All Media Will Be Forced to Choose: Are you part of the pro-democracy movement, or will you accommodate authoritarianism

[ancianita]

Last edited Wed Mar 12, 2025, 12:26 PM - Edit history (2)

JONATHAN V. LAST

https://archive.ph/Yw0Tp

We can learn a lot about what’s wrong with our democracy by examining how the media has split into into three fairly distinct spheres.

There’s the state media—Fox, Newsmax, the Federalist, HughHewitt.com—which have become pure propaganda outlets.

There’s the “neutral” media—the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC News, CBS News, CNN—which believe that politics should be covered as a sport with reports about who’s up and who’s down. Extraordinary efforts are made by these institutions to present both sides of every question, even if it means presenting the case for illiberalism or platforming people who the media orgs know are lying to their audience.

Finally, there’s pro-democracy media—outlets which understand that America is experiencing an ongoing authoritarian attempt and that they must stand on the side of small-l liberalism.

But this segmentation is not sustainable. Three spheres will soon collapse into just two:
Media orgs that oppose authoritarianism and media orgs that accept it.

Techdirt is one of the OG technology blogs. As an institution, it stretches back to the era of Slashdot and Fark.com. Yesterday Techdirt’s founder and editor, Mike Masnick, published an extraordinary post, reluctantly announcing that his site was now, in addition to being about tech, a part of the pro-democracy media:

Over the last few weeks, I’ve had a few people reach out about our coverage these days . . . [and about] how much we were leaning into covering “politics.”

When the very institutions that made American innovation possible are being systematically dismantled, it’s not a “political” story anymore. It’s a story about whether the environment that enabled all the other stories we cover will continue to exist. . . .

We’re going to keep covering this story because, frankly, it’s the only story that matters right now, and one that not everyone manages to see clearly. The political press may not understand what’s happening (or may be too afraid to say it out loud), but those of us who’ve spent decades studying how technology and power interact? We see it and we can’t look away.

So, here’s the bottom line: when WaPo’s opinion pages are being gutted and tech CEOs are seeking pre-approval from authoritarians, the line between “tech coverage” and “saving democracy” has basically disappeared. It’s all the same thing.

I hope you’ll read Masnick’s entire post because what’s striking is that he said the obvious truth out loud: The dismantling of democracy is the only story in America at this moment.

Wired magazine has also been forced to become a pro-democracy organization. Where Wired used to run fawning articles about the founder class alongside best-gadget listicles, it has become a crucial hub of reporting on the Trump administration’s dismantling of democracy.

Why have these technology publications been so quick to understand reality? Here’s Masnick’s explanation:

It’s difficult to explain how much it matters that we’ve seen this movie before...
When you’ve spent years watching how some tech bros break the rules in pursuit of personal and economic power at the expense of safety and user protections, all while wrapping themselves in the flag of “innovation,” you get pretty good at spotting the pattern. . . .

One of the craziest bits about covering the systematic dismantling of democracy is this: the people doing the dismantling frequently tell you exactly what they’re going to do. They’re almost proud of it. They just wrap it in language that makes it sound like the opposite. (Remember when Musk said he was buying Twitter to protect free speech? And then banned journalists and sued researchers for calling out his nonsense? Same playbook.) . . .

If you do not recognize that mass destruction of fundamental concepts of democracy and the US Constitution happening right now, you are either willfully ignorant or just plain stupid. I can’t put it any clearer than that.

It is because these tech outlets have specialized knowledge—and because they don’t have to relationships with people in politics to tend to—that they are able to see clearly what is happening and are willing to raise their voices against it.

We have seen the exact same thing with some specialized legal publications. Lawfare and JustSecurity.org were once destination sites for law nerds. Today they have become two of the most essential media organizations in America.

Why? Because since these people specialize in the law they know exactly how serious Trump’s attack on the rule of law is—and how dangerous it is.

Like Techdirt and Wired, serious people in the legal space are being radicalized—democracypilled?—because they understand that this isn’t a game and that the liberal press does not have an obligation to present illiberalism as a point of view worthy of consideration.

The people in pro-democracy media understand that liberalism has a moral obligation to take its own side.

Why doesn’t the “unbiased media” have the same clarity of vision as Techdirt?

Lots of reasons. Some financial. Some social. Some habitual.

Journalists who have spent their lives reporting on technology or legal affairs can be shocked by the state of our politics. Someone who has spent a career marinating in the great game of political intrigue will be harder to shock; he is the frog in the pot.

But ultimately the question of “why” doesn’t matter.
The only question that matters is what these institutions will do when they are eventually forced to pick a side. Because that will happen. It always happens. Authoritarianism requires it.

Jeff Bezos understands this, which is why he’s moved the Washington Post’s institutional priorities to be more accommodating.
CBS and ABC seem to understand this, which is why their corporate parents are looking to settle frivolous lawsuits favorably for Trump.
CNN must understand this—what other explanation is there for handing their air over to Scott Jennings?

Never forget JVL’s Law: Any person or institution not explicitly anti-Trump will become a tool for authoritarianism eventually.

... when the chips are down, very few large media institutions will be willing to become explicitly anti-Trump.
And so they will become his tools. Some more useful than others, of course. But tools all the same.

In the meantime, we’re going to need to support and build these pro-democracy media outlets, and not just “ordinary” political media, like The Bulwark and the Atlantic, but a constellation of new media ventures, too.

And those of us in this media space will need to show solidarity with one another.
When the authoritarians go after one of us, we should understand it to be an attack on all of us.

That’s how I roll. And I hope you’ll be with me.


Thanks, Bulwark. You finally get.