By DAN FAGAN
Most journalists understand following the money is the quickest way to answer the question of why.
Journalists should be asking the owner of the Anchorage Daily News, Ryan Binkley, why his paper has endorsed the insanity that is Ballot Measure 2.
Anyone with a lick of sense, and without a direct financial incentive in the measure passing, could never favor such a foolish, convoluted, and ridiculous proposal.
But Binkley does have a financial interest in the initiative passing. The very same Lower-48 left-wing billionaire backers dumping a bunch of cash into the operation of the ADN are also pouring multiple millions into supporting Ballot Measure 2.
Radical Leftist and billionaire John Arnold based out of Houston, Texas, has dumped $3 million into Alaska to help pass Ballot Measure 2. Arnold has been described as the mini George Soros. The shoe certainly fits.
Arnold has also donated millions to the liberal group ProPublica. ProPublica pays to boost the salaries and research costs of the fledgling and failing Anchorage Daily News.
If the paper came out against Ballot Measure 2, it would likely jeopardize the ADN’s desperately needed funding from the left-wing Arnold.
But Binkley has even more financial incentive to back Ballot Measure 2. Hedge fund billionaire Dirk Ziff, based in Florida, dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into Alaska to promote Ballot Measure 2.
Ziff also pays the salary of an ADN reporter according to Brett Huber, with the Defend Alaska Elections campaign.
“As the largest newspaper in the state of Alaska, The Anchorage Daily News has a civic responsibility to be transparent with the public,” said Huber. “At the very least the ADN should have disclosed this conflict of interest. Recusing themselves from offering an endorsement would have been the honorable thing to do.”
Huber says the Defend Alaska Elections campaign opposing Ballot Measure 2 has submitted five different editorials in the past month and yet the paper has refused to print any of them. He says every other paper in the state has run one of their editorials.
The ADN backing Ballot Measure 2 is even shadier considering the paper is using other endorsements during this election cycle to shake its perfectly deserved reputation as a liberal rag.
The ADN has endorsed Republicans Sen. Dan Sullivan, and Congressman Don Young. The paper also came out against Ballot Measure 1, a tax hike that would devastate Alaska’s economy and enrich the proposal’s biggest financial donor, attorney Robin Brena.
So, why would the paper come out in favor of Ballot Measure 2? Follow the money!
Don’t look for KTUU or Alaska Public Media to call out the ADN for its glaring conflict of interest. The left-leaning media typically watch out for their own.
Many hoped once the Binkley family took over Alaska’s largest newspaper, the ADN would abandon its long-held, consistent, and overt left-wing bent. At the very least we hoped the paper would try to be fair. It has not.
Many of the same old crusty liberals that ran the paper under previous owners McClatchy Inc. and Alice Rogoff are still in charge.
Ryan’s father John has long been a crusader for conservative ideas and values. Apparently, based on the ADN’s continued left-leaning reporting, Ryan holds a different world view.
Or maybe Ryan’s just trying to keep his business financially afloat during a time when newspapers are dramatically downsizing and failing across the country.
A well-known conservative I trust told me once of a conversation she had with Ryan.
She confronted him on his paper’s continued left-leaning bias. She reports Ryan told her he feared losing the paper’s subscribers if they changed their coverage since most of them are liberals.
If Binkley endorsed the insanity that is Ballot Measure 2, he should at the very least let his readers know he was doing so to help his bottom line.
Dan Fagan hosts the number one rated morning drive radio show in Alaska on Newsradio 650 KENI. Dan splits his time between Anchorage and New Orleans.
