Billionaire media bootlickers obey in advance
The owners of the LA Times and Washington Post give the finger to their readers and democracy.
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Both the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post are refusing to make an endorsement in a presidential race where a Trump victory is likely to have disastrous consequences for press freedom.
Both non-endorsement decisions were made by the papers’ owners. Both sparked resignations and protest from editors and staff that feel that the papers have a responsibility to endorse Kamala Harris. Both decisions damaged the reputation of the papers. And both seem in fact designed to damage the reputations of the papers by openly and cravenly proclaiming the willingness of the fourth estate to kowtow to fascists.
The failure of two of the nation’s leading news organizations is instructive. It illustrates the way in which the press’s “both sides” approach to election coverage has always been an in kind contribution to the Trump campaign. It shows how the wealthy are often eager to make common cause with authoritarians. And it shows how fear of public pushback and public opinion has little sway in an authoritarian state, where public figures aim their actions and their words at an audience of one.
A note from Aaron: If you missed it yesterday, I put together a mega thread covering the entirety of Trump’s ugly 5-hour rally at Madison Square Garden. You can check it out here if you still have an X account or here if you don’t. A Public Notice contributor was at the rally in person. Look for his dispatch in tomorrow’s edition of the newsletter.
Democracy dies in darkness
The LA Times’ owner disgraced himself first. The paper’s editorial board had drafted an editorial supporting Harris, for the obvious reasons you’d support Harris — in particular, the fact that her opponent is a fascist.
But the Times’ billionaire owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, decided he wasn’t comfortable with a stand for decency and democracy. On October 11, he rejected editorial board’s work and said the paper would not endorse either candidate. Editorials Editor Mariel Garza resigned in protest. So, shortly thereafter, did senior journalists Robert Greene and Karin Klein.
Then virtually the same thing happened at the Washington Post. The Post editorial board was working on a draft of a Harris endorsement. They sent the draft up the chain for review. After an unusually long wait time, they learned last Friday that the Post’s owner, billionaire Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, had declared the paper would not endorse.
As at the LA Times, Post staff were horrified. Many of the most prestigious columnists, including Karen Attiah, Max Boot, E.J. Dionne, Jr., Dana Milbank, Eugene Robinson, and Jennifer Rubin, signed a collective opinion column protesting the decision. Editor-at-Large Robert Kagan resigned, as did columnist Michele Norris.
“Both sides” is a quid pro quo for fascists
Both newspaper owners framed their decision not to endorse as a sober, responsible stance for journalistic objectivity. On X, Soon-Shiong said that instead of an endorsement he wanted the editorial board to provide a list of policy positives and negatives for each candidate.
“In this way,” he fulminated, “with this clear and non-partisan information side-by-side, our readers could decide who would be worthy of being President for the next four years.”
Similarly, William Lewis — the Murdoch hack who was made the CEO of the Post earlier this year — defended the decision to scuttle the endorsement as a “statement in support of our readers’ ability to make up their own minds.”
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These are transparent excuses also known as lies. Garza at the LA Times says that Soon-Shiong never even requested his ridiculous list. Kagan formerly at the Post points out that Trump spoke with executives at Bezos’s Blue Origin space company on the same day that Bezos killed the endorsement.
“Trump waited to make sure that Bezos did what he said he was going to do, and then met with the Blue Origin people,” Kagan says. In his view, it’s an obvious quid pro quo.
The pretense of objectivity is so thin here as to be insulting. But it’s also clarifying.
After all, it’s not just Soon-Shiong and Bezos who have claimed that election coverage needs to be respectful to both sides. CNN gave Trump a big Town Hall in May to lie and defame the woman he sexually assaulted without pushback. The New York Times this month listened to Trump’s viciously racist remarks about immigrants (“And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now. They left, they had 425,000 people come into our country that shouldn’t be here, that are criminals”) and characterized his comments as a sign of his “long-held fascination with genes and genetics.”
Outlets constantly sanewash Trump, framing him as a normal politician with coherent policy positions, and suggesting that patriotic, sober Americans could reasonably choose either Trump or Harris to lead the country. Again, this coverage is often defended on the grounds of objectivity and balance.
“Our commitment to readers is to report on the world as it is, without fear or favor,” a NYT spokesperson said in response to criticism. “Anything less, or advocacy in favor of one candidate, would run directly against the practice of independent journalism.”
But the egregious actions of Soon-Shiong and Bezos — billionaire non-journalists who flagrantly overturned their own editors’ decisions — gives the game away.
Bezos believes that Trump blocked billions in government Pentagon contracts for Amazon because of Post coverage. Soon-Shiong is friends with billionaire Trump supporter Elon Musk. Trump has promised more tax cuts for the uber-wealthy. He’s also promised to target media outlets that resist him if he’s president.
