hitting the unsubscribe button is totally fine, actually
Goddamnit, i have managed to avoid venting my spleen about US politics on LiveJournal for a long time because, honestly, nothing has changed since this time 8 years ago, when almost half of country's voters got whipped up into an anti-immigrant frenzy and cast their ballot for a celebrity conman who has spent his entire, privileged, elite life ripping ordinary people off, filing frivolous lawsuits and sexually abusing women. The guy is a pitiful, pathetic slime ball who is not worth a fraction of the time most media outlets (including social media) give him. The media has a lot to answer for in how they have normalized his behavior and rhetoric, and the amount of free advertising they have given him should well and truly put to rest the myth that the media as a whole has a left-wing bias.
So this is not a post about the election, but it is a post about the media. And, specifically, this kind of hand-waving away of decisions by two of America's most widely-read newspapers to block their editorial teams from issuing an endorsement.
All these flop-ass fucking thinkpieces about "well if you cancel your subscription it doesn't hurt Jeff Bezos at all" or "the media shouldn't be in the business of endorsing anyone anyway" are missing the point so hard i want to scream.
The problem here is not billionaires, and it is not media bias. The problem here is FREEDOM OF THE FUCKING PRESS. The fact this even needs to be said is bonkers.
Freedom of the press requires editorial independence. Period. It doesn't matter whether the owner of a newspaper is a billionaire or a publicly traded company or an NGO or the government. The whole fucking point of having an independent editorial board is that they get to decide what to report on. There can be right-wing editorial teams, there can be left-wing editorial teams, there can be editorial teams who make a decision not to endorse political candidates, there can be editorial teams who give their two cents on every candidate up and down the ticket. That's fine. Journalists come in all flavors, and that's exactly how it should be in a free country.
But you know what really undermines press freedom and people's trust in the media? When an editorial team is told by somebody outside the organization that they have to kill a story or opinion piece that they were working on.
Sure, stories get cut all the time for space reasons, or because another story deemed more important to the readership emerged, or because there weren't reliable enough sources, or maybe the articles just weren't written very well. The point is not cutting articles. It's taking the decision to cut out of the hands of the very people whose mission it is to make that decision.
And it is their mission. I'm going to directly include The Seven Principles for the Conduct of a Newspaper (found on https://www.washingtonpost.com/about-the-post/), written by a millionaire who bought the Washington Post in 1933:
I can't decide if it's worse that some people are ignorant of basic principles of the free press or that other people are deliberately choosing to ignore it because their ultimate goal is to further erode trust in the media.
When one of the most influential national newspapers in the world's most powerful democratic country violates its own stated mission and allows its owner to override the editorial board and mandate what can and cannot be published, that's bad for freedom and democracy. It doesn't matter if you agree with the paper's editorial team on all the issues. It doesn't matter if you don't even read the paper at all. (I don't.) This sort of shit is exactly what happens in authoritarian countries. And it's only the first step, because the next step is that once editorial teams have got the message about who's really in charge, they will self-censor and "independently" choose not to publish things that might upset the boss.
This mealy-mouthed waffling coming from some commentators that "well it's okay to make endorsements on the local level, but on the national level we feel people have to make up their own minds" makes it even more obvious that the self-censorship has already begun. So it's fine to have opinions on the small stuff, but can't touch the third rail of taking a stand on national events with a global impact? If you were the Smallville Ledger, sure, but you're the Daily fucking Planet, bro. Miss me with that nonsense.
In light of all this, if 250,000 readers of the Washington Post have had enough, fucking good. They should have had enough. Boohoo zero pity for the reporters who are complaining that they're the ones getting hurt. You know which reporters are actually getting hurt? The 134 journalists and media workers killed in Gaza over the past year (https://cpj.org/2024/10/journalist-casualties-in-the-israel-gaza-conflict/). The 521 journalists imprisoned by authoritarian regimes (https://rsf.org/en/rsf-s-2023-round-45-journalists-killed-line-duty-worldwide-drop-despite-tragedy-gaza). I know it's hard to find jobs in journalism right now so people have to take what they can get, but stop blaming the actual fucking victims of this decision: us. The public.
We, the people, are the ones who the media is supposed to be serving. Not advertisers. Not investors. Not even journalists themselves. Us.
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Meanwhile i continue to pay for The Guardian, because whether you agree with their politics or not, at least their ownership structure is designed to try to mitigate exactly this sort of undemocratic, anti-free bullshit. And plenty of other actually independent media is out there too that could use your support. Here is a list of just a few: https://www.trustworthymedia.org/list-of-independent-media/
So this is not a post about the election, but it is a post about the media. And, specifically, this kind of hand-waving away of decisions by two of America's most widely-read newspapers to block their editorial teams from issuing an endorsement.
