Review
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Title: Stop the Press: How the Mormon Church Tried to Silence the Salt Lake Tribune
Author: James W. Ure
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Year Published: 2018
Number of Pages: 311, Appendix, Index
Binding: Quality Paperback
ISBN:978-1-63388-339-0
Price: $18.00
Reviewed by Laura Compton for the Association for Mormon Letters
To say there is some tension between the two main newspapers in Utah, the Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News, is an understatement; anyone who values the First Amendment and multiple points of view must sit up and pay attention to what is happening in negotiating rooms, out of sight of the public eye. So says freelance journalist James W. Ure in his fascinating historical wrap up, *Stop the Press: How the Mormon Church Tried to Silence the Salt Lake Tribune.*
The LDS Church “has from its beginning been a political institution, a theocracy. Because Mormonism went against the grain of virtually all sacred American mores–sexual, political, dietary, theological–it has been on the defensive since its founding,” Ure writes. And part of its “cloak of persecuted innocence” is the way it tries to silence “its most vocal critic,” the Salt Lake Tribune (208).
Ure begins his story by explaining the significance of the tension between the Tribune and the Deseret News: how they fought and came to terms and then fought again; how their joint operating agreement was negotiated and re-negotiated; how that same operating agreement may now threaten the future of the Tribune; and how those agreements appear to be – and were – influenced by LDS Church leaders. The business deals are complex and hard to follow, but the bright line that ties them all together, according to Ure, is the apparent desire of Mormon leaders to quash bad news and control what is published about Utah’s most powerful religion. Ure’s journalistic style is crisp and easy to read, and the book’s chapters are well-organized and chunked into very manageable sizes.
To tell the story of the press, one must include the history of the Mormon Church’s relationship with the press. That history must begin near the end of Joseph Smith’s life, that moment when Smith ordered the destruction of the press that dared to expose his polygamous actions. From Illinois, Ure follows the Saints to Utah, picking up the tragedy at Mountain Meadows and the antagonism between Brigham Young and the Federal government. Ure draws heavily from Will Bagley’s *Blood of the Prophets* to describe the massacre’s history, coverup, scapegoating and Church reaction. While Bagley’s book is critical to understanding Mountain Meadows, Ure missed an opportunity to utilize other important commentaries on the matter–he refers once to an Ensign article by Richard Turley but neglects to cite anything from Turley’s (and Ron Walker and Glen Leonard’s) *Massacre at Mountain Meadows.* This was an opportunity to provide a “faithful” LDS voice in *Stop the Press*, a voice which, by Ure’s own admission, was nearly impossible to find.
Why is the Mountain Meadows black eye is such a significant portion of a book about the relationship between the Church and a modern newspaper? Because, Ure argues, the Tribune’s act of publishing, in March 2000, a series of articles on the massacre, was an act which undermined an already tenuous relationship between the Church and the newspaper. To understand the significance of the published stories, readers need to understand the significance of the 19th-century slaughter, and Ure takes nearly one half of his book to give his readers historical context for understanding modern divisiveness.
If readers’ only experience with Mountain Meadows or other LDS history referenced in *Stop the Press* is what they get from Ure’s book, they are likely to come away with a rather one-sided vision of LDS leaders firmly set in opposition to “gentile” media, leaders who would strongly prefer to have only their own voices echoing through time. Ure’s argument and narrative would be strengthened by including internal LDS resources and allowing readers to see evidence from both sides of the historic coin.
Despite the rather one-sided view of history, *Stop the Press* is a powerful book and sheds light on the critical need for multiple media voices, particularly in Utah, where the LDS Church oversees the Deseret News. The behind-the-scenes machinations exposed by Ure are enough to make anyone who values multiple viewpoints put up with the sometimes clunky, sometimes frustrating – and now costly – electronic versions of the Tribune.
Ure argues that the newspaper’s days are numbered because the joint operating agreement which allows the News and the Tribune to share costs and revenue from using the same printing equipment has been and continues to be revised in ways that threaten the sustainability of the Tribune’s very existence. According to Ure, LDS leaders would have no problem whatsoever if the Tribune’s voice was silenced completely when the joint operating agreement is again renegotiated in 2020. Why? Perhaps because the LDS Church “protects a relatively young organization that is still forming itself, struggling with contradictions of nineteenth-century beliefs in a twenty-first-century world.” (221)
*Stop the Press* provides fascinating insights into the ever-present, ever-changing relationship between the LDS Church and the news media. Readers keen on keeping an independent media voice in Utah will be particularly interested in the development and evolution of the Joint Operating Agreement between the Church-owned Deseret News and the Tribune and will likely come away from reading the book more informed about how important and necessary Utah’s independent media voices are.