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These Times Demand Courage

We are already learning who will stand up to Trump and his reckless enablers and who will kowtow out of fear

Steven Beschloss Dec 6

Who will have the courage to stand up for America? (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

“These are the times that try men's souls,” Thomas Paine wrote in 1776 in Common Sense, his 47-page polemic confronting the unjust rule of a king. “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country.”

Paine’s proposition offers a useful frame for our own moment that is testing our souls, our principles and the seriousness of our commitment. Who will have the courage to stand up and assert their patriotic dedication to our democratic way of life? Who will shrink from this service and allow themselves to be overtaken by fear—fear of a man fueled by grievance, vengeance and bloodlust, fear of cruel and reckless sycophants determined to serve their master rather than justice, the rule of law and the Constitution?

We are quickly learning who is shrinking and who is rising, who is kowtowing to the wannabe king and who is lighting the way to our democratic future, who is looking ahead to Americans acting with optimism and confidence, not hopelessness and fear. We are learning this now, even while the transfer of power won’t happen for another 44 days.

In recent days, I have been encouraged by election lawyer Marc Elias and former advisor to VP Mike Pence Olivia Troye, both dedicated pro-democracy advocates who have shown in word and deed that they are not willing to submit to the threats. Their early acts of opposition are a source of nourishment for all of us who wonder how these coming months will play out.

Both have been targeted by Kash Patel, Trump’s henchman and preferred weapon to run the FBI. Patel has called Elias, who won in 64 out of 65 legal cases in which Trump sought to overturn the 2020 results, “an enemy of the Republican Party.” Rather than lay low, Elias—who publishes Democracy Docket—has asserted his convictions and commitment with clarity and confidence. It’s not that he is fearless, of course. As Mark Twain noted, “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear."

Here’s how Elias put it on MSNBC’s Deadline White House with Nicolle Wallace on Wednesday, referencing Patel’s attention:

Right now there are a lot of people who are quietly scared and there are a lot of people who are publicly scared. There are a lot of people engaging in anticipatory obedience…I’m proud of the fact that I stand up for democracy and that I win. And we need everyone to be a little bit courageous. It’s OK to be scared. It’s OK to be nervous. I’m nervous, I’m scared at some level. But you know, everyone needs to be a happy warrior in this fight. Everyone needs to have a little bit of courage in this fight.

For Elias, that includes increasing his own efforts to advocate for democracy. “The success of our democracy rests on an effective opposition movement,” he wrote yesterday. “We all must play a part in offering additional ideas and approaches and not being afraid to take risks.”

Also on Wednesday, Olivia Troye posted the letter sent by Patel’s attorney threatening a defamation lawsuit and demanding her to retract her statements about Patel’s lack of fitness to serve as FBI director. Several days earlier on MSNBC, she said, “Kash Patel is a delusional liar. Let me be very clear about that. And he would lie about intel, he would make things up about operations….I know this because at some point I realized I needed to double-check Kash’s work to make sure I wasn’t misinforming Mike Pence by relying on his word. So I had to go around him.”

Troye is not backing down. “This follows his threats against media & political opponents, showing how he might act if confirmed,” Troye posted on Bluesky. “I stand by my statements.” Responding to CNN anchor Jim Acosta about what Patel’s threats portend, Troye said, “I think it’s a very clear sign of what’s to come should he become the director of the FBI and how he’s going to conduct himself…By sending that letter to me, it was an attempt to bully me, silence me, intimidate me. But it’s also a signal to others.”

Yes, I’m keeping my eyes on those who stand up for principle, for democracy and decency, and who don’t act out of worry and fear. Courage is not “the absence of fear,” Nelson Mandela once said, “but the triumph over it.” And, as Marc Elias told me yesterday, “I don’t allow it [fear] to prevent me from standing up for what is right. Trump wants us to be paralyzed by worry. I refuse to give him that power over me.”

