What is happening with editorial boards is not normal. You need to understand this first.
They are not part of the newsroom, so anyone telling you that is lying. What happened at the LAT and WaPo are the beginning. Have you not read history? They come for you. You just think it’s more steps away.
When I think of journalism collapsing, I think of the persecution of Julian Assange or the targeting of journalists in Gaza. The blocking of editorial boards’ endorsements seems trivial in comparison.
It’s a big deal. The endorsements are mostly worthless from a political perspective, but the willingness of otherwise powerful people to place themselves obedient to Trump’s dictates is relatively new, and is a terrifying sign.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/26/anticipatory-obedience-newspapers-endorsement-refusal
These papers have been privately owned by billionaires for years.
So, you just have your thing you want to say, and you’re not interested in reading our stuff or any point that isn’t what you already had picked out to say, not interested in a conversation, nothing like that, huh?
Just going to keep saying your thing with increasing curtness for as long as someone keeps sending you replies? It sort of looks that way.
I just try to be concise when I can. Either these papers only just started serving their owners’ material interests a few days ago or the outrage over the non-endorsements is contrived, irrational, and/or self-important; an embarrassing freak-out.
The issue isn’t that billionaires owning papers is new. It’s the billionaires hewing to Trump, when previously they were willing to publicly feud with him as people would do in a free society. A good example is Bezos versus the US government over the issue of USPS carrying Amazon packages. Since they’re now showing signs of obedience to Trump in fear of being punished, important scholars are pointing out that it’s a huge problem with a long history in the collapse of democracies into autocracies. It’s a critical force multiplier for the worst and most dangerous features of a fascist government.
I already said this to you, with citations, as did others. You’re so excited about making your point and convinced that you know better that I suspect you’ll just repeat your previous point of view, pretending I said nothing of interest. I eagerly invite you to do that again, if you like.
I just do not understand this worldview that the billionaires are supposed to have protected journalism, let alone served as an important bulwark against fascism. It was already game over if that’s the case.
Called it.
It looked a fuckload better when the alternative was venture capital. I wrote a post praising Bezos at the time, which didn’t age well.
WaPo could certainly have done worse. It’s not unreasonable to expect that a billionaire might look after a newspaper like a rare classic car or other vanity purchase, that he would be content to keep it running nicely even if it’s ostensibly a poor investment.
I think you and CrimeDad are kind of talking past each other.
I think this is simply the intrinsic interplay of the capitalist class and autocrats, though. They (millionaires, billionaires, etc) will, as a group, always protect themselves first when an autocrat comes along.
You are looking at the situation and saying, “Well, them kowtowing is clearly evidence that an autocrat has come along, because when it’s not an autocrat they don’t kowtow”, and CrimeDad is looking at it and saying, “Yes, but they’re just the indicator, they should never have been expected to try to stop this. They just intrinsically will align themselves with autocrats in order to maintain their positions of power, but despite that we’ve allowed them to take control of a core protection of our democracy (press freedom)”.
You clearly are in the field. Or somewhere off in socialism land, but the point remains: We cannot do this again. It turned out pretty bad for Hoover. Things got slightly worse in Germany.
I think it’s more that most ‘normies’ never actually thought we’d get here (this close to an open autocracy), and this is the clearest indicator to most of them that autocracy is rapidly arriving, and now they’re freaking out. Obv the capitalist class was always going to align with an autocrat rather than risk their wealth, and never should have been allowed to run newspapers, but here we are.
Meanwhile, with Harris’s enthusiastic acceptance of Dick Cheney’s endorsement, there’s a resurgent fascism within the Democrats that these normies are happily ignoring. That guy did more to expand American fascism than Trump even promises. Therefore, this election isn’t really about totalitarianism versus democracy. That’s another reason why the anticipatory obedience accusation isn’t relevant. It would have also been anticipatory obedience to endorse Harris.
Be careful with this. I do not tolerate gaslighting in here.
It’s this one. Been trying to figure out where you spoke with my voice, and it’s here. Not a slight, we just … settle on things.
They didn’t endorse Trump. They are all playing Switzerland. Read the stories and vote. Just vote people!
A non endorsement is an endorsement in itself.
If you sit at a table with 9 other people and 1 is a Nazi and nobody says anything, you’re at a table with 10 nazis.
I had an early friendship tested one night unexpectedly because our friends contractor (an English ‘expat’) started confiding in me after quite a few pints about some actual Nazi shit which I nipped in the bud but would not let him off the hook-our conversation was mostly between us but my friend caught enough of it (and a follow up conversation later) that the Nazi is no longer his local contractor.
Fuck these guys.
People regularly fail to grasp this.
I spent a semester in apparently Northern Germany. You saw a Nazi, you got the fuck out. They’re going to win.
Yes. And they didn’t not endorse Trump, as well. Which is the whole point here. They are laying down their arms just in case the wannabe authoritarian fascist dictator happens to win.
And the one fighting chance, outside of voting, and taking up arms, is a free press. Benjamin Franklin knew this and used it to its fullest capacity. And that is what is dying — without a free press, the vote is then in danger because any semblance of truth is already dead.
Then what are we left with?
Guns. And death.
And guess who benefits from that?
You know what the worst part of this is? Considering buying a gun so that at least we’re evenly matched. I don’t like that the idea was ever a thing.
That’s actually a discussion I’d love to have.
Well, these and other injuries against journalists and journalism aren’t new, but the coverage and outrage that I would have expected these and other outlets to produce has been relatively weak. Doesn’t seem like there’s much left standing to collapse.