Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.—Yale historian Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny
Once upon a time, in a world that feels so very far away, stories of courage by the reporters, editors and publisher at The Washington Postinspired a generation of young people to believe that journalism was a way—and maybe the best way—to change the world for good.
The pivotal scene in 1976′s All The President’s Men—which burnished both the facts and some legend about the Post, star reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and their role in the Watergate scandal that took down Richard Nixon—takes place in the dead of night on the pitch-black lawn of top editor Ben Bradlee. The two journalists, fearful they are being bugged, relay their source Deep Throat’s warning that “people’s lives are in danger, maybe even ours.”
The cowardly Bezos can spend billions to erect a manmade projectile that sends him into space, but he’ll never have the cojones of a Katharine Graham.
In a famous monologue, Bradlee (played by Jason Robards, who won an Oscar) tells Woodward and Bernstein to keep reporting the story, that “nothing’s riding on this except the First Amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press, and maybe the future of the country,” adding his trademarked newsroom cynicism, “not that any of that matters.”
Yet perhaps an even more revealing scene occurs earlier, when Nixon’s campaign manager John Mitchell—called by the reporters for his comment on a damning article—instead issues a warning to the Post’s trailblazing publisher, saying “Katie Graham’s going to get her [crude word for breast] caught in a big fat wringer if that’s published.” Katharine Graham’s Post had a lot at stake—federal regulators could strip her company’s lucrative TV licenses—yet both the story and the quote, minus the T-word, were published and the Post won a Pulitzer Prize for its relentless pursuit of Watergate.
These are the stories that journalists tell ourselves in order to live—so much so that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos felt compelled when he bought the Post from Graham’s heirs in 2013 to invoke them to reassure a wary newsroom that he would never diminish the Post’s reputation for courageous journalism. The $200 billion man wrote in a letter to staffers: “While I hope no one ever threatens to put one of my body parts through a wringer, if they do, thanks to Mrs. Graham’s example, I’ll be ready.”
Bezos was lying.
On Friday, the world’s third-richest person, his scandal-scarred British publisher Will Lewis, and the iconic newspaper they control stunned both the American body politic and the media world by spiking their editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris for president. The move came just days ahead of an election defined by her rival Donald Trump’s increasing threats to impose a tyrannical form of government with mass deportation camps and arrests for his growing enemies list, including journalists.
Lewis’ utterly incoherent defense of the decision—ending a tradition of presidential endorsements the Post launched in 1976, the same year that All The President’s Men was released—did nothing to quell the rampant, informed speculation that his boss Bezos has killed the already-drafted editorial out of fear a revenge-minded Trump 47 could terminate the billionaire’s extensive business dealings with the federal government. It seemed all too fitting that Trump was in Austin meeting executives of Bezos’ space venture, Blue Horizon, at the same time as the endorsement kibosh.
If this looks like the latest saga of open corruption in a nation that’s become a billionaire kleptocracy, it is—but this moment is also so much more than that. America is witnessing the raw power of dictatorship some nine days before voters even decide if that will truly be our future path. The cowardly Bezos can spend billions to erect a manmade projectile that sends him into space, but he’ll never have the cojones of a Katharine Graham. He is obeying fascism in advance, and he is not alone.
Three thousand miles west, Bezos’ fellow billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong—owner of the Los Angeles Times since 2018—pulled essentially the same maneuver in killing his editorial board’s endorsement of Harris that had been in the works for weeks, and which followed months of editorials warning of the authoritarian dangers of a Trump presidency. Observers noted that Soon-Shiong is a longtime close friend to—you guessed it—another billionaire, Elon Musk, who is the world’s richest man and has thrown all his time and considerable dollars into getting Trump elected. (Soon-Shiong’s daughter insists the reason was both candidates’ failure to address the carnage in Gaza.)
While the moral center of the journalistic universe seemed to be collapsing, Trump told a rally in Tempe, Arizona that the media is “the enemy of the people, they are. I’ve been asked not to say it, I don’t want to say it. They’re the enemy of the people.” The Republican’s replay of this ominous language echoing dictators of the 1930s was quickly followed by a new threat to create licensing woes for CBS because Trump didn’t like its editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Harris, and a lengthy post on Truth Social threatening to prosecute his enemies.
The message here is clear. The cowardice of the news organizations controlled by Bezos and Soon-Shiong has already taught Trump—in the words of Yale’s Snyder, a leading U.S. expert on fascism—what power can do, and if he prevails in next week’s election, he plans to bring that hammer down in full force. What happened at the Post and the LA Times was a stunning betrayal of journalism’s moral values, but in a strange way the papers did perform a public service: showing American voters what life under a dictator would feel like.
The endorsement cancellations came with a heaping side order of nuance. One irony, as some observers pointed out, is that the expected endorsements of Harris from both editorial boards would have been a tiny blip on the political radar, compared to the earthquake of the owners’ interference. What’s more, there’s an intellectual argument—I once made it myself in a long-vanished blog post—that newspapers shouldn’t endorse candidates. If the Post or Times had announced such a decision a year ago—and not under the heat of the election’s final days, under pressure from self-interested billionaires—there’d be little controversy.
But these reversals, coming now and coming from the poisoned heart of American oligarchy, have instead confirmed the worst fears among an anxiety-wracked electorate that the core institutions that once saved U.S. democracy under the life-or-death pressures of Watergate—the Supreme Court, Congress, and an aggressive media—have morally imploded into empty shells.
Even worse, readers’ sudden sense of betrayal seems to have greatly accelerated the already steep decline of public trust in American journalism, with reports that both the Post and the LA Times have been bombarded with thousands of canceled subscriptions. Some have switched to news organizations like The Philadelphia Inquirer, which published a long and compelling endorsement of Harris at almost the exact moment the Post’s capitulation went public. But many readers will be lost for good. This will create even more layoffs, which will lead to even less accountability journalism in a crumbling democracy, which will create even more cynicism—the tainted gasoline that fuels autocracy.
It’s also critical to note that this fish stinks mainly from the head. The vast majority of working journalists—most of whom weren’t born yet when Woodward and Bernstein stood on Bradlee’s lawn—are just as outraged as their readers frantically hitting the “cancel my subscription” button. Scores of reporters, columnists, and others in the two newsrooms have bravely condemned their bosses’ decisions in online posts and in open letters. The editorial-page editor of the LA Times, Mariel Garza, resigned in protest—despite the horrendous journalism job market—and at least two other colleagues have joined her.
“I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent,” Garza told Columbia Journalism Review. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.” With the election little more than a week away, I hope that the brave actions of Garza and the words of those who are speaking out—a growing list that includes Woodward and Bernstein themselves—will be the ultimate takeaway, and not the craven corruption of a little man like Bezos.
This early sneak preview of what dictatorship actually looks like is also providing the most important lesson we could have right now, which is how to not obey in advance but stand up against strongmen and bullies. How all of us respond over the coming days and weeks will decide the fate of the First Amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press, and maybe the future of the country.
And if any of that matters.
