Why won’t the media say Trump is becoming a dictator?

Journalism is the wrong profession for people who won’t face the facts

Journalists have a duty to warn the public of threats to their safety and well-being. They fail in that duty when they report on individual pieces of a disaster without providing the big picture.

The big picture is the fact that Donald Trump is building a dictatorship.

Many Americans are busy with a second job or a sick parent or other obligations, and they encounter the news only by accident. They don't have time to read a half dozen stories, add them up, and come to the conclusion that the president of the United States, aided by the entire Republican Party and billionaire oligarchs, is overthrowing our democracy.

That’s what the news industry should be saying repeatedly, and loudly. Because it’s true, and it’s a huge threat to the future of every American.

I don’t accept the argument that it’s debatable whether Trump is building a dictatorship. If you’re a subscriber to this newsletter, you’ve probably reached that conclusion long ago. And it’s inconceivable that the smart editors, producers, and reporters of major news organizations don’t know what’s happening.

So why don’t they say it? Because they’d get in trouble with their bosses, who either don’t want to appear biased or don't want to antagonize Trump or don’t want to alert the public because they’re pro-dictatorship as long as they can make money from it. The anti-democratic posture of corporate media means that the journalists on the front lines can state the facts only in a piecemeal fashion.

Over the last week, the piecemeal facts point in a clear direction:

• Trump declared “war” on Chicago and threatened to send troops there, as well as to other Democratic-run cities.

• The Supreme Court supported the Trump regime’s racial profiling in immigration enforcement. Authorities can stop you without probable cause if you're speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent.

• Trump announced the killings of 11 people on a boat in the Caribbean, supposedly in an attack on drug traffickers. But he got no authorization from Congress, offered no coherent legal justification, and presented no evidence. In effect, he claimed the right to kill people if he wants to.

• The Justice Department launched an investigation into Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, whom Trump has targeted in his campaign to seize control of the traditionally independent Federal Reserve Board.

Each of those news developments is authoritarian, and they come after months of similar assaults on our freedoms. But mainstream media aren’t providing the big picture.

They’ve been in this posture since Trump first ran for president. I was metro editor of the Chicago Tribune then, and one of my bosses instructed us not to describe Trump’s lies as lies. We were ordered to state what Trump said, state what the truth was, and then let the readers sort it out. We’ve seen how that turned out.

The media should be using words like “fascism” and “authoritarian” and “dictatorship” much more often. Instead the threat to our country is treated as if it’s Voldemort – He Who Must Not Be Named.

Some news outlets are becoming more explicit, and they deserve recognition. The Associated Press published a story last weekend with this headline:

Even the New York Times, often guilty of weasel wording, seemed to be getting sharper with a story over the weekend headlined: “Trump Tramples Congress’s Power, With Little Challenge From G.O.P.” NYT’s print headline was even sharper:

Other news outlets appear to be moving further in the other direction, however, encouraging Trump’s bully tactics. CBS News, for example, folded to the Trump regime’s complaints about its editing of an interview with Kristi Noem and announced that it will no longer edit interviews on “Face the Nation,” which is an assurance to Team Trump that its lies on that program will reach the public.

CBS News, which just named a right-winger as its ombudsman to handle news coverage complaints, is a prime example of “media capture” – the trend of powerful people seizing control of major news outlets to mute criticism of strongman leaders.

Outlets that want to maintain legitimacy need to ring the alarm bells now. They need to wake up Americans who are sleepwalking into a police state.

It’s an easy headline: “Trump is building a dictatorship.”

Say it at the top of the TV news. Print it in a type size that everyone will notice. And then make the case. The evidence is all around us.

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