Thursday, May 17, 2018

Salt Lake Tribune Troubles


            The Salt Lake Tribune has announced the layoffs of over a third of its newsroom; some 34 or so reporters, editors, and other staff. As the author of over a dozen blog pieces titled Salt Lake Tribune Tripe, I have, rightly, been especially critical of their poor and biased coverage of stories related to Mormonism.

            It is a tremendously difficult thing to lose your job; your means of supporting yourself and your family. I hope all of these former Tribune employees are able to find other work soon, or enjoy retirement (which some of them opted for). Most of these reporters were probably good at their jobs and reported news accurately and fairly in the varied fields of their expertise. I don’t think most reasonable people would want to do anything but wish them the best.

            But there is a disappointing side to these layoffs that hasn’t yet been mentioned in the preliminary news stories I have seen. Some of the Tribune’s employees, like Peggy Stack, that should have been let go, were not. This was the perfect time for Paul Huntsman to show some backbone and get rid of his media company’s anti-Mormon reporters—but he royally blew the opportunity. I only recognized one name of those now gone who contributed anti-Mormon stories to that paper; the others seem to have unfortunately survived.


            As I have written in the past, the Tribune’s boast of being Utah’s “Independent Voice” or “Watchdog” has usually equated to criticism of everything a prophet of God does. Few are the occasions of reluctant commendation and even those rare pieces usually have something thrown in them to cast a negative light somehow.

            So along with their financial troubles, they have another trouble, that of missing a golden opportunity to clean up the negative Mormon bias in their newsroom; to get rid of their fake Mormon news; to get rid of Peggy Stack and one or two others who are so obsessed with negativity and criticism of the LDS Church. I still have hope for getting rid of them in the future.

            As for the others that went today, good luck to them and may they find good and honorable work elsewhere, and may it indeed be honorable. To be paid to criticize a church you are supposedly a member of (or not) is about as low and hypocritical of a thing that a person can do, yet they do it. Money for betrayal; sounds familiar.

On top of that, they try to push their private agendas on the Church—pushing extremist feminism and gay/lesbian lifestyle acceptance propaganda; trying to force the Lord’s Church, using the leverage of publicity, to accept the vain philosophies of the world, which include doctrines of men and devils.

A Mormon Church modeled after Peggy Stack’s personal philosophies would by definition be an apostate church, impotent to save souls. Oh, how glad and deeply grateful I am that the prophets and apostles are directed by scripture and modern revelation and not by the suggestions found in the Tribune’s fake Mormon news/columns or those liberal/progressive/dissidents quoted therein! How much does a faithful, loyal, believing, testimonied, member, or disciple of Christ, really care about Stack’s feminism and LGBT activism? Absolutely nothing. Why does she constantly subject readers to her personal propaganda that she got from being in and of and part of the telestial world surrounding her? Can she not simply report the facts of the news instead of trying to persuade people out of the Church? Why won’t she attend a good journalism school where she could learn how to report correctly instead of manufacturing opinion (from friends) that agrees with her own views and calling it news? I will take comfort that I can continue hoping for more layoffs of the right people (or is that wrong people?) in the future. In the meantime, let’s hope the Tribune can continue, even short-handed, to do a good job reporting on fields and stories that have nothing to do with Mormonism and where they have shown competence, like the Utah Jazz, etc.

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