When fascists come for the news outlets that enabled them

The NY Times and ABC News find that appeasement doesn’t work

Federal agents went to New York Times reporters’ homes last week to deliver subpoenas in their investigation of news coverage that displeased the Trump regime.

This is bad news for both journalism and democracy. But it’s entirely predictable. News outlets that minimize and normalize Republican authoritarianism will eventually find it at their doorstep.

The NYT has been simultaneously great and terrible in its coverage of MAGA. Its investigative reporters have often exposed individual abuses, but its news editors have failed to shape a coherent warning about the broader threat to our freedom. Too often, they’ve been clueless or trivializing.

When Donald Trump called for “termination” of the Constitution, the NYT put the story on Page 13. When he lied about immigration and the economy in an address to Congress, the NYT praised his “game show flair.” When he vowed to take back the Panama Canal by force, the NYT called it a desire ”to expand America’s footprint.” When he showed that his brain was broken by bizarrely swaying to music at a campaign rally for 39 minutes, it was merely an “improvisational departure.”

During the 2024 presidential campaign, NYT Executive Editor Joe Kahn said the survival of democracy was not a top priority in the Times’ coverage:

It’s our job to cover the full range of issues that people have. At the moment, democracy is one of them. But it’s not the top one — immigration happens to be the top [of polls], and the economy and inflation is the second.

The NYT seemed to take civil liberties more seriously last week after receiving subpoenas over its coverage of problems with Qatar’s “gift” of a new Air Force One to Trump. The regime’s investigation is “a brazen act” that “should shock the conscience of any American,” the NYT said.

Of course, the NYT isn’t the only mainstream outlet that once thought it could ride out the fascist movement without getting confrontational with the fascists. Some journalists at legacy news organizations act as if they live in a very safe space. They’re part of the power structure. They have lawyers and researchers and expense accounts and multiple layers of editors to keep them out of trouble. Nothing bad could happen to them, right?

ABC News may have thought it was protecting itself by settling a Trump lawsuit for $15 million over host George Stephanopoulos’ comments that Trump had been “found liable for rape” in the E. Jean Carroll case. Technically, under New York law, it was sexual abuse, not rape, even though a judge in the case said it would be considered rape in “common modern parlance.” ABC had a good chance of winning the lawsuit because Trump is a public figure and would have had to prove Stephanopoulos knowingly made a false statement.

Instead, ABC surrendered, which encouraged Trump to sue other media outlets. Stephanopoulos signed a new contract and the network moved on.

But for tyrants, there’s never enough acquiescence.

ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel often mocks Trump on his late-night show, and Trump’s hatchet man at the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, went after Kimmel last September. Carr’s FCC can’t shut down networks, but it does have the power to launch investigations and pull the licenses of network-owned local affiliate stations.

Seizing on Kimmel’s comments after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Carr made his threat:

We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct to take action on Kimmel or, you know, there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.

Nexstar and Sinclair, two major local TV chains, pulled Kimmel’s show, and then ABC suspended him. But the regime’s heavy hand caused a major stink – and inspired calls for a boycott of Disney, ABC’s parent company. The bid to silence Kimmel fell apart, and he went back on the air.

Now Trump and Carr are going after ABC’s “The View,” whose hosts have long irritated the regime. Carr’s FCC is questioning the show’s claim that it qualifies as a news show exempt from “equal time” rules. As ABC puts it, “the FCC wants to control who is allowed to appear on the show.”

This time, ABC is fighting back, launching an ad campaign urging viewers to submit comments to the FCC. Tens of thousands have done so.

Better late than never, ABC. It’s well past time for other legacy outlets to defend the 1st Amendment and themselves. But so many of them continue to betray their duty to a free society.

We’ll soon see another demonstration of that subservience with the redo of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on July 24, featuring Trump. You’ll recall that a gunman interrupted the event in April, and the White House Correspondents’ Association vowed to reschedule the dinner in cooperation with the nation’s most prominent enemy of the free press.

The dinner – which should be abolished – will carry some suspense about what Trump decides to say. Back in April, some of us anticipated that journalists would sit there and take it as Trump ripped the “fake news.” But he is unpredictable. To its credit, the NYT does not participate in the WHCD, though it does cover it. Maybe it will once again praise Trump’s “game show flair.”

Trump, who can turn anything into a cheap carny act, is coy.

“I don’t know whether or not I will give the same rather nasty statements, at least as it concerns certain people,” he wrote in June. “But we will soon find out.”

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This week’s media atrocity

The Hill, anticipating an announcement of Sen. Mitch McConnell’s death, prematurely published a story headlined, “DO NOT USE: A lookback at Mitch McConnell’s time in the Senate.”

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