|
Dear friend,
It didn't take long for the new team at CBS to remind us that corporate ownership of the news is bad for journalism and bad for democracy.
New editor Bari Weiss pulled a fully vetted 60 Minutes story critical of Trump administration gulags right at a moment when David Ellison, her boss and the new owner of CBS, is courting White House approval for his bid to purchase Warner Brothers.
Still, you might ask, what does it mean to be independent when you don't have the reach of a popular network program or the platform of a daily newspaper.
The answer goes to the heart of the protections of the First Amendment and what it means to live in a free society. Consider two articles currently at washingtonspectator.org:
One is an interview with the war crimes prosecutor Reed Brody, who distills Trump's concocted rationale for intervention against Venezuela this way:
"President Trump has taken a metaphor—the war on drugs—and tried to convert it into an actual war. But it’s not a war, any more than a war on cancer would allow you to bomb a cigarette factory or a war on disinformation would allow Trump to bomb the BBC."
The other is an analysis from Jonathan Winer, who links Trump's designation of fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction with his designation of domestic dissent as a form of terrorism.
"Taken together, these developments reveal not a series of discrete policy choices, but a governing theory: that presidential will substitutes for law; that national security absorbs criminal justice; and that the distinction between enemies abroad and enemies within is not a line to be respected, but a line to be erased."
Our focus in the coming year will be on holding this rogue administration and its anti-democratic allies accountable. We're reaching out to ask if you would consider making a year-end tax-deductible contribution in support of our ongoing work.
|
