The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s hospital is shown in Braddock, Pa., in 2010. Some of its hospitals refuse to sell the Post-Gazette. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)
The sale of Pittsburgh’s top news outlet has been banned from the gift shops in at least three hospitals that are part of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
What a center spokesman tags “fairness issues” in the Post-Gazette coverage of the area’s health system inspire the move.
“At least three UPMC hospitals—UPMC Shadyside, UPMC Mercy and Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC—say they will no longer sell the newspaper,” according to the daily.
“The Post-Gazette is edited without regard to any special interest, and our news columns are not for sale, at any price,” said John Robinson Block, publisher of the newspaper.
“We have been here since 1786, and have as our purpose the same goal that UPMC was established for — to serve the public’s interest, not a narrow purpose.”
David Shribman, the paper’s editor and a respected Pulitzer Prize winner himself, called coverage fair-minded “in every respect” and underscored a reality surely experienced by most counterparts elsewhere:
“Every entity in every town feels aggrieved at some point by what a good newspaper writes. It’s part of living in a free society where the exchange of news and information is prized, not punished.”