All these flop-ass fucking thinkpieces about "well if you cancel your subscription it doesn't hurt Jeff Bezos at all" or "the media shouldn't be in the business of endorsing anyone anyway" are missing the point so hard i want to scream.
The problem here is not billionaires, and it is not media bias. The problem here is FREEDOM OF THE FUCKING PRESS. The fact this even needs to be said is bonkers.
Freedom of the press requires editorial independence. Period. It doesn't matter whether the owner of a newspaper is a billionaire or a publicly traded company or an NGO or the government. The whole fucking point of having an independent editorial board is that they get to decide what to report on. There can be right-wing editorial teams, there can be left-wing editorial teams, there can be editorial teams who make a decision not to endorse political candidates, there can be editorial teams who give their two cents on every candidate up and down the ticket. That's fine. Journalists come in all flavors, and that's exactly how it should be in a free country.
But you know what really undermines press freedom and people's trust in the media? When an editorial team is told by somebody outside the organization that they have to kill a story or opinion piece that they were working on.
Sure, stories get cut all the time for space reasons, or because another story deemed more important to the readership emerged, or because there weren't reliable enough sources, or maybe the articles just weren't written very well. The point is not cutting articles. It's taking the decision to cut out of the hands of the very people whose mission it is to make that decision.
And it is their mission. I'm going to directly include The Seven Principles for the Conduct of a Newspaper (found on https://www.washingtonpost.com/about-the-post/), written by a millionaire who bought the Washington Post in 1933:
- The first mission of a newspaper is to tell the truth as nearly as the truth may be ascertained.
- The newspaper shall tell ALL the truth so far as it can learn it, concerning the important affairs of America and the world.
- As a disseminator of the news, the paper shall observe the decencies that are obligatory upon a private gentleman.
- What it prints shall be fit reading for the young as well as for the old.
- The newspaper's duty is to its readers and to the public at large, and not to the private interests of its owners.
- In the pursuit of truth, the newspaper shall be prepared to make sacrifices of its material fortunes, if such course be necessary for the public good.
- The newspaper shall not be the ally of any special interest, but shall be fair and free and wholesome in its outlook on public affairs and public men.
I can't decide if it's worse that some people are ignorant of basic principles of the free press or that other people are deliberately choosing to ignore it because their ultimate goal is to further erode trust in the media.
When one of the most influential national newspapers in the world's most powerful democratic country violates its own stated mission and allows its owner to override the editorial board and mandate what can and cannot be published, that's bad for freedom and democracy. It doesn't matter if you agree with the paper's editorial team on all the issues. It doesn't matter if you don't even read the paper at all. (I don't.) This sort of shit is exactly what happens in authoritarian countries. And it's only the first step, because the next step is that once editorial teams have got the message about who's really in charge, they will self-censor and "independently" choose not to publish things that might upset the boss.
This mealy-mouthed waffling coming from some commentators that "well it's okay to make endorsements on the local level, but on the national level we feel people have to make up their own minds" makes it even more obvious that the self-censorship has already begun. So it's fine to have opinions on the small stuff, but can't touch the third rail of taking a stand on national events with a global impact? If you were the Smallville Ledger, sure, but you're the Daily fucking Planet, bro. Miss me with that nonsense.
In light of all this, if 250,000 readers of the Washington Post have had enough, fucking good. They should have had enough. Boohoo zero pity for the reporters who are complaining that they're the ones getting hurt. You know which reporters are actually getting hurt? The 134 journalists and media workers killed in Gaza over the past year (https://cpj.org/2024/10/journalist-casualties-in-the-israel-gaza-conflict/). The 521 journalists imprisoned by authoritarian regimes (https://rsf.org/en/rsf-s-2023-round-45-journalists-killed-line-duty-worldwide-drop-despite-tragedy-gaza). I know it's hard to find jobs in journalism right now so people have to take what they can get, but stop blaming the actual fucking victims of this decision: us. The public.
We, the people, are the ones who the media is supposed to be serving. Not advertisers. Not investors. Not even journalists themselves. Us.
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
- Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Meanwhile i continue to pay for The Guardian, because whether you agree with their politics or not, at least their ownership structure is designed to try to mitigate exactly this sort of undemocratic, anti-free bullshit. And plenty of other actually independent media is out there too that could use your support. Here is a list of just a few: https://www.trustworthymedia.org/list-of-independent-media/