Knight-Ridder Profits off the Slave Economy
Media companies have helped peddle tobacco, push pharmaceuticals, entrap people in debt, and whitewash war profiteering.
Among their most heinous crimes was their role as facilitators and profiteers of the U.S. slave economy, advertising the sale of enslaved Black people or rewards for the capture of escaped slaves across both the northern and southern United States. That includes newspapers bought and sold by Knight-Ridder.
That is the industry that built the Knight Foundation’s wealth.
According to its 2019 financial statements, more than 20 percent of Knight’s $2.4 billion endowment is invested in hedge funds. For at least five years, Knight’s endowment included Alden Global Capital, the owners of Digital First Media, the company that Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan called “the most ruthless of the corporate strip-miners seemingly intent on destroying local journalism.”