The Philadelphia Inquirer endorsed Barack Obama, then appended a wingnut dissenting endorsement - reflecting the views of a minority of the editorial board - for McCain.
Today, the story came out that Brian Tierney, the Republican operative who took over the Inquirer a few years back, engineered the move:
[A]nother member of the Editorial Board, who asked not to be identified because of possible repercussions, said that it was Mr. Tierney who pressed the case for Mr. McCain. After arriving at the meeting, the board member said, “we went around the room” and Mr. Obama was the “overwhelming winner.”
At that point, the person said, “Tierney weighed in and made the case for McCain.”
His paper, his shout, right? I guess, but he had promised not to do that:
Mr. Tierney, an advertising executive who in the past had been involved in Republican politics, was among a number of business executives who bought the Inquirer and its sister paper, the Philadelphia Daily News, from the McClatchy Company in 2006 for $562 million.
At the time they bought the newspapers, Mr. Tierney and his colleagues, aware of concerns over whether they would be accused of catering to their business interests, pledged not to interfere in the running of the newspapers.
At the news conference the day the the sale was announced, Mr. Tierney said all the investors had signed a pledge that they would not attempt to influence or interfere with either the news coverage or the editorial pages of the papers. In an interview, he said the pledge would extend to the papers’ endorsements of political candidates.
“I understand the concern, but we don’t want to be involved in that,” he said.
Republicans lie. Always.
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