They stand in stark contrast to the weak-kneed among us who are already bowing down to Trump’s threats of retribution, even when they try to dress it up as something else. In recent days, that particularly includes media types like Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough and the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong.

You may have already heard that Atlantic writer David Frum was asked during a break to leave Morning Joe after making a joke about Pete Hegseth’s drinking and Fox News’ tolerance of this bad behavior. (“If you’re too drunk for Fox News,” Frum said, “you’re very, very drunk indeed.”) After he exited, Brzezinski apologized for their guest’s joke: “The comment was a little too flippant for this moment we’re in.” The clip has the squirmy feel of a hostage video. While Scarborough looks on without expression, Brzezinski seems to be speaking to “someone,” to make it clear that they won’t cross a line and please, please don’t retaliate.

In a follow-up article in The Atlantic, titled “The Sound of Fear on Air,” Frum described his “unsettling experience” when he was warned by a producer not to repeat any comments about Fox. He concluded his essay like this: “I do not write to scold anyone; I write because fear is infectious. Let it spread, and it will paralyze us all. The only antidote is courage. And that’s infectious, too.”

That’s the opposite of the lesson that Patrick Soon-Shiong, billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times is delivering. After rejecting the paper’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris just before the election, Soon-Shiong is now adding right-wing CNN commentator Scott Jennings to his editorial board, has introduced an artificial intelligence-powered meter to counteract signs of bias in the paper’s news coverage by delivering “both sides,” and reportedly is now reviewing the headlines of every opinion piece before it publishes.

As Oliver Darcy noted in his media newsletter Status on Tuesday, “Since Trump’s victory in November, Soon-Shiong has turned to X to criticize the news media, praise Trump’s cabinet picks, and appeal to a MAGA audience. The change in behavior has confounded his journalists, who wonder what happened to the Soon-Shiong whose newspaper enforced strict Covid restrictions and emphasized its support for social justice causes.”

Let’s give the last word to legal analyst Harry Litman, who has resigned as a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Times. “I don’t want to continue to work for a paper that is appeasing Trump and facilitating his assault on democratic rule for craven reasons,” he wrote on his new Substack newsletter, adding, “Soon-Shiong has made several moves to force the paper, over the forceful objections of his staff, into a posture more sympathetic to Donald Trump...Given the existential stakes for our democracy that I believe Trump’s second term poses, and the evidence that Soon-Shiong is currying favor with the President-elect, they are repugnant and dangerous.”

These are times that try our souls. These are times that demand courage.

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Welcome to Stop the Presses, a weekly newsletter about how right-wing extremism has exploited the weaknesses in American journalism and what we can do about it.

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Can journalism survive billionaires?

Public service is often an outdated notion for media oligarchs.

Mark Jacob Dec 2

One of my first journalism jobs was at a daily newspaper in the South. The publisher, who had married into a well-off local family that owned the paper, liked to hang out in a railroad car that was refurbished as his man cave near the printing plant. Every night, he got a copy of the paper as soon as it came off the press.

One time, he called the newsroom and demanded we stop the presses because a story had the word “Israel” divided over two lines, as “Is-” and “rael.” There was no style rule against hyphenating the word “Israel,” but he insisted there was and we weren’t about to argue with him. So we stopped the presses and fixed it, delaying the press run and probably costing the paper some overtime cash. But, hey, it was his paper.

That incident taught me journalism is often at the mercy of rich people. And we’re seeing that now, big time.

The billionaire owners of the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times vetoed their editorial writers’ plans to endorse Kamala Harris for president. These weren’t frivolous decisions – they were greedy and fearful ones. Post owner Jeff Bezos has other properties such as Amazon that could be punished or rewarded by Trump. Same for Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, a physician who has widespread health care investments and angled for a top job in the first Trump administration.

Now, Soon-Shiong has announced plans to add right-wingers to the Times editorial board, including CNN’s ridiculous Scott Jennings. And in an interview with media reporter Oliver Darcy, Soon-Shiong showed he has surgically extracted his ability to face facts. Soon-Shiong would not acknowledge to Darcy that Trump lies more than most politicians. He said "a lot of politicians lie a lot" and it was just Darcy's "opinion" that Trump lied more than most.

