When a billionaire with political interests and a wife in Congress buys a newspaper does that mean he’ll be deciding which stories get covered and which don’t?

Absolutely not, says Portland Newspaper Guild President Tom Bell.

Investor Donald Sussman has assured the Guild and management at the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram that he’ll be hands-off with regard to news coverage. And reporters and editors intend to hold him to it.

“If that means Congresswoman Pingree has done something that needs to be reported on that makes her look bad, we’re going to write that story,” Bell said in a Feb. 13 interview with Maine Public Broadcasting. “And if Donald Sussman is in a business deal that is going to have a negative reflection on him, we’re going to write that story, because our livelihoods depend on our ability to state the facts as we see them.”

In interviews with journalists from MaineToday Media, the parent company of the Portland papers and also the Guild-represented Morning Sentinel in Waterville, Sussman said he won’t be involved in hiring, daily operations or news coverage.

“I will have nothing to do with editorial policy,” he said.

That hasn’t necessarily quieted critics of the so-called “liberal” media, says Guild Vice President Greg Kesich, given that Sussman donates to progressive causes and is married to a Democratic lawmaker who’s running for re-election.

But in the post-Citizens United era, Kesich says the wealthy can exercise plenty of power without owning a press, as the old adage goes.

“There are much easier ways to influence politics today than by owning a newspaper,” he says.