Darkness descending on WaPo
Only 1,411 days to go...
One of my favorite biographies, which I read nearly 25 years ago was Pulitzer Prize winning, Personal History by Katharine Graham.
“Here is the awkward child who grew up amid material wealth and emotional isolation; the young bride who watched her brilliant, charismatic husband—a confidant to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson—plunge into the mental illness that would culminate in his suicide. And here is the widow who shook off her grief and insecurity to take on a president and a pressman’s union as she entered the profane boys’ club of the newspaper business.”
It’s a well written book and an amazing story of an extraordinary woman who stepped into the role of publisher of The Washington Post at a pivotal moment in American history. In 1972 she became the first female CEO of a Fortune 500 company just as the women’s liberation movement was unfolding. Though she was shy and lacked confidence, she stood up to the naysayers and sexists around her. Unlike Jeff Bezos, she didn’t flinch and had the courage to take on a vindicative president, do her job and report the news.
From 1963 to 1991 Katharine Graham led The Washington Post. During that period, the publication transformed from a regional newspaper into one of the country’s leading journalistic institutions. She was under enormous pressure from the Nixon administration and she didn’t buckle. I highly recommend the new Amazon Prime Video documentary about her, Becoming Katharine Graham. The parallels with today are sadly too vivid. The difference is Katharine Graham had courage and a firm understanding of the role of the press in a democratic society.
She elevated The Washington Post. For Katharine Graham the Post was a family enterprise. She had been a journalist and she loved the company. She took on the role of running the paper after her husband’s death so that the family could continue to run own and run it, when her son came of age.
In October 2013, the Graham family sold the newspaper to Nash Holdings, a holding company owned by Jeff Bezos. Sadly under Bezos, the paper is diminishing. He is not a journalist and The Washington Post is simply a side enterprise. He needs to curry favor with the current administration because of his other businesses.
Where Jeff Bezos Went Wrong With The Washington Post
Now we know that Bezos is no Katharine Graham. It has been sad and unnerving to watch Bezos fall so terribly short of her standard as he confronts the return of Donald Trump to the White House. It’s been infuriating to observe the damage he has inflicted in recent months on the reputation of a newspaper whose investigative reporting has served as a bulwark against Trump’s most transgressive impulses.
Late in October, the editorial page of The Washington Post was going to endorse Kamala Harris. Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris, paper reports. The paper lost 250,000 subscribers, who canceled their subscriptions.
In January, Pulitzer Price winning political cartoonist, Ann Telnas, had cartoon that was pulled because it presented the “broligarchy” in a less than favorable light, so she resigned.
Recently, Bezos declared that The Washington Post’s opinion page would only run pieces supporting personal liberties and the free market. The announcement led to the immediate resignation of Opinions Editor David Shipley. In response, Bezos' changes at 'Washington Post' lead to mass subscription cancellations — again
More than 75,000 digital subscribers to The Washington Post have cancelled since its owner, billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced on Wednesday that he would radically overhaul the paper's opinion pages to reflect libertarian priorities and to exclude opposing points of view.
There are a number of articles out there that bemoan the fall of The Washington Post.
Exclusive: Washington Post to overhaul newsroom structure
Opinion Columnist Jen Rubin Leaves Washington Post to Start Contrarian Blog: ‘Billionaire Media Failing to Meet the Moment’ Her letter reads…
Why I Won’t Be Working for The Washington Post: It’s Time for Jeff Bezos to Sell It.
Longtime Post opinion editor and columnist Ruth Marcus resigned from the Post after CEO Will Lewis killed her column expressing concerns about Bezos' opinion section changes.
How Jeff Bezos brought The Washington Post’s global reputation into question
The Washington Post first unveiled the slogan, "Democracy Dies in Darkness," in February 2017 as subtitle. According to the newspaper, the phrase was popularized by investigative journalist Bob Woodward and had been used internally within the company for years before being officially adopted. Woodward said he did not coin the phrase himself, instead attributing the phrase to a judge ruling on a First Amendment case, believed to be from Circuit Judge Damon Keith.
Sadly, darkness is descending on The Washington Post as they continue to lose subscribers and seasoned journalists and become more and more a propaganda voice for an authoritarian government.
