A Times news article headlined "An Effort To Thwart Sale of Papers To the Kochs" reports that "the two Democratic leaders of the [California] state legislature — Darrell Steinberg, the president pro tem of the Senate, and John A. Perez, the speaker of the Assembly" announced on Wednesday that they would oppose a sale of the Los Angeles Times to the libertarian businessmen Charles and David Koch.
If these were Republican politicians trying to prevent the sale of a newspaper to left-wing owners, you can be sure the Times article would be full of quotes from journalism "experts" about how outrageous it is for politicians to get to decide or approve who owns the newspaper that covers them and that serves as a watchdog on them. In fact, it is outrageous. The politicians control the newspapers in dictatorships. In America we have a free press, which means that the politicians don't get to pick the owners. But the New York Times seems so eager to prevent the sale of the Los Angeles Times or the Chicago Tribune to deep-pocketed owners whose politics differ from the New York Times' left-wing views that the New York Times seems willing to throw this principle overboard, or at least to put it aside.