By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on September 26, 2024
An Editorial Opinion
AL.com, which claims to be the largest media organization in Alabama, is owned by the Alabama Media Group, which also publishes digital editions of the Birmingham News, Huntsville Times, and Mobile-Press Register newspapers. The Alabama Media Group is owned by Advanced Publications, Inc.
Advance Publications, Inc. is a private American media company owned by the families of Donald Newhouse and Samuel Irving Newhouse Jr., the sons of company founder Samuel Irving Newhouse Sr. Advance Publications owns other publishing-relating companies, including American City Business Journals, MLive Media Group, and Condé Nast, and is a major shareholder in Charter Communications (13% ownership), Reddit (42 million shares), and Warner Bros. Discovery (8% ownership).
Donald Newhouse, whose net worth is estimated at $11 billion, was ranked No. 29 on the Forbes magazine list of the world’s richest Jewish billionaires for 2022. Prior to his death in 2017, Samuel Irving Newhouse, Jr., had an estimated net worth of $9.5 billion and was ranked the 46th richest American by Forbes in 2014.
Begging for Dollars
Despite their wealth, the Newhouse media clan is begging for dollars to keep their Alabama media affiliates afloat. For example, AL.com runs ads everyday begging for money to: (a) keep AL.com free for all readers, (b) support around-the-clock statewide and local news coverage, and (c) back its “nationally recognized, awarding-winning investigative journalism.”
The Newhouse Media Empire Has a History of Pandering to White Racism in Alabama
The Newhouse media empire has a long and documented history of pandering to white racism in Alabama (and other Southern states). In his 1994 book titled, "Newhouse: All the Glitter, Power & Glory of America's Richest Media Empire," author Thomas Maier lays it out for us. Here is an except from his book.
As confirmed by Thomas Mayer, the Newhouse-owned Birmingham News played a prominent role in championing white racism in Alabama during the 1950s, 60s and 70s. The News was an original participant in the FBI’s infamous COINTELPRO program (1956 to 1972) to discredit Black leaders of the civil rights movement in Alabama.
An example of the News's COINTELPRO anti-civil rights work is depicted in this June 1967 editorial cartoon demonizing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and his non-violent civil rights movement that supposedly killed innocent white Alabamians.
During the 1980s, 90s, and 2000s, the Birmingham News platformed thousands of anonymous comments from readers to articles about my landmark legal cases in Alabama in which these readers labeled me as a “snake," “clown," “race-baiter," “crook," “criminal," “thief," and “low-life.”
In 1999, the News openly portrayed me as a blood-sucking insect that then-Birmingham Mayor Bernard Kincaid squashed.
The News profiteered from a disgusting form of “click bait” journalism that trashed successful Black political, civic, and business leaders who, in turn, became “red meat” for the carefully cultivated body of white racists within the News's readership.
Alabama Media Group Affiliates Perpetuate the Vestiges of COINTELPRO in the Modern Era
The Birmingham News has never publicly disclosed or disclaimed its major conflict of interest with me. I was the presiding judge on a three-judge arbitration panel in 2002 that assessed a $16 million Judgment against the News for intentionally defrauding a group of its distributors, all of whom were White. In 2004, the Judgment was affirmed by the Alabama Supreme Court. Payment of the fraud Judgment was NOT covered by insurance.
Following the $16 million arbitration award against the News, the Alabama Media Group embarked upon a relentless campaign to discredit and destroy me.
On November 29, 2018, and again on Christmas Day in 2018, The Birmingham News team, operating under the brand name AL.com, reached a new journalistic low. On these dates, they fabricated and published a racist quotation claiming Richard Arrington, Jr., who is Birmingham’s first Black mayor, paid me during the late 1980s and early 1990s to “kick white people’s ass.” The fake quotation was attributed to me. Two-time Pulitzer Prize columnist John Archibald, who is now a member of the Pulitzer Prize Committee for Journalism, fabricated the November 29th version of the fake quotation. AL.com Managing Editor John Hammontree wrote and published a Christmas Day article that repeated this fake quotation.
Under the threat of a defamation lawsuit, AL.com retracted Archibald’s fake racist quotation and issued me a public apology on January 13, 2019.
Epilogue
The billionaire Newhouse media family that once used the Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times, Mobile-Press Register, and AL.com as commercial vessels for spewing racial hatred in Alabama are now begging readers in the state for dollars to stay in business.
One of the targets of this racial hatred – Donald V. Watkins – now operates a thriving, 240,000 viewers per month, ad-free, racially diverse, free digital news media network with tens of thousands of devoted readers in Alabama and hundreds of thousands more around the world. We do not seek or accept money from advertisers, content providers, syndicators, or anybody else
Coupled with the digital media platforms owned and operated by other Watkins family members, we are able to provide hard, independent, unbiased journalism to more than one million readers on a daily basis without begging anybody for dollars to do so.
Beware: Whenever New York billionaires panhandle working class Alabamians for money to keep their media empires operating in the state, something is mighty wrong. Hint: They likely view Alabamians as a class of backwards, uneducated, unsophisticated, bigoted fools who can be easily lied to, hoodwinked, and manipulated.
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