Thought for the day in honor of her birthday…
“If you never encounter anything in your community that offends you, then you are not living in a free society.”
~ Kim Campbell
Must Read Article:
Bashing the press is a time-honored tradition for presidents of both parties. But Trump has gone much further, attacking the very notion of an independent news media, one that will refute his distortions. He wants journalists to parrot his views and face consequences if they don’t… Media lawyers and some of Trump’s allies say the concessions have emboldened the president’s legal team. More lawsuits are likely. They will probably be accompanied by other attempts to delegitimize the press — an important strategy for a White House that uses lies to advance its agenda.
Quotes of the day:
“There is no guarantee that Trump’s perverse momentum will slow, or be derailed, of its own accord. He has the unwavering support of his MAGA base, the cowed compliance of his congressional caucus, and the backing of multibillionaires such as Jeff Bezos, who would rather diminish the vitality of his newspaper than risk the dinner invitations of the sovereign.”
~ David Remnick
What I’m reading today…
Trump Is Breaking the Fourth Wall
The spectacle that resulted was a striking exception (to history, to world stability, to decency). Trump was abandoning an ally and bullying him in the process; he was rejecting frameworks that distinguished America’s friends from its enemies. The meeting declared the president’s—and thus everyone else’s—new reality: Trump’s earlier show was mere prologue. This is Trump’s reality-TV presidency. The new season will be darker, grimmer, and filled with ever more dizzying plot twists. It demands to be watched not as entertainment but as an omen.
The Washington Post Looks to Recruit Right-Wing Journalists
The Washington Post is hiring—but apparently only if you’re the kind of journalist that will steer the paper further toward the right. Publisher Will Lewis recently met with Eliana Johnson, the editor-in-chief of the right-wing outlet The Washington Free Beacon, to discuss how she could help recruit more right-leaning reporters… The move is the latest sign that owner Jeff Bezos is intent on steering the paper further to the right.
Trump is turning the media into a mouthpiece of the regime
You know we’re in trouble when Fox News emerges as the great defender of freedom of the press. But such was the case when Jacqui Heinrich, a senior political correspondent at Fox, responded to the news that Trump’s White House would now handpick the reporters who get to cover the president in small settings, with the post: “This move does not give the power back to the people – it gives power to the White House.” Heinrich was specifically responding to press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s Orwellian claim that letting Donald Trump choose who would cover him was designed to restore power “back to the American people”.
‘People Are Going Silent’: Fearing Retribution, Trump Critics Muzzle Themselves
More than six weeks into the second Trump administration, there is a chill spreading over political debate in Washington and beyond. People on both sides of the aisle who would normally be part of the public dialogue about the big issues of the day say they are intimidated by the prospect of online attacks from Mr. Trump and Elon Musk, concerned about harm to their companies and frightened for the safety of their families. Politicians fear banishment by a party remade in Mr. Trump’s image and the prospect of primary opponents financed by Mr. Musk…
CBS moves to dismiss $20 billion Trump lawsuit
CBS argues the case should be dismissed for a lack of personal and subject-matter jurisdiction as well as improper venue…."This lawsuit is an affront to the First Amendment and is without basis in law or fact," one CBS filing reads. "Plaintiffs President Donald J. Trump and Representative Ronny Jackson, public officials at the highest ranks of our government, seek to punish a news organization for constitutionally protected editorial judgments they do not like… They not only ask for $20 billion in damages but also seek an order directing how a news organization may exercise its editorial judgment in the future. The First Amendment stands resolutely against these demands."
State Dept. Plans to Close Diplomatic Missions and Fire Employees Overseas
The moves come at a time when China, the main rival of America, has overtaken the United States in number of global diplomatic posts. China has forged strong ties across nations, especially in Asia and Africa, and exerts greater power in international organizations.
Many Chinese See a Cultural Revolution in America
As the United States grapples with the upheaval unleashed by the Trump administration, many Chinese people are finding they can relate to what many Americans are going through. They are saying it feels something like the Cultural Revolution, the period known as “the decade of turmoil.”
