When the R-J unfairly strikes at Harry Reid, it hits Nevada

By Brian Greenspun (contact)

Sunday, Sept. 6, 2009 | 2 a.m.

It seems that the other day, Sen. Harry Reid was simply being Harry when he met the ad director of the Las Vegas Review-Journal at a Chamber of Commerce event.

While shaking Bob Brown’s hand, Harry said words to the effect of: I hope you (the R-J) go out of business.

As is sometimes the case with Harry, they were not the best-chosen words, especially in this climate.

Still, while Harry has been on the receiving end of brutal attacks by the R-J for years, no reasonable individual could construe his joking jab as a remark to be taken literally.

But what does Sherman Frederick, the R-J publisher, do? What he always does and what he sees as his mission in life: In his Sunday column last week, Sherm twisted and turned the words and events at the chamber meeting into an attack on Harry Reid.

And Sherm tried to do it in a way to make him look like he is standing up for the First Amendment, his advertisers and everything that is right in America. He accused Harry of bullying tactics toward the R-J’s advertisers in some perverse attempt to shut the newspaper down.

To Sherm’s credit, he did admit in his column that Harry told the chamber audience in his speech that he hopes the R-J sells lots of ads because the Las Vegas Sun is delivered inside it.

Nonetheless, Sherm went on to threaten our senator with annihilation.

I think that fairly sums up Sherm’s column.

I know that facts can sometimes get in the way of a good column or a bad life’s mission, but even Sherm has an obligation to tell his readers the truth, no matter how much he hates the thought.

When it was time to give a public speech to the chamber, Harry Reid acted as a responsible senator and Nevadan should act. Harry had the purest of motives in wishing that the R-J sells plenty of ads: He wanted to make sure the Pulitzer Prize-winning Las Vegas Sun, Nevada’s largest-circulated newspaper, would continue to be delivered.

It may have been a bit backhanded while his tongue was firmly planted in his cheek, but Sen. Reid’s words were honorable and fully American. (And, by the way, I don’t want the R-J to go out of business, either.)

So why did Sherm create a pretext so that he could promise to destroy the one person who gives Nevada a loud and strong voice in Washington, D.C.? Why did he make this stuff up knowing full well that some of his readers and many people across the country who want to hate Reid — but aren’t sure why — would take to the rhetorical pitchforks?

Because that is what Sherm does. He can’t help himself. He believes that he runs the most powerful newspaper in the state and that he can bully politicians, businesspeople and anyone else who doesn’t toe the ultra-right-wing line drawn by the owners of that newspaper and enforced by Sherm.

If they show independence, as Harry Reid has always done, by standing up to the right-wing dictates of the R-J, Sherm seeks to play the role of judge and political executioner. That is why readers see an unceasing barrage of anti-Reid columns, editorials and slanted news stories in the R-J.

I know it is sport at the R-J and in some selfish corners of the Nevada political landscape to denigrate and diminish all that Sen. Reid has done and continues to do for ordinary Nevadans. But that doesn’t make it healthy, it doesn’t make it right, and it doesn’t make sense.

With the relentless attacks on him, who can’t understand if Sen. Reid thinks the R-J exists for two purposes and two purposes only — to make as much money as it can for its Arkansas owners and to defeat him at any and all costs.

On both counts, the public good — that would be for those of us who live and work in Nevada — has no place in the R-J’s plans.

Sen. Reid does not need me to defend him against Sherm and the R-J — I do it because it gives me some pleasure — but he does need the citizens of this state to understand where all this stuff comes from. And why? As citizens we must all take responsibility for what we choose to believe. And we must forsake those who knowingly tell us wrong!

Harry Reid will have to make his case for reelection to the voters of Nevada. They will decide his future and theirs when they cast their votes in November 2010. Until then everything else that we hear from people who don’t care about our state is just noise, the kind that hurts our ears and makes us want to stop listening.

But we need to listen, read and learn if we want to be good and productive citizens. I suggest, however, that those who just fell for Sherm’s latest ruse turn, instead, to the Las Vegas Sun for credible information and insights. We at the Sun provide the kind of credible journalism that can light up your lives and enrich your world. We do it with thoughtfulness and truthfulness.

That is what newspapers are supposed to do.

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.