I have never felt more concerned for the future of our country.
Of course it’s the fact that the presidential election is neck and neck, evenly split between a very reasonable Democratic candidate and a terrifying Republican who is a convicted felon, a pathological liar and more cognitively questionable by the day.
I don’t trust the polls anyway, and neither should you. They got it wildly wrong in 2016 when Hillary Clinton was assured of a win, mildly wrong in 2020 when Trump refused to accept the result and insanely wrong at midterms in 2022 – remember the “Red Wave” that did not happen? That.
But what is giving me stabbing stomach pains is the blow to our free press, which is the one thing we cannot as a country do without. Free speech. Critical voices. Independent inquiry into our government and elected officials.
A free and vibrant press is the single, indispensable pillar of a democracy. And those institutions are at risk.
The decision by the Los Angeles Times billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong to quash an endorsement of Kamala Harris, matched by the decision by billionaire Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos to end the practice of endorsing any candidate, after the paper’s editorial board had prepared to endorse her as well, is a devastating blow to a free press.
Two of the country’s largest newspapers took their opinions off the table days before the election, even though their editorial boards wanted to be heard. Their doing so sends a terrible signal to other corporate leaders, and to other publishers. If they ducked provoking Trump, so will others.
It is legitimately scary. As historian Timothy Snyder has written, their decision on these endorsements is a kind of “anticipatory obedience,” a caving to Trump’s threats to retaliate against his perceived enemies before anything happens and without Trump even being elected. This is a perilous sign for democracy.
“Do not obey in advance,” writes Snyder in his seminal pamphlet, “On Tyranny,” which is being widely quoted on social media. “Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked.”
Hundreds of journalists in these newsrooms who have pushed back against their owners, thousands of readers who have cancelled their subscriptions in the past three days – are enraged that these billionaires would “bend the knee” to Trump out of fear of what he might do.
The journalists at these papers have spent years showing their mettle, reporting on both Trump and Joe Biden in a sea of social media noise. They sift through facts, track down sources, try to identify misinformation – all under enormous pressure. Their work is essential at a time when voters do not know what information to trust.
You trust the reporting of The Washington Post. And the LA Times. And a handful of others. Without them, our democracy is cut adrift.
I worked at The Washington Post for eight years. And I have covered the ups and down at the Los Angeles Times under multiple owners for 20 years. I admit that I was relieved when Bezos bought the Post from the Graham family in 2013. And I was thrilled to see Soon-Shiong, a local L.A. resident, rescue (so I thought) the LA Times from the muddled mismanagement of Tribune.
But these latest decisions give the lie to civic duty in billionaire ownership of our news institutions. Bezos has billion-dollar contracts in front of the U.S. government, and Soon-Shiong’s main source of wealth is his pharmaceutical research which depends on federal approval.
Meanwhile both newspapers are losing massive amounts of money (The Post lost $100 million last year; the Times at least $50 million.) Both billionaires may well regret having bought them.
The argument for billionaire ownership of newspapers was that the owners were so rich that they were immune from political threat or intimidation. The wealthy individual was making an investment in the community and gaining a tool of influence in the halls of state and national government, business and foreign policy.
It gave them a seat at the table of power in a way that their money could not. But that ownership also confers obligation. That is a realization that seems to escape yet another billionaire who dabbles dangerously in media, X-owner and Trump booster Elon Musk.
As I have argued for years, media is different. It’s not like a sports team or a packaged good or a car manufacturer. It brings with it a special responsibility to uphold honest, fact-based inquiry and have the courage to disseminate the results of those inquiries.
It also means overseeing an unruly newsroom staff of opinionated, educated reporters and editors who will not be cowed or intimidated or bullied.
Independently-owned media is essential in our age of disinformation. TheWrap remains fiercely independent, as we like to say. And all we do is news. Feel free to support us with a subscription, it’s worth the investment.
But as for other publications – let us hope our billionaire problem does not spread further.
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