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Sunday, October 27, 2024

Today's News: Pre-emptive surrender from the gutless Washington Post and LA Times

Can't really describe how terrified I am about the US election -- I hope and pray that Harris can close the deal with the American people. 
Her rally last night in Houston was epic, as was the Kalamazoo rally today.
But talking earlier tonight with our son, we agreed how dark the situation is today compared to 2016. Then, people could say they didn't know what to expect with Trump, but now they know exactly what he will do, yet millions of Americans still want to vote for him.  
We are seeing both cowardice and courage in the United States now, and I just don't know whether the courage will be enough. 

Cowardice: 
The news that the billionaires who own the LA Times and the Washington Post are just too gutless to endorse Harris is discouraging -- can America demand more courage from its ordinary people than it is getting from its richest?
Courage:
I'm also seeing a lot of media endorsements of Harris now too, and that is encouraging.
Commentary: 
Many worthwhile columns about the situation - and thank god for Substack now too.
...It is not hard to guess why Bezos and Soon-Shiong made these decisions. Both are billionaires whose other businesses could be hurt by people who conflate their papers’ editorials with the two men’s own opinions. And both are hedging against the chance of Donald Trump winning the election, since he will surely turn his vengeance on those who opposed him. He’s already been feuding with Bezos for years, so why not add another billionaire he can zing and threaten on TruthSocial.
But that hedging is exactly why these decisions are a huge mistake. They are a pre-emptive capitulation to a fascist, at a time when the independence of journalism could not be more important to the nation.
But thanks for all these new subscribers, Bezos. They gotta spend that WaPo money somewhere, and looks like they’re spending it with us.
Parker Molloy Playing It Safe Is Risking Democracy: Media’s Silent Endorsement of Authoritarianism As the 2024 election looms, media self-censorship in response to Trump’s potential return threatens the democratic role of journalism.
In his 2017 book On Tyranny, historian Timothy Snyder introduced the concept of "anticipatory obedience," warning that "most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given." He argued that in uncertain times, individuals and institutions might preemptively adjust their actions to align with what they believe a more repressive regime would want—often without being asked.
Forward to the final weeks of the 2024 presidential campaign, and Snyder's warning feels eerily prescient. Media outlets, facing the potential return of Donald Trump to the White House, appear to be tiptoeing around coverage that might provoke his ire. This self-censorship isn't just a disservice to journalism; it's a disservice to democracy....
Daniel Drezner The Cowardice of the Washington Post My former employer runs and hides in the darkness.
... In response to Bezos’ decision, Bob Kagan resigned from the Post’s editorial board today. If I was still writing there, I would have joined him. As another member of the board told Semafor’s Maxwell Tani, “If you don’t have the balls to own a newspaper, don’t.”
This is an embarrassing display of cowardice from Jeff Bezos, Will Lewis, and anyone else at the Post who had a hand in making this call. It is also an extremely disturbing harbinger of the quiescence of major institutions if Donald Trump wins in November.
Jamison Foser The Washington Post Chooses Darkness America's institutions and elites have already begun yielding to fascism. They will not save America. We're going to have to do that ourselves.
...The elite institutional cavalry is not coming. They will not stop Trump from taking power, and if he does so they will not meaningfully stand in the way of his plans. We have to save ourselves, and then we need to reform our broken institutions and replace the people running them.
We are our only saviours.
It starts with voting — right now, if you live somewhere that allows votes to be cast before Election Day. Talk to your friends, your family, neighbors, coworkers. You know somebody struggling to decide who to vote for, or whether to vote at all. Tell them why you’re voting for Kamala Harris. That’s the single most impactful thing you can do, aside from casting your own vote: Talk to people you know about why voting is important to you, and ask them to join you.
Robert Reich Cowardice and intimidation at The Washington Post and L.A. Times Their billionaire owners are Trump enablers
...Mariel Garza, who resigned as editorials editor [of the LA Times], said in an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review that the editorial board had planned to endorse Kamala Harris but that Dr. Soon-Shiong informed them on October 11 that the Times would not be publishing any presidential endorsement.
“I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not OK with us being silent,” Ms. Garza said. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up.”
Exactly. And in dangerous times, dishonest and cowardly billionaires shouldn’t be able to abuse their power by preventing honest people from standing up.
This is how fascism takes root.
Dan Froomkin A sickening moral collapse at the Washington Post By not endorsing a presidential candidate, the Post endorses the lack of accountability.
...For a while there, many of us in the newspaper business thought that benevolent billionaires were a plausible savior for news organizations like the Post and the LA Times. We were wrong. Just as these oligarchs are a plague on society, they are a plague on the news business. They have now ruined – possibly for good – two of our most treasured news organizations.
