When a subscription reminder comes along from either The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald or the New York Times it’s almost apologetic in its tone. Couched in terms such as ‘Can we count on your support?’ Sadly, these days, a subscription to these eminent institutions and home to top quality journalism is a charitable donation as much as it is an exchange between service provider and consumer. Though it’s also an act of enlightened self-interest. In Australia we haven’t yet reached the depths of outright political lies dressed up as journalism that they suffer in the US. But if we don’t support our free press, who will alert us to the rising temperature as we are slowly boiled like frogs by powerful forces aiming to exert influence on our politicians for their own nefarious ends?
It’s comforting to think that we are insulated from the weird and not so wonderful clown show that is the USA under Trump but isn’t he just the end product of decades of undermining of the ethos of journalism? Especially by Rupert Murdoch and the junk food for the mind that is Fox News. Times in fact are so critical for journalism in America that as MSNOW political analyst Jan Psaki puts it, ‘Cutting off the public’s access to the truth is a key part of Trump’s election strategy’. Central to this plan is control of what’s left of long standing news organisations. Some of it by government action but also by allowing those who wish to gain his favour to gut storied news institutions and place Trump friendly “journalists” as the purveyors of ‘news’. Consider these actions. Trump banned Associated Press from the White House and is systematically denigrating and bullying any critical journalist – particularly women journalists, rather than answer their questions. He put restrictions on seasoned reporters at the Pentagon and replaced them with non-serious but Trump loyal, extreme right wing commentators. He cut off all funding for public broadcasting, closed the overseas offices of Voice of America and now controls even the military news outlet “Stars and Stripes”.
When the FBI raided the home of a Washington Post journalist who was receiving information embarrassing to the White House from obviously well-placed sources, the Post’s Squillionaire owner Jeff Bezos, was silent on the matter. This is the man who recently cut 300 journalists from the newspaper citing ‘commercial considerations’. Though Bezos himself caused great financial losses to the Post when 250,000 former subscribers (including me) cancelled subscriptions based on his veto of the Post’s editorial board’s strong endorsement of Karmala Harris at the 2024 election. Now Bezos cosies up to Trump by overpaying Melania Trump for a dud “documentary” in the hope perhaps for some extremely lucrative defence contracts, Psaki surmises.
Last year, Trump appointed an unqualified loyalist to the Federal Communications Commission role who threatened networks that have been critical of Trump’s administration. Famously menacing the licencing of networks who aired late night comedian and Trump critic Jimmy Kimmel. Kimmel was duly removed from the airwaves until a massive public backlash saw him re-instated. It doesn’t stop there, right wing business people have been systematically exerting control for some time now over thousands of small town network affiliations and literally ‘filtering’ the news as it’s reported right across the US.
Then there’s the scandalously spurious lawsuit CBS owners ‘settled’ with Trump to gain permission to sell the network. When another late night host, Stephen Colbert, was critical of the deal his own network had done, describing it as a bribe, he was informed his show was to be cancelled. (Though it’s a slow burn cancellation, he’s on the air till May). In fact, new owners of CBS are you guessed it, Trump allies. As Psaki reports, billionaire father and son Larry and David Ellison, handed control of CBS to yet another right wing figure who apparently has no experience of running a news organisation.
So this seriously begs the question, where do we all expect to get quality information from that we can rely on, if we’re not prepared to pay for it? How can we trust oligarchs to let the news organisations they are gathering up, report the truth and unabridged facts without ‘fear or favour? They certainly don’t need to have their media be profitable. Like modern day Citizen Kane’s, they can afford to make a loss. Especially if they can curry favour with someone like Trump to make them more money in their other business conglomerates, by legislating on their behalf. From lowering their company taxes, to weakening labour and environmental laws. Clearly running a loss-making news syndicate that buys you influence, can be very good business indeed.
Thankfully, Australians are far too down to earth and sensible to ever elect a buffoon like Trump. But a lack of access to quality information from a slew of reliable sources could still see populists start to crowd out the airwaves and online spaces. Promoting simplistic solutions to complex problems because there is space for them where serious, educated quality journalists once reigned supreme. It only takes just enough people, gaining all their news through junk food dispensers dressed up as ‘news’ sources, to elect just enough flat earth populists, to throw sand in the gears of parliaments. Trying to take us backwards and slowing up the steady societal progress that we all seek to gain from.
So when you’re next catching up on the latest news, perhaps it’s worth investing even a small amount of money to the news organisation of your choice. We all want to be kept abreast of events and know what’s going on in the world. Even if just catching up with the headlines. The question is, where will the headlines come from, who will break the stories of corruption and wrongdoing, how can we trust what we’re hearing, if we’ve stopped investing in the people dedicated to keeping us informed?
Time to pay my bill.