“Coming from an authoritarian state, we know that dictatorship is not just a system — it is, at its core, the pursuit of power. We also know that the Cultural Revolution was about dismantling institutions to expand control.” ~ Wang Jian
The Rise of the Brutal American
In just a few minutes, the behavior of Donald Trump and J. D. Vance created a brand-new stereotype for America: not the quiet American, not the ugly American, but the brutal American. Whatever illusions Europeans ever had about Americans—whatever images lingered from old American movies, the ones where the good guys win, the bad guys lose, and honor defeats treachery—those are shattered. Whatever fond memories remain of the smiling GIs who marched into European cities in 1945, of the speeches that John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan made at the Berlin Wall, or of the crowds that once welcomed Barack Obama, those are also fading fast. Quite apart from their politics, Trump and Vance are rude. They are cruel. They berated and mistreated a guest on camera, and then boasted about it afterward, as if their ugly behavior achieved some kind of macho “win.” …Europeans can also see that this alternative reality is directly and profoundly shaped by Russian propaganda. I don’t know whether the American president absorbs Russian narratives online, from proxies, or from Putin himself. Either way, he has thoroughly adopted the Russian view of the world, as has Vance.
Trump isn’t simply telling Americans that they haven’t been given their due. He’s insisting that they’ve been duped, and the choice before them is to finally get smart or to continue getting scammed…It reflects his fiercest and most fundamental convictions: that every transaction and relationship is a zero-sum situation in which one party is getting the better of the other, and that if you’re not making a chump of your adversaries, you’re ensuring that they will make a chump of you…It’s also a trick. It pulls such a thick wad of wool over his followers’ eyes that they’re unlikely to see how Trump — with his richest-ever cabinet, his relentless monetizing of the presidency, his rank nepotism and the conflicts of interests swirling around him — is really the one fleecing the country.
The only question that matters is what these institutions will do when they are eventually forced to pick a side. Because that will happen. It always happens. Authoritarianism requires it. Jeff Bezos understands this, which is why he’s moved the Washington Post’s institutional priorities to be more accommodating. CBS and ABC seem to understand this, which is why their corporate parents are looking to settle frivolous lawsuits favorably for Trump. CNN must understand this—what other explanation is there for handing their air over to Scott Jennings? So, here’s the bottom line: when WaPo’s opinion pages are being gutted and tech CEOs are seeking pre-approval from authoritarians, the line between “tech coverage” and “saving democracy” has basically disappeared. It’s all the same thing.
Maybe it’s just human nature to believe wackadoodle conspiracy theories, to assume the worst about others, to always suspect the most complicated, labyrinthine schemes are plausible instead of embracing the “Occam’s razor” principle that the simplest solution is probably right. In an article titled, “How and why does misinformation spread?” the American Psychological Association states, “People are more likely to share misinformation when it aligns with personal identity or social norms, when it is novel, and when it elicits strong emotions.”
The Expanding Attacks on Speech
It’s alarming to see how quickly and energetically Donald Trump and his enablers are attacking free speech and working to silence dissent. Sometimes their intent is obvious, but other times they are using hot-button issues as subterfuge to misdirect the public.
War heroes and military firsts are among 26,000 images flagged for removal in Pentagon’s DEI purge
References to a World War II Medal of Honor recipient, the Enola Gay aircraft that dropped an atomic bomb on Japan and the first women to pass Marine infantry training are among the tens of thousands of photos and online posts marked for deletion as the Defense Department works to purge diversity, equity and inclusion content… In some cases, photos seemed to be flagged for removal simply because their file included the word "gay," including service members with that last name and an image of the B-29 aircraft Enola Gay. Stupidity at the Pentagon
More nonsense courtesy of President Bone Spurs… Is this really how we want our DOD tax dollars to be spent? Examining photographs?
I wonder if this means they’re going to remove all the references to the Women Airforce Service Pilots of WWII. My aunt was one…
What I am watching…
What I read every day…
Ironic that Amazon Prime is streaming "Becoming Katharine Graham" which profiles a courageous woman helming a newspaper during the contentenious Watergate era and highlights the difference between Graham's courage and Jeff Bezo's craven cowardice. I would hope for a voice of outrage from Don Graham regarding the enfeeblement of his family's cherished legacy.