Moving On from Legacy Media

It’s hard to overstate the irony contained in the slogan that the Washington Post persists in printing beneath its gothic logo: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

They really ought to change it. Blue Gal, co-host of The Professional Left podcast, suggests “Democracy Died. Oopsie.”

Not that the Post is alone in eviscerating our democracy, or in adding to the darkness now descending upon us. The entire legacy media, with few exceptions, is culpable. Consumers of the Post — and the New York Times, and CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, etc. — are supposed to have usable brains, yet it’s amazing how easily they can be manipulated into believing that “both sides” are equally bad.

When the Post’s editorial board equates Trump’s pardoning of 1,600 insurrectionist thugs with Biden’s pre-emptive pardoning of public figures in serious danger of a mafia-like vendetta, you know the both-sides narrative has risen to new heights of hypocrisy. The article’s subhead says it all: “In one day, two presidents set dangerous precedents.” And how about that cute wordplay?

The legacy media are either woefully naïve about their own prospects in this new reality, or they’re caving in advance.

Either way, they’re ignoring the lessons of history, in which dictators relish the muzzling of the press. Controlling the public’s access to information is essential to any aspiring fascist state, and when Trump calls the press the “enemy of the people” — which he’s done for over a decade — he’s following a long tradition of intimidation.

Look no further than Putin’s Russia, right now, to see the journalism model MAGA seeks to emulate. When reporters start getting jailed — or thrown from high buildings — the publications they work for learn quickly what’s expected of them. Either they leave their principles at the door and report what the regime wants, or they leave — one way or another.

In Russia, it’s now all propaganda, all the time, and trafficking in actual facts can carry long prison terms.

We’re not quite at that point, but stand by. What we’re seeing from our legacy press is capitulation in advance. The corporate interests that now own the major news outlets have decided that integrity is not nearly as important as shareholder value — and if a halfway-decent democracy has to die in the process, that’s just a cost of doing business.

The media conglomerates had plenty of time to plan for this. They had to assume Trump would be elected, even if they hoped not. Some of them even supported him, despite knowing how toxic he was likely to be to their own interests. But they’ve made — collectively, it seems — a corporate decision to suck up to Trump, much the way German industrialists sucked up to Hitler.

Beyond being short-sighted from a business standpoint — Trump never met an economy he couldn’t tank — this decision willfully ignores that lengthy list of toadies who had previously sworn fealty, only to end up scapegoated, indicted, disbarred, or, at minimum, unemployable.

But the decision stands. And ever since the election, it’s been embarrassing to see one media outlet after another surrendering without a fight.

It started with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzeczinski, of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, who flew to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring, and were surprised when their ratings then fell through the floor.

Then ABC, astonishingly, settled a lawsuit that was frivolous even by Trump standards. They agreed to contribute $16 million to Trump’s presidential library, which seems a lot of money for so little material, and which amounts, of course, to a form of bribery, legal though it may be. Yet the C-suite at parent-company Disney did it right out in the open. Their noses are still brown.

Now CBS is apparently doing much the same thing, offering to settle another breathtakingly bogus litigation, apparently for the same reasons. Both CBS and ABC are, in effect, putting their hands in the air, assuming the position, and begging Trump not to hurt them.

So why would MAGA need to muzzle the press when the press is perfectly willing to muzzle itself? The line between news and propaganda has always been a thin one, but the election has rudely shown us that the line no longer exists.

It will be interesting — and in many cases nauseating — to see which of our most familiar reporters, newscasters, and pundits continue to embrace real journalism, and which become quislings. If the Russian model is any indication, a sizeable number of these media figures will choose their jobs over their integrity, and we’ll be shocked at how easily they slip into their oleaginous new roles.

Equally interesting will be those who maintain that integrity. Already a number of journalists have quit their jobs to take their chances in a fraught environment. Many are feeling their way into an alternative kind of journalism, and hoping for the best.

Paul Krugman, for example, left a quite cushy job at the Times to do more work for far less money. Like many others, he now has the beginnings of a strong following on Substack. Seemingly exhilarated by his liberation, he posts every weekday, and it’s always worth reading.

The Post saw the departure of a bunch of journalists, the most public being columnist Jennifer Rubin and political cartoonist Ann Telnes. Rubin is also headed for Substack, where the business model is still undefined, and the drop in income is precipitate.

We will need this “new” journalism going forward, because the dismal truth is that our traditional news sources have sold us out. While they remain somewhat able to report breaking news, they’ve become unreliable narrators who can’t be trusted to tell us either what happened or what it means.

So we have to look outside the mainstream — to bloggers, podcasters, and other more tech-forward outlets — to get the information we need. It will be a long slog.

But to that end, I’ve been asked to share a few of my own sources, so I’m listing here a sort of starter set. Keep in mind these are not reporters, though some have journalism backgrounds. They don’t break news, they analyze, interpret, and add perspective:

Paul Krugman, mentioned above, the Nobel-prize winning economist brings clarity and sanity, not just to economics, but to the political issues affected by them. Most economic “thought” bandied about these days is total bullshit, and Krugman is one of the few who can tell you why.

The Professional Left Podcast, coming to you from a cornfield in the Heartland, is the work of a husband-and-wife team of political nerds with long political memories. Twice weekly, they dispense the most consistently accurate and insightful commentary available to us in these bleak times, and somehow they make it sound hopeful.

Jessica Valenti, the go-to source for anything related to abortion, tracks the myriad miscarriages of both pregnancy and justice. She stays on top of a panorama of ugly but important topics, especially contraception, red-state legal treachery, and the perversion of language by abortion abolitionists.

Heather Cox Richardson, an academic historian by trade, delivers easily-digestible recaps of the previous day’s events, often putting those events into historical context. She knows better than most how we got here, and what we did about it in the past.

The Bob Cesca Show, an eccentric, often humorous spin on the topical stories of the day, is the work of Bob Cesca, a radio veteran with disc-jockey chops. He and his regular guests are well-informed, smart, and — even now — entertaining.

Crooks & Liars, a well-staffed online publication, is a dependable source of quick yet savvy news analysis. For decades, they’ve chronicled the crooks and liars who’ve plagued our lives, and who now run our government. They know who did what, and they keep the receipts.

All these people need money, some more than others, but that’s not why they’re doing it. You can usually subscribe for free, just by giving them your email. If you can contribute, great, but most of them are content just to be heard by people hungry for some sanity.

Admittedly, it’s not a great way to keep a benighted populace informed. But we have to start somewhere.