Ethical journalists leave Carpenter Media outlets over MAGAT editing

 Well, well, well. If there was any doubt that the second oldest newspaper in Texas has become a MAGA-supporting rag, we now have a New York Times article and two stories from Alaska Public Media to thank for confirming it. Victoria, we too, are part of the new corporate owners propaganda ecosystem. Harsh words to be sure. Bear with me on this.

The stories out of Alaska report that four journalist from three newspapers have resigned penning a joint letter to Mary Kemmis, a senior vice president and group publisher of — are y’all ready for this? — Carpenter Media Group. That’s right. It’s the same outfit that bought The Victoria Advocate. What happened was that the corporate bosses caved to a clearly right-wing know-nothing Alaska state representative over the content of an article covering a Sept. 17 memorial service for Charlie Kirk, the right-wing provocateur murdered last month. What was Rep. Sarah Vance’s beef with the newspapers’ story about Kirk’s memorial?

Vance objected to the original story’s second paragraph correctly characterizing Kirk as a “Christian Nationalist icon” and accurately reporting that Kirk was a defender of racist views. Even worse, in my view, she did so on her official stationery and her official Facebook page, according to Eric Stone of APM. Further, Stone reported, “Vance accused the paper of bias and said she was ‘aware of’ a campaign to boycott Homer News advertising.”

On her official Facebook page (yes, I checked), she called the description of Kirk as “vile and slanderous.” Never mind, poor Sarah, but you can’t slander a dead person.

Clearly, this type of political meddling is unacceptable. Bowing to pressure such as that wielded by Vance and others of her ilk places the First Amendment at risk. In the current political climate, honest and accurate reporting are facing a clear and present danger.

Which, of course, brings us back to Victoria where we can mourn the death of a newspaper and start referring to it as a propaganda outlet. In this climate, it seems fitting to replace the editorial page quote of our First Amendment with a quote attributed to the Third Reich’s minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, stating, “It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion.”

I doubt, with an installed a MAGA supporting managing editor, we’ll see this kind of upheaval here. After all, he has joined with the other MAGATs in canonizing Kirk as their martyred saint. Just see his column admiring Kirk as he joins the well-known chorus of repeating lies over and over and over until people start to believe them. Yes, the Advocate is now part of the Christo-fascist echo chamber purveying fêtes, fluff and political falsehoods.

I’ll do my own repetition: I’ve said it before and I”ll say it again, Victoria deserves better.

The retribution begins

 The New York Times is covering Donald Trump’s retribution tour fairly well. Tyler Pager’s analysis that Trump is weaponizing the Justice Department to exact revenge against his perceived enemies. At the top of that “enemies list” is James B. Comey, the former FBI director. Trump’s beef with Comey centers on the role of Russia’s infiltration of the 2016 presidential campaign. Comey isn’t the only potential target. He’s pushing the Justice Department to go after Sen. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif. and Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, George Soros and others.

 The Sept. 27 story prompted me to reflect on my long-term concern that I don’t see a peaceful end to the oligarch take-over of our country. My post, once again, referenced “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America,” by award-winning Duke University historian Nancy MacLean. I’ve said for the past five years that this book has markedly changed my frame of reference about our politics but hasn’t gotten much traction in my world. However, in this case, it got some; my comment became one of the “Reader Picks.”

 

I wrote : “Let's face reality and stop debating the trivia. Every legal matter involving Trump will, at Trump's behest, go to SCOTUS. And with the six totally corrupt ‘justices’ on the bench, the court will rule in his favor. The oligarchs have outflanked our system and we are no longer a free people. See “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical  Right's Stealth Plan for America,” by award-winning Duke University  historian Nancy MacLean. Can anyone tell me how to stop this peacefully? 'Cause I can't see this without violence.”

 

Two other posters responding to my post gratified me. One, with the screen name “Wobbly Biped,” called MacLean’s book “a masterpiece.” As you can expect, I agree. But “Happy Rabbit” posted a scenario that I’ve wanted out in the open for discussion. It’s the proverbial elephant in the room. Here’s Happy Rabbit’s post: “In a post yesterday, one commenter pointed out the following (and I'm paraphrasing): there is only one question left in this entire nightmare - which side will the military take?”

 

The question is timely, isn’t it?

 

National media are reporting that Trump and Defense Secretary spoke to a gathering of the U.S. military’s top brass at Marine Corps Base Quantico on Tuesday, Sept. 30. According to reporters Emily Davies and Matt Viser in their Washington Post story, “President Donald Trump delivered a meandering address to an unprecedented gathering of the country’s top military leaders, railing against his predecessor, celebrating tariffs and floating the idea of using American cities as a training ground for the military as he painted a picture of the U.S. under attack ‘from within.’”

 

The story points out that Trump is trying to weaponize the military against his enemies, which is the modus operandi many of us predicted. Thankfully, the military leadership gathered there seemed not to be amused — or pleased, according to the story. Maybe this telegraphs what side the military will take. We can only hope.

