By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on October 18, 2022
AL.com, Alabama’s largest mainstream media organization, uses sex ads to prop up its sagging sales. Its principal newspapers are The Birmingham News, The Huntsville Times, and The Mobile Press Register.
Serious news reporting left this media company decades ago. Investigative reporting is almost non-existent. Its editorial board and opinion columnists refrain from condemning racial rants by powerful public officials in Alabama.
AL.com core financial support is tied to ads placed by the corporate oligarchy that runs Alabama. Its sexually suggestive ads target “click-bait” readers who lust for discreet soft-core porn in the mainstream digital world.
To my disgust, two of these sexually suggestive ads ran in a thoughtful and profound October 13, 2022 guest editorial submitted by Bart Starr, Jr., that AL.com titled, “Bart Starr, Jr.: Republicans must denounce Tuberville’s ‘ignorant and hateful’ remark.”
On a side note, no Republican leader in Alabama, or the nation, denounced Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s racist remarks on October 8, 2022 at a MAGA rally in Nevada. Likewise, AL.com’s editorial board and opinion columnists also refused to condemn Tuberville’s racist rant.
AL.com placed two sexually suggestive ads in the middle of Bart Starr, Jr.'s editorial. The photos of these ads accompany this article. This ad placement was shameful, disrespectful, and highly inappropriate.
Every time I think AL.com has reached a new low in what it calls “journalism,” the organization surprises me by sinking further into the gutter.
Let me recap AL.com’s descent into "gutter" journalism. First, The Birmingham News was an original and active participant in the FBI’s covert COINTELPRO campaign to destroy Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s reputation in Alabama’s white and black communities during the 1950s and 60s. The News regularly denigrated Dr. King in its news coverage and its editorial cartoons. The News continues in its coveted COINTELPRO role to this day.
Second, The Birmingham News committed years of fraudulent business practices against a groups of its distributors for which the newspaper was ordered by an American Arbitration Association arbitration panel and the Alabama Supreme Court to pay $16 million in damages in 2004. The arbitration panel was headed by me, which is a conflict of interest fact that the News never disclosed in any of its biased reporting on me and its racist cartoons about my business and political activities.
Third, on November 29, 2018, Birmingham News columnist John Archibald fabricated a racist quote and attributed it to me in an article he published. Only the threat of litigation forced the News to retract the fake quote on January 13, 2019 and issue a public statement of regret for publishing the article on two of its media platforms. Archibald never apologized to me or the public for his actions.
Gutter journalism has become a staple at AL.com, and it is endless.
At www.donaldwatkins.com, we do not need to sell ads of any kind to stay in business. We are “unbought” and “unbossed.”
This is why we can publish the cold, hard, truth on any subject of significant public interest. This is also why our media footprint is growing throughout America and around the world. We are a trusted news mediaource that no government agency, corporation, or individual has been able to compromise or shut down. never disclosed in any of its biasedd reporting on me and its
