Editor, The Smithfield Times:

A recent article in the Short Rows column of your newspaper (“Proud to see Smithfield Times soldiering on,” Oct. 4) referred to the problems newspapers in general have surviving in the age of the internet.

I have read similar articles in several newspapers nationally. It seems the owners of those publications blame the internet, and in some part that is definitely a factor, but another factor is that most newspaper publications over the years have begun to have and express a leftist agenda in editorials and reporting the news. They do not give outright false information but are artists at omitting information so that the entire truth is not told. I do not mean The Smithfield Times, as your paper reports mostly on local items and local newspapers are not the ones that seem to have the bias.

At least half of the subscribers to newspapers are conservative and are sick of seeing the leftist liberal tilt in the news. The days of reporters putting their personal feelings aside and being objective reporters of the facts seems to have disappeared. Conserative readers have abandoned newspapers in droves to get factual non-left-leaning news from other sources.

When you lose half of your subscribers, the publication suffers financially just like any business that loses half of its customers. It may already be too late, but if newspapers would return to non-biased reporters of fact, it is possible they will recover some of these readers and continue to survive.

I hate to see newspapers go out of business because they provide a vital function to many, but they are the ones committing financial suicide to forward a leftist agenda.

 

Volpe Boykin

Carrsville