Soon-Shiong is a native of South Africa, as is another person threatening the viability of American journalism, Elon Musk.

Musk’s Twitter/X produces some original interviews, but its main power is its control over who sees other outlets’ news reports. That’s because X boosts some posts and throttles others. Musk ordered his staff to write special code putting his own posts in more people’s feeds, and those posts often include reckless lies, fake photos, and personal threats against people he considers his enemies.

Also troubling is X’s policy of throttling posts that include links. It’s easy to understand why platforms like X wouldn’t like links: They pull visitors off the platform. But they also make their posts more credible – by supplying the sources for the claims being made. And it’s a way to share engagement with the people who are actually doing the work of journalism. But Elon Musk doesn’t care about that.

Now Musk is fashioning himself as Trump’s co-president, helping shape policies while retaining his role controlling news coverage of those policies. That’s an authoritarian’s dream.

Another social media mogul who is bad for both journalism and democracy is Mark Zuckerberg, whose company Meta owns Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp.

Local news outlets have been devastated by the migration of advertising revenue to places like Facebook. That’s not Zuckerberg’s fault entirely. It’s a long-term industry trend. But Zuckerberg has fought tooth-and-nail against sharing revenue with the people whose content is helping him make money.

While not a fascist enthusiast like Musk, Zuckerberg seems desperate to avoid any conflict with Trump that could interrupt his cash flow.

During the 2020 election, Zuckerberg made donations to help local officials conduct the voting, and because of that got targeted in the Republicans’ suite of lies alleging vote fraud. Trump said Zuckerberg would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if he engaged in a similar “plot” in 2024. And Zuckerberg knuckled under, saying he wouldn’t fund further election operations because “my goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another.” As if helping people vote was taking sides.

Zuckerberg also removed restrictions on Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, played to Trump’s ego by calling him a “badass” after the first assassination attempt, and made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago last week.

While making money off of journalism, Zuckerberg’s platforms downplay some of the most important journalism: political news. At a time when public engagement in politics is essential to the survival of democracy, Zuckerberg thinks distracted-boyfriend memes are safer content.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with media outlets trying to make money. But increasingly, news industry owners seem interested only in making money, not in performing a public service at the same time.

The paper where I was metro editor, the Chicago Tribune, is now owned by Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund with a reputation for dramatically reducing its staff and increasing its subscription prices. That’s a good formula for short-term profits but not for long-term service to communities. Hedge funds and private equity firms are so dominant in local journalism today that they own more than half of the daily newspaper circulation in this country.

For three years, I was website editor at Northwestern University’s Medill Local News Initiative, a project examining ways to make local journalism more sustainable. I wrote about email newsletters, subscriber retention, digital startups, reader events, news apps, and more. But the whole time I knew the real answer to the industry’s problems could be described in two simple words: better owners.

The trend lines are not good. Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch’s Fox News continues to be No. 1 in the cable news ratings while systematically lying about important facts to boost Republicans. MSNBC, the left-center cable channel, has been spun off from NBC Universal, creating uncertainty about its future. Elon Musk has even speculated about buying it, which would reflect a tactic in one of Trump’s favorite strongman states, Hungary, where oligarchs have bought up media that challenged leader Viktor Orbán.

Former Hungarian lawmaker Gábor Scheiring wrote an important essay last week in Politico Magazine with advice for how Americans could prevent Trump from following Orban’s playbook. “Liberal-minded billionaires should not sit idly by as they did in Hungary, watching the right take over the media,” he wrote.

There are indeed “liberal-minded billionaires” in the United States, and they need to make more of an impact in the media. Such as, for example, buying MSNBC and making it a stronger voice for truth and decency. We can’t count on corporate networks like CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS to stand up to Trump, who has already lobbed threats at TV news outlets.

Right now, the picture is dark, but there are flickers of light.

