With the world on fire, a cowardly, timid news media is a threat to U.S. democracy
By Will Bunch
"There was a shocking and incredibly important story on the front page of the New York Times last week. As reported by an A-team of journalists including two Pulitzer Prize winners, the Times warned its readers that Donald Trump — if returned to the White House in 2025 — is grooming a new team of extremist government lawyers who would be more loyal to their Dear Leader than to the rule of law, and could help Trump install a brand of American fascism.
You say you didn’t hear anything about this? That’s not surprising. The editors at the Times made sure to present this major report in the blandest, most inoffensive way possible — staying true to the mantra in the nation’s most influential newsroom that the 2024 election shouldn’t be covered any differently, even when U.S. democracy is on the line.
“Trump Allies Want a New Style of Lawyer if He Returns to Power” was the original online headline for the piece, as if maybe they were talking about colorful drawling Southerners with seersucker suits, rather than rabid-dog ideologues who would do the dirty work of overturning an election that career government attorneys refused to do before Jan. 6, 2021.
That “new style of lawyer” — pro-Trump, “America First” zealots who think the ultraconservative lawyers bred in the Federalist Society are too soft to carry out their leader’s autocratic call for a “final battle” against traditional democratic governance that he calls “the deep state” — was described, numbingly, by the Times as “more aggressive legal gatekeepers.” Their dangerous antidemocratic mission was blandly outlined as a plan to “take control of the government in a way unseen in presidential history.”"
https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/journalism-free-press-gaza-extremism-20231105.html
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... it's BOUGHT AND PAID FOR by the conservative owners and executive boards.
We'd be kidding ourselves to think that beat reporters are allowed to express their own relatively "liberal" opinions on newspaper articles or television stories. They don't get published, they don't get on the air when they express liberal progressive views - they get FIRED.
The owners and executives of major city newspapers and TV and cable news stations are all or mostly one-per-centers. Their annual salaries and perks are usually more than 100 times what the beat reporters make per year. Most of them think just like Chump, and as far as they're concerned he's the greatest thing since sliced bread.
The lawyers in the US are either making $1 million per year, or if they aren't, they assume they will be in the next 5 years. They all relate to the same conservative "logic" as the bankers, accountants and executives. The deck is totally stacked against Democrats, liberals and progressives.
