As divisive as politics have become in this country, there is one thing upon which most people agree: The media sucks.
We’ve heard it all: The New York Times online is just a word puzzle page. Legacy media is dying. Online viewing on news sites is down. Reporters are hacks. Editors are worse and about the only institution trusted less than the media is Congress – thanks to Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Jim Jordan and James Comer among others.
While all of this is to some extent true, you have to wonder why we got there. Did big media bosses suddenly decide they’d be shills for no reason? Or was there something else involved?
I’ll cut to the chase: Politicians from all walks of life denigrate journalists. They may cheer for a single report they agree with, but will turn and lambast the same reporter or publication when they do not. It is politicians, particularly every president since Ronald Reagan, who are responsible for the decline of the press.
Last week in the White House briefing room, the Biden administration rallied for Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter charged in Russia with espionage, who has spent a year in prison because he did his job in Putin’s Russia. The AP reported in January there are more than 300 journalists jailed around the world for simply doing their job.
Across the globe, more and more, reporters are being jailed and killed. We are called the “Fake Media”, propagandists and idiots. On the left, we are called enablers who engage in false equivalency. From the right, we are called libtards, communists, fascists and the “mainstream liberal media.”
In the meantime, various media organizations have reported that at least 77 members of the press have died trying to cover the war in Gaza since it began last October.
Those are cases of literally shooting the messenger. Metaphorically, our audience long ago settled on blaming us for the news they did not like. Members of governments do this and get people questioning reality. Their goal is deflection and deception. They want you to blame us, so you don’t call them into question. Every government does it. Some do it better than others.
Russia is great at this. So is North Korea and so is every tinhorn dictator and second-class banana republic on the planet. But one country has led the way. One country has provided the blueprint for everything done across the globe to journalists: The United States.
I take no joy in saying it, but the United States is devolving into a pettiness unseen in my lifetime. The lack of education and the horrible state of journalism is to blame. Ronald Reagan and every president since, has contributed to our demise.
Reporters Without Borders ranks the U.S. 45th among all nations for a free press. We are a troubled democracy. There are nearly three times the number of people on this planet as on the day I was born and a quarter of a number of reporters. Media consolidation created this problem. Six companies now own more than 90 percent of what you see, read or hear. Our federal government, beginning with Reagan, made media consolidation possible with the same logic that brought us trickle down economics. Neither has worked. Both are detrimental to the body politic.
Computers aren’t to blame. The Internet isn’t to blame. Poor management, chain-store marketing and massive layoffs due to what our government has done to journalism – those are the causes of our problem.
While the current presidential administration has often cheered the Free Press from the podium of the Brady Briefing Room, and while President Joe Biden himself has many times said he supports us, he has also contributed to our demise. Do not misunderstand me. This isn’t a false equivalence. This is a fact. The two presidents who’ve contributed most to the decline of journalism are Ronald Reagan and The Orange Don – with Trump being by far the worst.
But even as Biden continues to speak about busting up monopolies, not once has he indicated the need to do so when it comes to newspapers, television, radio or social media. And while Biden asks us to remember Gershkovich, who is remembering Julian Assange? Russia has charged Gershkovich with espionage. The American government has charged Assange for nearly the same thing – and in less than a week he’ll have been in prison for five years without ever coming to trial.
Assange went to prison for actions former Attorney General Eric Holder said were similar to those taken when the New York Times and the Washington Post published the Pentagon Papers. Publishing the secrets of government is what we should be in the business of doing. Today, we publish swill because we cannot get anything better – lest we risk going to prison.
That’s what Assange did. The Obama administration, of which Biden was a part, decided not to prosecute Assange for what he did. The lunatic Trump changed that.Nothing is more indicative of the need to make sure that Donald Trump never gets back in office than what his weaponized Department of Justice did to Assange.
“People understand what Julian did,” his brother Gabriel told me last week. “He published information that embarrassed the U.S. government. They decided to get even with him.”
Human Rights Watch noted the importance of the Assange case when it first came to light nearly 15 years ago. "This is a signature moment for freedom of expression and information in both the US and abroad," said Dinah PoKempner, general counsel at Human Rights Watch. "Prosecuting WikiLeaks for publishing leaked documents would set a terrible precedent that will be eagerly grasped by other governments, particularly those with a record of trying to muzzle legitimate political reporting."
The DOJ under Donald Trump pursued Assange. That was predictable after Trump decided to tear down and undo everything done during the Obama administration. But Assange has spent more time in prison under the Biden administration than he did during the Trump administration. He sits in a dank cell in England while he fights extradition to the U.S. His brother said that is having a serious effect on him. “He’s 52, but he looks much older,” his brother said after last visiting him.
After visiting Assange in prison on 9 May 2019, Nils Melzer, the United Nations special rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, concluded that "in addition to physical ailments, Mr Assange showed all symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture, including extreme stress, chronic anxiety and intense psychological trauma,” as reported in Wikipedia.
“It is a slow torture. He’s never held his youngest son,” his brother explained. “He’s spent five years in prison for doing the job of a reporter.”
If it’s all that’s lost on you, that is understandable. We are lost in a world of headlines from stories like “I am a sociopath and here’s what I want you to know,” to “What John Lennon said about Elvis,” and “Ten of the best Sci-Fi movies on Netflix this month”. It’s either pap, old crap or sap meant to promote pap and crap.
What Assange did is what American journalism used to do and often no longer does. It’s not a coincidence that he’s not from this country, most reporters still left in this business from this country are bought and sold by the large companies that own them.
Whatever else you think of Assange, his actions, and what he’s being prosecuted for, were acts of journalism that used to be commonplace and are now extinct. The U.S. government hounds him because at the end of the day, our government doesn’t want its dirty little or big secrets aired. The Australian parliament, several members of Congress, the German Chancellor and others across the world have pleaded with the U.S. government to drop its case against him.
I’ve asked repeatedly, many times, for a statement from the DOJ about the case. I’ve never received an answer. The White House merely refers you to the DOJ. “It’s up to the attorney general to decide,” we’re always told.
In the meantime, freedom suffers.
Every conspiracy theory gains ground with our government’s action against Assange and its lack of transparency with the public – whether a conspiracy actually exists or not. Every scream of “Deep State” gets traction due to the same. And more importantly, our government, as many have pointed out, is providing the template by which authoritarians around the world justify their actions against truth-seekers and fact-tellers.
With each passing day that Assange spends in prison, it should be clear to everyone – free speech is dying. We live in a world of rising authoritarianism. If Joe Biden cares about Free Speech and the press as much as he claims (we all know Trump doesn’t care and in fact wants to eliminate any criticism against him) then he should speak out and urge Merrick Garland to drop the case against Julian Assange.
Don’t expect that to happen before the election, unless it becomes clear that a high-profile trial of Assange during the election season would hurt Biden’s chances at re-election. Of course, the government could also drag its feet and keep Assange from his family until after the election so the story gets little or no attention from corporate media.
That is how free speech, and perhaps Julian Assange, will die; misunderstood, mostly forgotten, loathed and feared.
It’s all about controlling the message.
