Heads explode as conservative television executive buys the Baltimore Sun.

The Baltimore Sun, Maryland’s leading newspaper, has a new owner. He’s David Smith, a television executive and lifelong resident of the Baltimore area. Smith purchased the Sun from Alden Global Capital, a Manhattan-based hedge fund known as a “destroyer of newspapers.”

Normally a change in ownership from a financial conglomerate with a reputation for slashing jobs and shuttering newsrooms to a local businessman would be greeted with cheers by a paper’s staff. But in this case, the purchaser is chairman of the Sinclair Broadcast Group, whose nearly 200 local television stations have, in the words of the Washington Post, “shown a marked conservative bent in recent years.”

Thus, there is panic among reporters at the liberal Baltimore Sun and disapproval, if not dismay, at the even more liberal Washington Post.

The Post’s disapproval is on display throughout this report. The concern, expressed by one of the Post’s sources is “whether [Smith] will use the Sun to advance his ideological agenda.”

The Post never shows that if Smith were to use the Sun in this way, he would differ from those who control left-liberal organs like the Post itself. I say he would differ only in the direction of his ideological slant.

The Post writes approvingly of another Baltimore newspaper, the Baltimore Banner. Without a hint that it appreciates the irony, the Post notes that the Banner is owned by a former Democratic state senator.

Clearly, the Post, like the left in general, believes major newspapers should be the exclusive domain of liberals. This mirrors its view of colleges, the federal bureaucracy, and the entertainment industry.

Fortunately, Smith doesn’t share that view and isn’t intimidated by those who do. Many a new owner in Smith’s shoes might have tried to assuage his leftist staffers by telling them what great professionals they are and how he plans to let them do their jobs without interference.

Not Smith. At a meeting, a recording of which was given to the Post (naturally), he stood by a 2018 statement in which he called print media “meaningless dribble.” And according to the Post, “when pressed, he said he mostly thought the same of the Sun.”

Smith also said he went 40 years without reading the Sun, his local paper. While negotiating its purchase, Smith relented and read the paper “maybe four times.”

The Post seems to perceive a disconnect between Smith holding a negative opinion of the Sun and having read it only four times. I don’t see it. Even one reading of the Washington Post would be sufficient to convince the average conservative that, as I’ve spent the last 20 years trying to show, it contains plenty of leftwing dribble.

After the meeting, a Sun staffer complained that “we don’t know how to reason” with Smith. I don’t know either, but this passage offers a lesson in how not to reason with him:

Toward the end of the meeting, Smith went on a tangent about how he believes Baltimore police officers are scared to do their jobs because “they’re terrified of what state government is going to do to them,” noting that the state’s attorney tried to prosecute six officers. “It ruined those people’s lives.”

“I’m sorry, are you talking about the ones who killed Freddie Gray?” a staffer asked, referring to the 2015 death of 25-year-old Gray while in police custody, a galvanizing event that led to widespread protests across the city, some turning violent. . . .

A tense exchange followed.

Don’t try to reason with Smith by speaking lies to power. As the Post notes, three of the six officers charged in the Gray case were acquitted, after which charges against the other three were dropped.

The “tense exchange” over Freddie Gray should reinforce Smith’s negative view of the Sun’s newsroom. He will have quite a struggle to overcome its leftist tilt. I hope he’s up to the challenge.