Should Journalists Be Part of the Resistance? [View all]

[babylonsister]

https://www.motherjones.com/media/2019/11/should-journalists-be-part-of-the-resistance/

Should Journalists Be Part of the Resistance?
An open letter (sort of) to the editor of the New York Times.
Monika Bauerlein
November 27, 2019


Over the past month or so, the New York Times’ executive editor, Dean Baquet, has been giving a handful of interviews about the role of journalism in general, and the New York Times in particular. One of these, with the BBC, briefly had our ears burning. “I make it very clear when I hire, I make it very clear when I talk to the staff, I’ve said it repeatedly, that we are not supposed to be the leaders of the resistance to Donald Trump,” Baquet said. “That is an untenable, nonjournalistic, immoral position for the New York Times. If I was the editor of Mother Jones, I would say otherwise.”

snip//

The fundamental mistake that conventional Washington journalism has made over the past four years is to imagine all of politics as two-dimensional—Democrat to Republican, left to right, with far too little attention to the many other fault lines that run through, across, and at a diagonal to that distinction. One of the most important of these other fault lines is the one between those who stand for democracy, with a small d, and those who abet authoritarianism and minority rule.

In that battle, journalists can’t just dispassionately chronicle two equally valid “sides.” A free press needs (and is needed by) lowercase-d democracy. We can’t exist without it.

The Times can’t and shouldn’t be part of a capital-R, partisan Resistance, but it better damn well be part of the lowercase-r resistance against authoritarianism and illiberalism. And if leaders like Baquet are worried about taking sides against the latter, they are failing (not to get grandiose, but dammit, it’s Defcon One here) their sacred mission.

This is journalism’s fight, but it’s not just ours. The people who scream “fake news” when we report the truth are the same people who attack anyone who dares to speak out online, women and people of color most of all. They literally raise money to go after individual journalists and their families. They file lawsuits against citizen activists and make local news anchors read robo-scripts. Standing up to that is not about partisanship. It’s about speaking truth to power and defending the freedom that allows us to do so.

That’s our case. But now it’s time for yours.