“They’re so nasty. They’re so evil,” Trump said of the press Saturday during his rally in Michigan. Then during his rally at Madison Square Garden yesterday, Trump said “they’re the enemy of the people. The press.” (Watch below.)
The calculus here isn’t hard to figure out. All billionaire media owners have to do is protect Trump, downplay the real danger he poses, and if he wins, he will enrich them rather than jailing them. And if he loses — well, Democrats aren’t threatening to target media oligarchs who kowtow to fascists.
“Both sides” isn’t a stance embraced in the interest of the public. Media owners don’t treat Trump as a normal candidate in order to inform their readers and viewers. They sanewash Donald Trump for the same reason that Bezos and Soon-Shiong are defending Donald Trump from their own journalists. They are, as Timothy Snyder suggests, “obeying in advance.”
Trump threatens media orgs; media orgs figure they can protect themselves by not getting on Trump’s bad side. They’re willing to criticize Trump — but only within certain bounds. The goal is not to cover the truth “without fear or favor.” The goal is to stay off the enemies list so you can comfortably make bank if Trump wins, no matter what happens to anyone else.
You can’t shame the devil
Critics and people who oppose fascism like to think that public pushback can shame media oligarchs, or at least force them to reconsider after they see an impact on their bottom line.
Some 2,000 Washington Post subscribers canceled in the first 24 hours after the announcement that Bezos had killed the Harris endorsement. Screenshots of cancelled subs have been ubiquitous on social media.
Numerous commenters also excoriated both papers. Former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacobs noted, “To see the Washington Post flush away its credibility by kowtowing to Trumpism is crushing.” Journalist Mike Rothschild wrote, “The dumbest part of the WaPo/LA Times not endorsing at the behest of their billionaire owners is that it turned a non-story into a major one.” He added, “Their endorsements of Harris would have been a blip. Their silence is a bright light shining on their cowardice.”
Both commenters and people cancelling their subscriptions assume that denunciations will affect the publishers. This is a basic tenet of democracy and of journalism. Shining a light on cowardice or evil is supposed to shame the cowards and evildoers, expose them to public censure, and, perhaps, get them to change course.
The problem in this case is that Bezos and those like him don’t really care what the public says. They don’t care if they debase themselves. In fact, debasing themselves is the point. Bezos and Soon-Shiong have decided to lick Trump’s boots. If Trump’s happy with the shine, why should they worry about what anyone else thinks?
The fact that they are getting pushback from subscribers is if anything, from their perspective, a good thing. It shows Trump they think he is more important than their readers. The destruction of journalistic credibility is a feature rather than a bug. Trump hates the Washington Post; he wants to destroy it. Bezos, in an act of fealty, has gone a good way towards destroying it. What more could a fascist leader want from his lickspittle?
Bezos, Soon-Shiong, and the rest of the mainstream media are giving us a little preview of the shameless lies, crony capitalism, groveling abasement, and lack of public accountability that we can expect under the next Trump administration. Canceling newspaper subscriptions, or Amazon subscriptions, won’t do much to change that. If you want to rebuke Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong, the only option in the short term is to elect Kamala Harris.
That’s it for today
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Thanks for reading.
Prof. Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Journalist Kara Swisher have an important discussion about Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, corporate media, and the Bad Boy, Tech Billionaire Bro Peter Thiel, and his mentee JDV, whom they imply will be taking over from DT. Here is a link. https://youtu.be/yBSAveg-fzg?si=cbkcvJuof89JKQZD
I am someone who strongly believes that given the behaviors of these two and other oligarchs, the government should appropriate Space-X, Blue Origin, and Starlink for our national security. Let them go do this in another country, who is willing to have them either run with or cave in to fascists.
Matt Stoller believes Bezos is teaching Democrats about Billionaires.
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-jeff-bezos-and
I have always understood that problem, which does not make me leftist, as they claim Democrats are, but centrist. Left is something different, which is not understood by the right, or the Dems. We are not left to claim that our economy should not be set up for unbridled wealth to accrue off the backs of the rest of the nation. That is common sense.
My Harris-Walz and Blue vote from abroad was received on October 11 at my board of elections in the US. My daughter's vote from abroad, which was sent with mine, arrived on October 16 from the same place to the same place, sent at exactly the same time. Go figure. Still, we are relived that our Blue votes are in.
I voted for Harris/Walz in early voting PLUS I cancelled my subscription to the Post. Bezos won’t miss my puny dollars that I paid for his newspaper, but I have the satisfaction of not supporting the newspaper that died in darkness.