against Corporate Money in Politics

When Papa Doug Manchester bought the San Diego Union-Tribune late last year, there was a hint that the “new” U-T would be different.

But with the daily’s total black-out of a rally on Saturday by hundreds of San Diegans against corporate monies in politics and elections, we can now see that the “new” U-T is the same as the old U-T: both ignore as best as they can progressive gatherings against causes the owners and editors like.

The “old” U-T was adept at ignoring rallies by several thousand labor supporters for example – all the while high-lighting a tiny gathering of tea party types. We documented this in the past.

So, in a way, the U-T‘s black-out of any news about this rally was simply par for the course.

Yet, interestingly enough, today’s U-T did run an article in the main section of the newspaper entitled “Occupy Protests Target Spending” on page A11.  The article did discuss actions around the country at courthouses against money in politics, describing protests in Washington DC and in San Francisco and Boston – but nary a word about the same protests here in San Diego on the same day.  (Could not find the online version of the article in order to link to it.)

According to that article, and others, yesterday’s rally in San Diego was one of the largest in the nation against Citizens United.

The new U-T could have very easily run a short piece about the rally.  But its editors chose not to.  Are we surprised? The Voice of San Diego‘s interviews with Manchester and his right hand man demonstrate that neither have ever run a newspaper before, and that Manchester sees the daily as a vehicle to booster his favorite city.

So, instead of learning about how much our local San Diegans dislike the Supreme Court ruling so much so that 250 protested against it, we learned that the Vice President and his wife visited Camp Pendleton, how DMV kiosks quicken registration renewals, how the University House at UCSD will be fixed up, that a retiree’s killer got a life sentence, how a shooting killed two, about how Mayor Sanders in DC joined a group of other mayors in support of gay marriage, and how abusive ex-spouses target Toni Atkin’s assembly measure.

In fairness, the U-T was not the only media that ignored the rally as there weren’t many TV cameras present either.  Corporate media has trouble in this town of showing displeasure and opposition to corporate money in politics.