What Ever Happened to Newspapers That Championed The People Instead of Their Own Narrow Interests?

The editorial page of the local rag, The Morning Sun, has sunk to a new low on Sunday by publishing an editorial promoting its own economic interests without any disclaimer. At least most broadcast media will tell you when they are self-promoting, but not The Morning Sun. The editorial involved the increase just passed to give the state’s hardest working wage earners a break by increasing the minimum wage

The editorial called for state legislators to “correct” a provision that would provide some semblance of economic justice for hourly workers in the state. Using some of the same tired right wing economic fallacies that have kept minimum wages from keeping up with inflation, The Morning Sun argues that jobs will be lost if the law isn’t changed immediately.

Not only is it economic nonsense, it is a blatant lie. Increases in minimum wages and providing strong overtime provisions have kept employers from exploiting workers and actually forces employers to create more jobs. Does it cut into profits and squeeze executive salaries a bit when the lowest paid people earn more? Of course, it does, but The Morning Sun won’t tell you that.

The newspaper business has survived and thrived, at least at the top, by lobbying hard for exemptions to wage and hour laws and even child labor laws. But to assert somehow that the common good would benefit by changing the law is utter nonsense. The owners and highest paid executives at the newspaper would benefit from changing the law, but not the workers that have been exploited by the newspaper industry.

At a time when the rich and powerful get tax breaks, while the rest of us get crumbs, for a local newspaper to tout legislation that would further benefit the rich is obscene.