Censoring The News

FTVLive has told you about the relationship between the Dayton Daily News and WHIO, which a both owned and operated by Cox. 

The TV station and the newspaper have merged operations in an effort to cut costs and streamline operations.  

Now, according to an internal memo, the Dayton Daily News is going to start censoring the news when it comes to negative stories about WHIO and CBS, which WHIO is an affiliate. 

Rashida Rawls, a Cox editor, sent the memo below after the News ran this review of the fall TV season, picked up from the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

Hi all,

The wire filler story on D2 of today’s Life section cast all of the TV networks, including CBS, in a negative light. Our news station – WHIO-TV is a CBS-affiliate station. We do not want to run any stories that cast our station in a negative light or even allude to it negatively.

I know we’re working really hard – and very quickly – to do the very best in selecting wire stories. But I wanted to bring this to our attention so that we can be more careful in selecting nondaily wire copy and in our editing and/or selection of stories that contain references to CBS. Remember, we are better together.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks.
 Rashida Rawls

Memos like this make me sick to my stomach, If you ever wanted a reason we duel ownerships and news partnerships are wrong, it's all in that memo posted above. 

H/T Jim Romenesko