ProPublica is a nonprofit investigative outfit making a difference by revealing vital facts about abortion bans, Supreme Court corruption, and much more. There are plenty of other independent news outlets, big and small, that could use your support. (Media writer Jennifer Schulze listed many of them in a recent column.)

And the social media picture has shown new vibrancy with the growth of Bluesky, which is taking audience from Musk’s X and Zuckerberg’s Threads. Bluesky doesn’t throttle links, and CEO Jay Graber says the platform is “billionaire proof” because it’s designed “so if someone bought [it] or if the Bluesky company went down, everything is open source.” (I’m at @markjacob.bsky.social on Bluesky.)

Journalism needs to promote the sharing of power, not the consolidation of it. It needs to be independent and brave. Otherwise, democracy is impossible.

 

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The Appeasers

Mar-a-Lago, where integrity goes to die

Mary L. Trump Nov 19

It took awhile, but in the run up to the 2024 election, many in the corporate media started to tell the truth about the threat Donald Trump poses to the future of American democracy. Many of them accurately called him a fascist. Of course, they also spent a lot of time normalizing him, so it shouldn’t surprise us that those same people are falling over themselves to get back in my Donald’s good graces.

In the weeks since the election, we’ve begun to see just how far the corporate-owned media will go to appease the man who, on an almost daily basis for nine years, has maligned the profession of journalism and put individual journalists in danger.

Of course, the appeasement, or as scholars of authoritarianism call it, anticipatory obedience, by certain outlets began well in advance of the election. Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong, owners of The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times’ respectively, refused to allow the papers’ editorial boards to endorse Kamala Harris.

The most embarrassing current example of this appeasement was the spectacle of Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinksi of MSNBC’s Morning Joe announcing on live television that they had visited Donald at Mar-a-Lago. Brzezinksi said the following:

For those asking why we would speak to the president-elect during such fraught times, I would ask back: Why wouldn’t we? It’s time to do something different, and that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump, but talking with him.

Why wouldn’t you? Because, if you have integrity, if you believe your own warnings, you do not ever make common cause with fascists. That’s why.

But these are hacks who were once close enough with Donald that he offered, over lunch at Mar-a-Lago, to preside over their wedding. There’s no reasons to put stock in anything they say or do.

Things turned bitter after Donald became displeased with Morning Joe’s coverage of his administration. Presumably in retaliation, Donald posted the following in the spring of 2020, on Twitter:

When will they open a Cold Case on the Psycho Joe Scarborough matter in Florida. Did he get away with murder? Some people think so. Why did he leave Congress so quietly and quickly? Isn’t it obvious? What’s happening now? A total nut job!

This was in reference to a vicious conspiracy theory that Scarborough murdered one of his congressional staffers. But, apparently, that, along with Donald’s fascism, is all just water under the bridge for Scarborough and Brzezinksi.

They and people like them have clearly made the decision that anticipatory obedience will spare them from Donald’s wrath. Undoubtedly, they’ve also made the calculation that abdication will also be more lucrative for them.

We know that’s the call Jeff Bezos made when he broke with the paper’s 36-year tradition of endorsing a candidate for the presidency. Protecting his multi-billion dollar government contracts is more important to him than protecting democracy. Bezos’ grotesque tweet in the wake of the election results was just a more overt bending of the knee:

Big congratulations to our 45th and now 47th President on an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory. No nation has bigger opportunities. Wishing @realDonaldTrump all success in leading and uniting the America we all love.

Bezos hasn’t stopped there. The Post just announced that its annual Global Women’s Summit will feature Kellyanne Conway and Lara Trump. (But Meghan McCain is also a featured speaker, so who knows?)

Doubling down on his own  refusal to allow The L.A. Times to endorse Harris, Soon-Shiong went on Fox News to make it clear he wants his newspaper to have more right-wing contributors. He even name-checked CNN professional liar and gaslighter Scott Jennings as his ideal employee. 

