New York Times shows how media have failed American democracy

Dr. The New York Times’ timid enlightenment reveals how the American media helped pave Trump’s path to authoritarianism, writes Victoria Fielding.

ON OCTOBER 31st, hidden in opinion pages New York Timesreaders were finally able to find America’s newspaper on record admitting: surprise surprise – Minister Donald Trump He has some authoritarian tendencies that could be a bit of a problem for American democracy.

It’s like the police showing up days after the robber ransacked your home and sold all your possessions. New York Times opinion editors tentatively asked a polite question: Are we losing our democracy?

Yes, of course you are. One of the reasons for this is that this article was written not before Trump was elected, but ten months after he began his authoritarian push.

It is also clear from the moderate language and temporal framework that the authors of this article fear the consequences of calling out Trump’s authoritarianism. This fear means that the paper’s next course will probably be unworkable.

New York TimesLike nearly every other mainstream news outlet, it will almost certainly continue to contribute to America’s slide toward democratic authoritarianism, instead of doing what it should have been doing all along: vociferously opposing it.

Historians might look back at this piece’s laundry list of authoritarian alarm bells and wonder – rightfully so – why all the individual points were reported as if they were a perfectly normal occurrence in a democracy, to the point that they were brought up to illustrate how Trump was, lo and behold, using an authoritarian playbook.

The list is interesting, but none of it is new information.

Trump’s undermining of American democracy is described as follows:

stifling dissent and speech;
persecuting political opponents;
bypassing the legislature;
using the military for internal control;
challenging the courts;
declaring a national emergency under false pretenses;
denigrating marginalized groups;
controlling information and news media;
trying to take over universities;
creating an authoritarian cult of personality;
using power for personal gain; And
Manipulating the law to stay in power.

Doing one of the things Trump has consistently done since the first day of his second presidency and threatened to do long before that, giving clear and consistent warnings of what was to come, should have raised all the red flags and alarm bells in the newspapers. New York Times.

But not until Trump does All Talking about this kind of thing every day for ten months warrants a cautious opinion piece saying, “Hey, wait, wait, maybe we’re losing our democracy.”

While all this is going on, newspapers are reporting extensively on Trump’s presidency. New York Times He can be described as empty-mouthed, desperate to give Trump the benefit of the doubt, and restrained in his criticism of Trump’s openly anti-democratic agenda. And we are always ready to publish verbatim what Trump said or correct his words. garbled mess to make sense — as if they were Trump’s press secretary rather than his gatekeeper.

There isn’t enough space here to criticize the American news media’s contributions to Trump’s undermining of American democracy, so I’ll focus on two in particular that are exemplified in this too-little-too-late affair. New York Times editorial

First, not enough attention is paid to Trump’s relationship with the American media. The sixth point of the claims in the list is, ‘Trump controls information and news media’.

This section starts like this:

‘Democratic governments value accurate information as a guide to decision-making. Authoritarians try to suppress inconvenient truths.’

In addition to firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and ending climate data collection, Trump ‘Steps to control media’. This includes forcing tiktok He fell into the hands of his allies by suing news organizations such as. Wall StreetJournal And New York Times and receiving millions of dollars in payments ABC, extraordinary, YouTube And Meta To figure out what the part is defined as ‘Unfounded allegations’ He said Trump was not treated fairly.

It is true that Trump victimizes the media in order to subjugate them, weakening their ability to serve as guardrails for democracy. But what the article conveniently fails to mention is that much of the American media (mainstream and social media) does not need to be suppressed by Trump because they are already his allies.

It tells this New York Times I didn’t mention how Washington Post defended Trump’s destruction of the East Wing of the White House, which coincidentally was owned by a billionaire Jeff BezosHe was among the donors who helped finance the lavish ballroom Trump built on the ruins.

They also didn’t mention that it is one of the largest social media platforms in the world. XOwned by billionaire Trump ally and megadonor Elon Musk. They also didn’t mention the billionaire owner of Meta. Mark Zuckerberg to have aligned himself With Trump.

If all this elephant in the room wasn’t enough, the media’s attempt to claim Trump as a victim, when in fact much of the media was collaborator and ally, the editorial of course made no mention of the Murdoch media’s long-term vital support for Trump.

Without echo chamber Fox NewsThere would be no generation of American voters systematically fed manipulative and often false information supporting Trump under the guise of “journalism,” while also being told not to trust anything they see on any media channel other than Fox News. It is no exaggeration to say that without Fox News there would be no MAGA movement.

As for Trump’s allies in the media and manipulation of the masses, there is one more notable exception to the description of Trump’s authoritarian playbook: Trump’s prolific lies, his endless lies, his manipulation of reality, his undermining of facts, his total and unadulterated nonsense about everything, and of course his media friend’s defense and contribution to those lies.

In fact, when you examine the list of 12 anti-democratic concerns, none of them would be possible without the collective lies of the Trump movement; It’s a movement that Trump’s allies in the media are part of. The Trump movement lies about marginalized people turning their supporters against them. They lie and deny Trump’s corruption even though we can all see it with our own eyes. They make things up to persecute political opponents, justify the unfair use of the military in domestic cities, and explain the killing of non-American citizens on boats.

Even as the writers come close to saying that Trump is lying, they come away from it. This is despite Trump suppressing dissent and speech to prevent people from criticizing him, including criticizing his lies. The article even acknowledges that Trump declared a national emergency “under false pretenses.” What are false claims other than lies – bald-faced, endless, authoritarian lies?

Democracy is killed by the loss of truth. In other words, authoritarianism is based on deception. Deception often uncritically platformed New York Times.

These glaring omissions in this piece go a long way to explaining why New York Times He will not suddenly wake up and realize that he is unable to defend democracy in the face of Trump’s authoritarian oppression. In fact, when you look closely at the byline, the newspaper carefully notes that the article was written by: ‘editorial board’who ‘A group of opinion journalists whose views are shaped by expertise, research, debate and some long-held values. It is separate from the newsroom..

It is separate from the newsroom. And even then, it’s still very scary to call a bossy rower a proper paddle.