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Pikeville paper pulled from racks at local hospital
The Appalachian News-Express was removed from the Pikeville Methodist Hospital gift shop and emergency room waiting area July 31 without any explanation from hospital administration, said News-Express editor David Gross.
And more than a month later, the papers are still out of the hospital, and the administration has not given the paper any reason why, Gross said.
Gross said he believes the paper was removed that Tuesday because of an article that ran in the previous issue about the hospital that included information about a large deficit in its budget.
The hospital removed the paper ³at least in our mind, to try to influence our coverage,² Gross said.
Hospital administration did not return calls to the KPA News Bureau to comment on why the paper was removed from the building.
Hospital officials told the News-Expressı circulation department to remove the paper from the gift shop and the hospital removed a coin newspaper machine from the emergency room waiting area.
The hospital and the newspaper have a had a strained relationship for a long time, Gross said. Over the years, the hospital has pulled all of its advertising and had its monthly news letter published at another plant in response to articles written about it.
Gross said that although the loss of advertising cost the newspaper 10ıs of thousands of dollars, it has not caused them to cover the hospital any differently or reduced the coverage. It may have done just the reverse, he said, just so there is no perceived conflict of interest in the readershipıs eyes.
He said that publisher Marty Backus was very dedicated to having a story in every issue about the removal of the papers. The newspaper also ran an editorial about the issue, criticizing the hospital for what it considered ³defying the First Amendment.²
³Like any, our publisher here wants to have as many advertisers as possible, but you canıt let an advertiser dictate the news,² Gross said.
Gross said the paper researched trying to force the hospital into returning the papers, but after investigating its options, found that it did not have legal footing to do so because the hospital is a private nonprofit organization and not an arm of the public government.
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