The preemptive rolling over of much of the corporate media comes at the worst possible time. Donald’s transition, marked by disastrous cabinet picks and ethics breaches, show us that a second Trump administration is preparing for a full-on assault on our American institutions.

The Supreme Court and judges like Aileen Cannon have almost completely removed the guardrails of justice. The request of New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg to postpone indefinitely Donald’s sentencing on the 34 felony counts of which he was convicted by a jury of his peers in May of this year was yet another blow.

That essentially leaves us. So, we must not cede any ground. A considerable percentage of legacy media has become too corrupt or too indifferent to hold the line, therefore, the line is ours to hold.

Whether it’s Substack or YouTube channels, we must support independent media that pledges to speak truth to power and call for accountability at every turn—wherever we find it.

Here’s the link to Mary Trump Media’s YouTube channel—it is free to subscribe but your subscription is vitally important to our ability to grow.

 

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Cowardice and intimidation at the Washington Post and L.A. Times

Their billionaire owners are Trump enablers

Robert Reich Oct 25

Friends,

I apologize for bothering you again today, but this is important. Will Lewis, the chief executive of the Washington Post, announced today that the paper would not endorse a presidential candidate this year.

Why not? Lewis explained that the paper was “returning to its roots” when it didn’t endorse presidential candidates.

Lewis’s explanation raises more questions than it answers. The Post has made an endorsement for president in every election since 1976, when it supported the candidacy of Jimmy Carter.

Before the late 1970s, the Post did not usually make presidential endorsements, although it made an exception in 1952 to back Dwight D. Eisenhower. Yet it wasn’t until the 1970s — with its exposure of Richard Nixon’s illegal break-ins at the Watergate complex and subsequent cover-ups — that the Washington Post became a respected national newspaper with a reputation for holding the powerful accountable.

Why decide not endorse now, when America faces an election with potentially enormous consequences for democracy at home and abroad — with someone on the presidential ballot arguably far worse than Nixon?

Besides, the paper had endorsed Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016, and Joe Biden over Trump in 2020. What’s changed now?

The only credible explanation I can think of is that the Post’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, doesn’t want to raise the ire of Donald Trump, should Trump become president — especially now that Trump has declared his intention to punish his opponents.

Bezos’s other businesses have many federal government contracts, and his largest — Amazon — is the current target of a federal antitrust suit.

Assuming this is the explanation, it stinks. It undermines the credibility of one of our leading newspapers. It prevents The Washington Post from exercising its responsibility to tell the public where it stands on Trump and why.

The New York Times’s editorial board, which operates separately from the newsroom, endorsed Harris for president on Sept. 30, saying: “It is hard to imagine a candidate more unworthy to serve as president of the United States than Donald Trump.”

At least one member of the Washington Post’s opinions department, Robert Kagan, has resigned. The rest of the opinions department should do so as well. Immediately.

We are come to a juncture in America where, as in the first Gilded Age, enormous wealth is lodged in a very few hands — hands that are now either actively supporting Trump (such as Elon Musk) or afraid to come out against him for fear he’ll wreak vengeance on them if they do.

Trump has already seriously endangered American democracy. Those who are afraid to stand up to his bullying are only encouraging him to further assail democracy.

Marty Baron, the recent editor of The Post called the decision “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty. Baron predicted that Trump would view it as an invitation to continue to try to intimidate Bezos and others.

The Post’s move follows the decision by the billionaire owner of The Los Angeles Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, to block a planned presidential endorsement at that newspaper as well —resulting in the resignation of the head of the editorial board and two of its writers.

Mariel Garza, who resigned as editorials editor, said in an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review that the editorial board had planned to endorse Kamala Harris, but that Dr. Soon-Shiong informed the editorial board on Oct. 11 that The Times would not be publishing any presidential endorsement.

“I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not OK with us being silent,” Ms. Garza said. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up.” 

Exactly. And in dangerous times, dishonest and cowardly billionaires shouldn’t be able to abuse their power by preventing honest people from standing up.

This is how fascism takes root.