Failure to hold Trump accountable will cause the demise of the free press
I have been thinking of this diary for months. Even before November 8 I had this vision in my head of what the media was doing. After the Democratic convention and post-pussygate, Hillary looked like she was going to win in a landslide. I had hopes of retaking the Senate and making a big dent in the House. And then the media changed. The MSM wanted a horse race for the ratings and the revenue. And maybe in any other year with any other candidate, the consequences would not have been so great. The media focused on f*ing emails rather than all of the issues with trump. False equivalences abounded about the Trump Foundation and the Clinton Foundation. And on and on it went ad nausea.
But through it all, as both trump’s authoritarian streak showed up more and more and the reports of his admiration for Putin, Kim Jong Un and other dictators grew, I couldn’t help but wonder where the media’s sense of self-preservation was. By giving trump billions of dollars in free publicity, they were in effect, beginning the process of eating their own tails.
Students of history and authoritarian leaders have a plethora of examples as to what happens to the press. Journalists critical of those regimes can and usually are killed or jailed. So it’s literally the very lives of the press that have now been put at risk, ironically enough, because most of them failed to do their jobs.
By the time the election results came in, the media was almost halfway through it’s tail. Days before the inauguration and the media is, as the poor snake above represents, in my belief, at a proverbial crossroads half way up the snake and without immediate intervention, it will die.
However, there is still hope. Immediate veterinary care can save a snake in this condition but in the case of the media, they will have a far harder choice to make. And I would argue, the owners of the media have as much to lose as trump turns more people against them, they will suffer financially. If trump tries taking over and having “state media” with “ministers of propaganda” (aka Kelleyann) then even the executives who tried to play nice will lose everything anyway.
So the choice that has to be made is whether to legitimize trump, continue to make false equivalencies, fail to hold trump, his cabinet and the republicans to account for ethics, conflicts of interest, the selling out of America to the highest bidder, etc. In doing so, they may temporarily get more ratings but ultimately consume themselves when trump goes full tyrant.
The other choice is to become part of the resistance. The more the media holds trump, his children, his cabinet, his advisors and the republicans accountable, the less likely tyranny will be allowed to thrive. It’s only in the darkness of normalization that the true threat to ending America’s greatness exists. The more light that's shone on every thing that trump does, the better chance we all have at surviving this.
Some might argue that an individual reporter’s self-interest should be to support trump, get payoffs and print nice stories to avoid his petulant temper tantrums and vindictive wrath. Based on trump’s distrust I believe only a select few reporters would be allowed into his inner circle so I think all journalists need to fear how long cowing to him would prevent their demise.
I fear there is a point of no-return that the press has in this. If the press isn’t holding him and his followers accountable, our free press will be lost and so will our democracy.
It’s their choice. They can either keep eating and die, or change tactics. I’m hoping self-preservation kicks in and they follow the journalism lead of Edward R. Murrow and expose this coup for what it truly is.
Now...for some good Murrow quotes to inspire you.
“Good night and good luck” — ERM
