By Roldo Bartimole

I’m sick of hearing about the “liberal press.”

The press is hardly liberal unless you define liberal only as culturally permissive. Critics might have a point there.

Usually, however, when people refer to the liberal press they are speaking of it in political terms. Through the last forty years, there has been a purposeful attempt to make the word “liberal” a term of derision. It’s a tactic used by right-wing forces in the nation.

Applying a liberal labeling to the media bothers me personally because it isn’t so.

I’ve always found the liberal label for media people to be pretty much nonsense. That’s been my personal experience, limited as it may have been in what I’d call the straight media. Most reporters, particularly today, are middle class people essentially divorced from people in lower economic circumstances. They are more concerned about their personal advancement and careers than ideology. That makes them attuned to the desires of their bosses, who hardly reflect any liberal ideology.

When I first came to Cleveland in 1965 to work for The Plain Dealer I was one worried young man, unsure if I would be able to compete against those who, to me, were big city reporters. They obviously would be interested and alert to what was happening around them. Cleveland’s urban problems had been one reason I was attracted to the city.

I was quickly surprised.

Just before I left Bridgeport, Connecticut, I worked for a weekly paper owned by Leigh Danenberg, who undoubtedly one could have called a “liberal.” Westbrook Pegler, a “deplorable” New York columnist, wrote of him as a commie. I came to work for him at the Bridgeport Herald after he telephoned me for a talk. He knew he said that the paper I worked for, the Bridgeport Sunday Post, had “gagged me.”

I had done numerous stories about slum housing in Bridgeport and predictably, it disturbed the mayor and his flunkies to the point that they put some kind of pressure on the paper. I was told that I was to not to pursue such articles anymore. As a result, I simply showed up to work, put other assignments in the bottom drawer, and did very little.

Just before I left for Cleveland, I had the opportunity to interview Robert Penn Warren. It was 1965. Warren, the author of possibly the best American political novel All the King’s Men, wrote, Who Speaks for the Negro? about that time.

The fact that I was moving to The Plain Dealer came up during our conversation. Warren advised me that I should look up Ruth Turner when I got to Cleveland.

Ruth Turner is another forgotten Clevelander. I’ll let Warren introduce her to you. “Ruth Turner was born in Chicago, attended public school in that city, was graduated from Oberlin with a major in German, went on a scholarship to the Free University of West Berlin, and then took an M.A. at Harvard Graduate School of Education. She taught school briefly in Cleveland, Ohio, but is now a full-time worker for CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), at the very center of the Negro Movement in that city, which has lately had a violent history of race relations. She is in her middle twenties, a rather small, delicately formed young woman, of dark brown color, with a calmness of manner which is sometimes belied by a sudden intensity that comes over her pleasant face. She wears glasses.”

When I came to The Plain Dealer, I wanted to meet this person. The response I got from those reporters I talked with was that I must be nuts. She, Turner, was a rabble-rouser. Someone to be avoided not pursued.

As it was, I did get to talk to her. This was many years ago but it was clear that she distrusted me as much as my colleagues – those labeled as “liberals” – did her. She had been burned by the news media too often. (You can say that either she gave up on Cleveland not long after, or she was driven out by the city's conservative backwardness.)

That was also true about thr group, Students for a Democratic Society, that started organizing in Cleveland, one of two cities in the U.S.

When I found out such a group was in Cleveland I also pursued them, wanting to know and write about what they were doing here. I did get an invitation to dinner with the group at their Jay Avenue apartment in now what’s known as Ohio City.

However, they didn’t want to talk to me as a reporter because they had little use or trust for Plain Dealer reporters.

A lot of Cleveland history has been lost because reporters are so institutionally conservative that they do not pursue what is right before them, often fearful of being labeled liberal.

These prejudices against unconventional people and ideas seem to be inherent to so many reporters. One would have to believe that much of it stems from their breeding by education in our school systems and from their loyalty to those who pay their salaries.

I think there’s more unwillingness to view Cleveland and its people realistically today than when I was considered peculiar for desiring to meet and engage Ruth Turner.

If you look at how much of what comes from today’s reporters, that originates from official sources – primarily paid spokespersons of business, civic and government – you realize even if there are liberals in the media they are irrelevant. They become natural propagandists for the status quo.
from Cool Cleveland contributor Roldo Bartimole Roldo@Adelphia.net

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