Posted on 08/04/2010 8:28:46 AM PDT by STARWISE
The $1 sale of Newsweek magazine to billionaire Sidney Harman, who is married to a member of Congress, is raising questions about the struggling magazine’s new connections to partisan politics.
Harman, husband of California Democrat Rep. Jane Harman, has long financially supported Democratic candidates and has been associated with numerous center-left groups over the past decades.
According to data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics, Harman has donated more than $150,000 to Democratic candidates and committees over the past twenty years.
(He also gave $6,000 to independent Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman in 2005-2006, $4,600 to Maine Sen. Susan Collins and $2,000 to then-Colorado Rep. Scott McInnis in 2001, both Republican).
Harman has never been a man who simply lets his money do the talking.
In the 1970s, he served under President Carter in the Commerce Department where he worked to impose barriers on foreign shoe manufacturers who wanted to enter the American market, according to a 2003 New York Times profile. Today, he is a trustee emeritus at the Carter Center and sits on the board of the Aspen Institute.
Harman, like most anyone involved in politics and media, is not without his critics.
In November, his wife will face a challenge to her long-held congressional seat. Her opponent, Republican Mattie Fein, sent an open letter to then-Newsweek editor Jon Meacham before the magazine deal was announced that warned that Harman’s wife could use her power in the House to quell certain stories. (Meacham has since resigned.)
“Harman would be likely to exert her ownership leverage to divert Newsweek’s investigative reporting away from government wrongdoing that could be politically embarrassing to her,” the July 8 letter read. “As managing editor of a preeminent news magazine, you are saddled with a special responsibility to keep Newsweek from a hijacking to advance Congresswoman Harman’s personal and political agenda.”
Brent Bozell, president of the conservative Media Research Center and long-time critic of the magazine, criticized the move, calling Newsweek a “dying magazine.”
“A left-winger pretending to be centrist sold it to another left-winger pretending to be centrist,” he said in a statement. “Newsweek is a dying magazine because no one wants to read their left-wing propaganda masquerading as ‘news.’ The $1 price tag, then, is probably just about right.”
Other news organizations had voiced interest in bidding on the magazine, but the Washington Post Company chose to sell it to Harman, who company chairman and CEO Donald E. Graham said “feels as strongly as we do about the importance of quality journalism.”
But by purchasing the magazine, Harman faces an uphill battle in bringing the magazine back to profitability. In the last two years, Newsweek has lost $71.5 million. The former owners have retained the pension cost of certain employees, but the rest is Harman’s to shoulder.
A spokesman for The Washington Post Company declined to comment on the tax implications involved in the sale beyond the company’s official release.
If you feel so strongly about it, you should try it some time.
Journalism imparts the writers' views into every event.
Newsweek might go left stream?
Shouldn’t this article have been written 45 years ago?
I don’t think it is possible to go any farther left than they already are.
I find it hard to believe no conservative was willing to offer $2 for Newsweek;I suspect a arranged sale with all the usual Democratic Party dishonesty and securing of closets(so the skeletons stay hidden).
Newsweak’s strategy must be to tack left and... drop off the face of the earth.
Newsmax attempted to purchase the magazine, but was turned away.
“Shouldn’t this article have been written 45 years ago?”
ROFL
“...new connections to partisan politics” ?
I needed a good laugh this morning.
Pelosi, Harman Have Long History
Excerpt:
In 1998, Jane Harman left the House and spent tens of millions of dollars on a failed bid for governor of California. After that loss, Rep. Nancy Pelosi was one of the first people to encourage Harman to come back to Congress. And why wouldn’t she?
The two women had worked together for years, serving in the House and toiling in the trenches of California Democratic politics. Pelosi even helped recruit Harman to run for Congress in the first place in 1992.
But relations between the pair have soured since Harman returned to the Capitol in 2001, and the feud between her and Pelosi provides a fascinating backdrop to the current controversy that has engulfed Harman — her alleged willingness to intervene in the prosecution of two AIPAC officials in exchange for help in lobbying Pelosi to make Harman Intelligence Committee chair in 2006.
~ ~ ~
Pelosi Tells of a Briefing by Officials on Harman
*snip*
She also said Ms. Harman was apparently not a target of the surveillance, and insisted that the incident did not factor in her decision to deny her colleague the top post on the House Intelligence Committee after Democrats won the majority in 2006.
That decision is still a source of friction between the two Californians, who are both powerful and wealthy women ....
*snip*
Their tussle over the committee post was back in the spotlight this week after reports that Ms. Harman had been secretly recorded agreeing to intercede on behalf of pro-Israel lobbyists, who were under investigation for violations of the Espionage Act, in exchange for help in pressing Ms. Pelosi to give her the intelligence job.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/us/politics/23rivals.html
~~~
Might be ‘insider’ Pelosi bits in coming Newsweek issues. Nanzi, that Botox may yet crack.
Incestuous Gubamint
Just what the Founding Fathers Did NOT have in mind.
Doesn’t bother me. Is anyone really worried that the magazine will get MORE liberal? Readership has been tumbling for the past 10 years, so if they move further to the left, they’re going to fold, anyway.
My issue was actually with the “quality” part.
I was thinking earlier that we need some wealthy conservatives to get into the news business. It’s the most reasonable way to shove the MSM back to the middle where it belongs. Admittedly they may not turn a profit but could writeoff their losses against other profits. We have to get the MSM back to a free press or there will be more obama’s, reid’s and pelosi’s.
The only thing that will change is that now everyone will know that Newsweek is a fully bought and paid for subsidiary of the democrat party.
Wow, that photo sure can’t be the Jane Harman that I have been seeing in photos and on TV here in So Cal these last 15 years. Looks like she invested a ton of money in plastic surgery. It would be good to see that photo along side one from a few years ago. Where or where have all of the wrinkles gone. And just look at those cheek implants.
Newsweek is definitely worth more than $1 dollar.
Harmon should have to pay taxes on the difference between the fair market price and that $1 dollar. It’s essentially a gift.
Look, I may not like taxation, but if a Lefty is involved, they do believe in it, so pay the taxes like a good little Marxist lackey and be done with it.
New connections? There's nothing new here, just new ownership, same ol' partisan politics as before.
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