Dark clouds gather over US press freedom

As the world holds it breath with the US Presidential election heading for its climax in a little over a week’s time, dark clouds are gathering over the once prized values of media freedom.

Just a week after Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, instructed the paper’s editorial board not to make an endorsement for president, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, similarly stopped that paper offering an endorsement of any candidate. It is assumed that both papers would have endorsed the Democrat nominee Kamala Harris.

This unprecedented interference in editorial freedom has provoked a fierce backlash among journalists in the United States.

Mariel Garza, the editorials editor of the Los Angeles Times, resigned, making it very clear why she was taking a stand: “I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent. In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up”, she told the Columbia Journalism Review.

Marty Baron, the former executive editor of the Washington Post, condemned that paper’s decision as  “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty”.

He pointed the finger at the Republican candidate Donald Trump, saying that he will “see this as an invitation to further intimidate the owner” of the Washington Post. “Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage”, Baron added. Ironically, that statement was issued on X (formerly Twitter), now owned by another billionaire, Elon Musk, who has been busy spending millions of dollars buying votes for Trump.

Trump has long been an enemy of a free press, repeatedly labelling anything that is critical of him as “fake news” and throwing out baseless accusations about left-wing conspiracies against him.

He has frequently threatened to strip broadcast licences from the three biggest US television networks – ABC, CBS and NBC – in retribution for being fact-checked during the campaign and for news coverage that Trump claims is unfair.

“For the past decade, Donald Trump has been running a campaign against the media straight out of the playbook that authoritarians have used around the world, which is to threaten retaliation against news organizations if they don’t provide him with favourable enough coverage,” says Ian Bassin, an attorney and founder of the not-for-profit advocacy group Protect Democracy. “We are seeing now the seeds of that campaign bearing fruit.”

Trump has made it very clear during the campaign that, if elected, those who have opposed him will pay a heavy price. Bezos, Soon-Shiong (who owns a vast medical products business that needs government licences) and Musk have much to lose if they antagonise a vengeful Trump. But that is not how democracy works. That is not how a free press works.

The proud claim to be “The Land of the Free” is starting to look threadbare as its great press institutions are silenced. It will be left in tatters if Trump is elected.