We’ve reached the point now where they have to buy the paper if only out of spite, right? They’ve spent the last three or four years as the left’s Emmanuel Goldstein. They must be enjoying the infantile histrionic angst at the prospect of them chipping off a piece of liberals’ media monopoly. Even if there’s a boycott of the paper, which of course is what this “coalition” is preparing to galvanize, it’d be worth it to them for the larfs.

Two fun facts about the coalition. One: It insists that a media outlet owned by “intensely partisan activists could not be trusted to provide an honest account of a wide variety of issues that are of vital importance to the public.” Two: One of the coalition members is Daily Kos.

Millions of Americans rely on the news outlets currently operated by the Tribune Company to provide them with accurate, unbiased information about pressing issues in their communities and around the world. Ownership by two of the most influential and radical right wing ideologues in the country will skew trusted news sources to further their interests and debase our democracy.

Any news outlet owned by such intensely partisan activists could not be trusted to provide an honest account of a wide variety of issues that are of vital importance to the public. The Koch brothers have worked for years to benefit their bottom line at the expense of the everyday Americans. They have donated millions to organizations and politicians that deny climate change[i], attack campaign-spending limits[ii], dismantle worker’s rights[iii], promote discriminatory voter ID laws[iv], restrict access to health care[v], and increase income inequality[vi]. In doing so, the Koch brothers have shown a willingness to repeatedly and egregiously mislead the public. Allowing them control of important, respected newspapers to further their agenda will make an honest public discourse on these, and many other important issues, impossible.

We already know what happens to news coverage when the ideology of an owner is placed over informing the public. This sale would create another Rupert Murdoch, and make papers like the LA Times and Chicago Tribune look more like Fox News and the New York Post.

You know what that last line is about. I clicked over to FoxNews.com and LATimes.com to compare what’s happening on their respective home pages today. Here’s Fox:

And here’s the LAT:

It’s not the taco story that’s truly classic there, as irresistible as it is. It’s the predictable “partisan politics as usual” spin on the Benghazi hearings, as if a diplomat’s sworn testimony about being told by his superiors in the Democratic-run State Department not to talk to investigators across the aisle about the attack is some sort of boring talking-points recitation. God, if you’re up there, hear a humble atheist’s prayer: Please don’t let the Koch brothers interfere with magical journalism like that.

By the way, how’s that LA Times staff walkout going? We’ve heard repeatedly that mass newsroom resignations might be coming if the Kochs’ tentacles envelop the Times. Seems to me that promises from those staffers, in writing, that they’ll quit if the sale is made are in order. How about it? Let’s see the “impartial” media clerics of the Times’s masthead put their money where their mouths are.