... Columbia Journalism professor Bill Grueskin wrote:
Here’s the thing about these LAT/WPost non-endorsements. They’re unimportant politically; few votes would be swayed. But the billionaire owners are (intentionally or not) sending a signal to the newsrooms: Prepare to accommodate your coverage to a Trump regime.
And that’s the even greater fear: That these institutions are not just succumbing to authoritarianism, they are advancing it.
Woe unto us.
Margaret Sullivan We needed courage. We got cowardice. My thoughts on billionaires who own newspapers and betray the public interest
...Billionaires, pretty clearly, are not going to save us. Quite the opposite.
What should the response be? There’s only one available at the moment. Caring citizens and all defenders of democracy need to do everything in their power to vote Trump out, and begin the long road toward reform of a broken nation.
And to keep in mind the historian Timothy Snyder’s first rule of opposing tyranny: Do not obey in advance. “Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individual think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”
Finally, this chilling story, from The Bulwark's Jonathan Last The Guardrails Are Already Crumpling Jeff Bezos’s decision to pull a Washington Post endorsement of Harris is foreboding. But not necessarily for the reasons you think.
... We have seen this movie before.
The year was 2003, and the scene was Russia, where Vladimir Putin, still in his first term as president, had not yet let the mask slip.
Putin was carefully consolidating power and he realized that the same oligarchs who had supported him initially were also a source of danger. Their money and control of important industries—especially the media—gave them independent bases of power. And every autocrat knows that dictatorship only works when his subjects understand that the only power they may have is the power he grants them.
At the time, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was the wealthiest man in Russia. He controlled Yukos, a massive oil company he cobbled together from formerly state-owned assets. He had the kind of wealth and power that made him untouchable, and he started making noises about getting more involved in politics—maybe even running for office.
So Putin had him arrested.
You may not remember this, but the Khodorkovsky case was a major piece of international news at the time. In the West, people weren’t quite sure what to make of it. Khodorkovsky’s people waged an aggressive PR campaign on his behalf claiming that his arrest was politically motivated and that Putin was becoming a thug.
Putin’s side portrayed it as an anti-corruption move, since Khodorkovsky was no angel.
Here in the West, we were all still giddy over glasnost and the end of the Cold War. We didn’t want to believe that Russia might be plunging back into authoritarianism. So people mostly took a wait-and-see approach.
But the Russians understood.
Khodorkovsky was convicted and sent to a labor camp in the Russian Far East while the government confiscated Yukos and redistributed it to Putin’s cronies. Khodorkovsky’s money, his power, his connections—none of it could protect him from Vladimir Putin.
The rest of the oligarchs got the message. If Putin could get to Khodorkovsky, he could get to anybody.
And so the oligarchs fell in line and ceased to be a source of concern to Putin. Instead of alternative power centers, they became vassals.
Which is exactly what Jeff Bezos has just taught Jamie Dimon and every other important American businessman.
These guys can hear the music. They’ve seen the sides being chosen: Elon Musk and Peter Theil assembling with Trump’s gangster government in waiting. They see Mark Zuckerberg praising Trump as a “badass.” And now they see Bezos getting in line, too.
What’s remarkable is that Trump didn’t have to arrest Bezos to secure his compliance. Trump didn’t even have to win the election. Just the fact that he has an even-money chance to become president was threat enough.
Or maybe that’s not remarkable. One of Timothy Snyder’s rules for resisting authoritarians is that “most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given.” People surrender preemptively much more often than you might expect.
Two weeks ago, Ian Bassin and Maximillian Potter wrote what might be the most prophetic essay of the year. They warned about “anticipatory obedience” in the media.
Seventeen days later, Bezos made his demonstration.
In case you needed reminding: The “guardrails” aren’t guardrails. They’re people.
And they’re already collapsing. Before a single state has been called.
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1 comment:

  1. Cap4:02 am

    All these clever media people miss the point. Bezos and Soon-Shiong aren't cowards for not endorsing Harris; they're cowards for not admitting they prefer Trump.

    It's no secret that oligarchs like fascism. The US has been running fascist coups in S. America for years for that reason, and German industrialists funded that weird Austrian housepainter with the mustache. Funny how the other media barons point the finger at Bezos, but are happy to run story after story about leaked emails, but only when advantageous to Trump. They sanewash him as a normal candidate skipping over the fact that Trump is a rapist and convicted fraud artist, and crazier than a shithouse rat. Whether they elect Harris or Trump, the US is already an oligarchy. The media's job is to maintain the illusion of democracy.

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