 

Here are the links:

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/26/us/politics/trump-comey-revenge.html

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/26/us/politics/trump-comey-revenge.html#commentsContainer

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/09/30/trump-quantico-military-generals/

Local newspaper looks complicit in supporting the MAGA movement

Now that I have escaped the almost two-week long rabbit hole of rebuilding my computer, I want to prompt discussion with my Victoria friends and journalist colleagues about the current state of local news. I’ve lived in Victoria slightly more than eight years and have seen our local newspaper, The Victoria Advocate, deteriorate to the point that it’s barely readable. The Advocate’s struggles certainly reflect the industry’s financial pain to some degree; but the real problem for this, the second-oldest newspaper in Texas, is its management’s incompetence and ideology.

After having gone through several editors, we now have some of the most pathetic content I’ve ever seen in a commercial product. Most of the staff-produced copy is either fluff or it’s proselytizing for Christianity. It’s the right-wing version of Christianity — the MAGA/Trump version in which the racism, misogyny, hate and cruelty are front and center. It’s clearly not the kind, gentle and loving Christianity of the inclusive denominations such as the United Church of Christ or the Episcopal Church in America.

One might ask what has triggered my need to discuss the Advocate at this juncture. Well, the answer lies in how, Managing Editor Shawn Akers responded to the death of the right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk. His column, posted September 12, starts with the asinine sentence, “I must admit, I was a fan of Charlie Kirk’s. I admire his high level of intelligence, and I admired his intentions when he visited college campuses to engage students about life and cultural subjects.”

That sentence shows the Akers’ blindness to reality and/or willful ignorance and/or lack of critical thinking skills. Read what Kirk spews: racism, misogyny and hate. It’s further in the article, however, that Akers finally drops his charade and gives lie to his claim that his religion doesn’t affect his role at the newsroom’s helm — a claim he has made since I critiqued his introductory column in September 2024. (I can’t find the column on line any more leading me to wonder if disappearing the content reflects a calculated move or incompetence.) More and more, the Advocate is becoming a propaganda outlet for the brand of fundamental Christianity that, in cherry picking Bible verse, misses all the good things that Jesus said.

To heap praise on a fascist and participate in the the right-wing game plan to turn Kirk into a martyred saint was the last straw; on the Advocate’s Facebook post of this column, I called for Akers to resign. And I sent an email to Justin Wilcox, the Advocate’s regional publisher for the Carpenter Media Group, asking him to tell me why I should spend $15/four weeks of my retiree fixed income to expose myself to such disgraceful journalism. I’ve posted the email to my blog as a supplement to this post. I’ve gotten no direct response from Wilcox, which would have been the professional thing to do. Instead, Akers wrote me to excoriate me for going over his head. That, I thought, was a strange turn of phrase considering I don't work for the Advocate. His email and my response are also on my blog so you can, if you wish, fully understand what, in part, this post is about.

Which leads me to another matter related to Kirk’s death. The Christo-fascists are weaponizing his killing to move us closer to the 19^th Century nation the billionaires crave. The attack on dissent and the media and other institutions not supporting the oligarchs’ agenda, using their Cheetos-colored front man Donald Trump, is a scary start to what comes next. The violence against Kirk is giving the excuse for the Christo-fascists to engage in the violence they so badly crave. This is right out of the German Nazi playbook of the 1930s. Look for language coming soon from the “conservatives” to justify more force than the already deployed ICE version of Hitler’s Brown Shirts offer. Count on it.

Responses to Kirk’s death fall clearly along ideological lines. The authoritarian attack on people like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert would make Joseph Goebbels proud. But that’s just part of the story. I keep telling people to read “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America,” by Duke University historian Nancy MacLean. In this book the reader will find the source of and inspiration for the MAGA movement. MacLean’s work also shows that the blueprint for Project 2025, with a clear plan for violence, began in the 1950s. All the turmoil we’re seeing this week — lionizing Kirk, using the large corporations to stifle dissent, perverting the media landscape to support the MAGA movement — all this is part of the plan to normalize the Christo-fascism being imposed on us.

The MAGA movement will push boundaries and norms. Trump and his minions will ignore court orders and dare people to push back. They will also continue to litigate everything fully knowing that they own the U.S. Supreme Court. And that brings me back to the Advocate’s and Akers’ complicity in pushing content that normalizes the alt-right agenda, openly supports Christo-fascism and ignores information that would reveal what’s really happening.

Kirk’s murder was wrong on every level. And so was the assassination of Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman, a Democrat. Hypocrisy from MAGA is now in full view because we heard nothing but crickets about her death as well as the death of her husband and dog.

Violence has no place in the ideal of the United States. MAGA has already trashed that notion. We can have peaceful demonstrations, petitions and elections. But if the Christo-fascists and MAGA ignore the elections (remember January 6?) and the complicit media propagandizes instead of reporting the facts, then where do we go from here?