A Free Press

The First Amendment says – “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press …” What happens when Congress doesn’t do anything to abridge the freedom of the press, but the press does it to themselves? Maybe out of fear, maybe for profit, or perhaps other reasons we aren’t aware of.

What happens when the press reins in their staff? Is that censorship? If they don’t care or don’t have the courage to publish something, then what? Where does that leave the rest of us? So many questions as we start the year 2025.

This has, of course, been coming for a while. The pundit/humorist Andy Borowitz got it right when he recently said, “Anticipatory obedience to fascism has risen ominously in recent months.”  He was referring to several acts, starting with the Los Angeles Times and the Jeff Bezos owned Washington Post killing editorial page endorsements of Kamala Harris prior to the election. Next, Disney gave Trump $15M, instead of fighting his defamation claim against ABC in court. For both Disney and Trump, $15M is chump change, but it set a precedent. I could mention the weasels, Joe and Mika, making their groveling post-election trip to Mar-a-Lago, but since they are weasels, I do not think they really count anyway. 

What set off the most recent wave of “Free Press” concerns? The Washington Post killed a cartoon by Pulitzer Prize winner, Ann Telnaes. Her crime? Her cartoon showed Bezos, Disney and other billionaires bowing in supplication before Mr Trump. Toooooooo controversial these days, I guess. Telnaes resigned in protest from the Post.

I follow many news sources, both traditional and newer from both the left and the right. This includes The Washington Post, the New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal among the mainstream media. Here locally, I have subscriptions with our local papers, as well as the Virginia Political Newsletter from Virginia Scope, which covers all things political in Virginia. I subscribe to Lucian Truscott and “The Status Kuo” on the left, and also receive “The Righting”, an email distribution which gives a daily synopsis of headlines from news sources on the right – everything from the Wall Street Journal and Washington Times, to neo-Nazi publications. I also have Facebook, X, BlueSky, YouTube and TikTok accounts and receive feeds from those as well. I am a bit of a news junkie I suppose, although I generally avoid TV news and the talking heads. Having that many sources, isn’t a free press an obvious and easy thing?

James Carville, he of the “It’s the economy, Stupid!” fame, recently said this about our changing news environment and what the future holds:

“I am an 80-year-old man and can see clearly that we are barreling toward a nontraditional and decentralized media environment. Podcasts are the new print newspapers and magazines. Social platforms are a social conscience. And influencers are digital stewards of that conscience.” 

What he did not talk about was self-censorship, censorship, or restrictions on a free press. I guess “social conscience” and influencers who are our “digital stewards” suffice in his world and solve the problem. It worries me. 

Borowitz’s “anticipatory obedience” is the real issue. How many of our news sources will work to flatter Mr. Trump or work to not offend Mr. Trump, all to either curry favor, or at least not anger the new administration and draw its ire?  Certainly Bezos is a flagrant example. His recent million-dollar donation to the Trump camp did nothing to change people’s mind about his motives. Profit is a golden idol for many.

For a lot of us, what makes it particularly egregious with the Post is that this is the same newspaper which took on Nixon and his gang of thugs fifty years ago with their Watergate and Pentagon Papers reporting and editorial views. My, how the mighty have lowered themselves.

Some of my friends feel there is a difference between restricting editorial content versus restricting actual news content. That is, as long as sources faithfully report the actual news, it’s not really restricting a free press. In their view, editorial content has always had some restrictions on it, and the recent actions are just an extension, albeit a sad one, of that. 

This is a very slippery slope. In my view, with the changing news environment Mr. Carville so aptly describes, the lines between news and editorial content continue to disappear. Influencers are not reporters. They are influencers, and everything that word implies. Meta’s decision to remove “fact checking” from their platforms and rely on users to add corrections or notes to posts is the most recent example of the blurring of lines. Gee, do we think there was any “anticipatory obedience” on Zuckerberg’s part with his decision? And, back to the weasels Joe and Mika – are they influencers?

I recently read the novel “Pereira Declares”, by Antonio Tabucchi. Written in 1994, the story is set in the late 1930s in Salazar’s semi-fascist Portugal. It tells the story of Pereira, the editor of the Culture Section of a weekly newspaper in Lisbon. He studiously avoids politics in both his newspaper editing and his personal life, until a series of activities force him to grow a conscience and become increasingly involved. By the end of the book, he is the anti-Bezos. For me, it was an amazingly relevant book, considering what is currently happening here in America.

 

We will see what surprises our near-term future holds for us over the next year or two. What I really want to know is if those parts of the press providing us “news” will continue to kowtow to Mr Trump, especially the craven capitalists such as Bezos and Zuckerberg? Or, like Pereira, will they grow a conscience and ensure a free press remains free and unfettered? In a capitalist world, what is the price of freedom in 2025? Maybe I’m wrong, but I think we already know the answer. 

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Addendum:

• You can learn more about Ann Telnaes and why she quit the Washington Post here: Ann Telnaes. 
• If you have the time, I recommend you give “Pereira Declares” a read. It is a slim book that makes you think on multiple levels. 
• I did not talk at all about net neutrality in this blog, although it is tangentially related. It is something you should read up on, especially considering recent court decisions.