The Counterpublic Papers vol. 9 no. 6

I’m going to double dip by doing something I probably should do a bit more of—responding to “readers.” In this case I put it in quotes because only one of the folk I am going to respond to subscribes, but if I’m spending significant time responding elsewhere to someone that DOESN’T subscribe I might as well put it here. 

So last week the publishers of the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post separately decided not to endorse a candidate for President (as I type I just found out the Gannett papers followed suit). It was the first time either had done this in decades and it surprised both editorial boards, as they made the decision just a week or two before the election. In fact in the Los Angeles Times case, the paper was scheduled to run a series called “the case against Trump” alongside the endorsement and in the Washington Post case, they’d already endorsed Angela Brooks against former governor Larry Hogan in the Maryland Senate race. 

After the Washington Post decision, which Bezos attempted to defend (and as Melissa Kabas writes had the audacity to use the term “our” articulating himself as a journalist in explaining his decision), the editorial board itself took a stance against their own paper, including Ann Talnaes who may have drafted the cartoon of the year. After the 2020 election (and near the January 6 rebellion) the Washington Post changed its masthead to “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Talnaes created a blank page smeared with black paint to represent the Post’s decision. 

The response also generated mass action. As of this writing approximately 250,000 subscribers cancelled. (Full disclosure I haven’t yet but only because I want to create PDFs of all the articles I saved before I do.) 

A few journalists (including a long time friend who works for the Post) questioned this action. Doing this wouldn’t hurt Bezos—he’s a billionaire—but would instead hurt the paper, hurting its news division, its ability to do hard hitting investigative journalism, and could end up killing the paper. 

Here’s my response. 

I'll start with the broad observation that Bezos' decision was a lot more than "bad," given how close it comes to the election, the change in masthead (for those that don't know the Washington Post's masthead reads "Democracy Dies in Darkness"--a change I think the Post made in 2020 or 2021), the particular role oligarchs play in American life, and the realities of this election. It was so bad that 18 [now 21] columnists signed a letter in response.

The terrain of newspaper journalism is incredibly fraught. You and I and most people our age grew up in two newspaper cities....and now not only do most cities only have one newspaper, that one newspaper is likely owned by either an oligarch or someone who wants to be. Further, many towns don't even have that.

You expressed concern for the free press and what we lose if it is killed. We run the risk of losing the types of routine coverage and deep investigative journalism that is required for democracy to thrive. "All the exposés. Gone. Investigations. Gone. Explainers on the ballot measures. Gone. Fact checking policies and politicians. Gone. Then who's hurt?"

This statement is both right....and totally misses the point.

Political scientists who study comparative politics came up with a term to describe a certain type shift from democratic states to non-democratic ones. "Democratic backsliding." They came up with that term to describe transitions that didn't happen immediately, through a military coup, or something like it, but slowly. And they've recently begun using the term to describe the US. Free press tampering is often something that comes with backsliding--either politicians or oligarchs gradually or abruptly reduce the ability of journalists to report.

What happened to the post and the times is a sign backsliding is taking a turn for the worse. The Post IS NO LONGER FREE IN THE WAY IT WAS LAST WEEK. Once he makes this move, what prevents him from coming after the news next? Take a look again at the quote above. What prevents HIM from coming after those things now that he's done this?

THIS is what people responded to. And people chose this, WHILE UNCOORDINATED, because this was the best signal to send. Far better than canceling Amazon Prime (although that could be next) because an amazon prime cancellation can be read in a dozen different ways.

Now on that response. You're suggesting that mass cancellation can only hurt. But compared to what? What other action would've been better? If there's an action that could've been better...why didn't Post staffers coordinate it? why didn't you coordinate it? I'm pretty sure a draft of the endorsement exists. Why didn't the board send it out? Anonymously even?

I suggest that we're already down a dangerous path. Instead of telling people "STOP" in the absence of ANY OTHER ALTERNATIVE...the answer should be to tell people "GO." And use that energy to develop the internal institutional strength to contest the changes in the paper. We don't stop backsliding by telling people in an instance like this to just go back to normal, or perhaps "write a letter to the editor." we stop backsliding through the types of aggressive action that got people like us into the schools we graduated from.

….

We’re all experiencing a great deal of anxiety about the election. One of my friends wrote that he was concerned that the polls were masking the Bradley Effect, a term coined to describe the tendency of white democratic voters to lie about their vote when a black democratic candidate was on the ballot—it’s called the Bradley effect after former Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley (who lost a close 1982 gubernatorial race he was expected to win seemingly because people lied about their intentions to pollsters). If the Bradley Effect is at play here, he reasoned, we could be in trouble. 

He’s absolutely right—if even a thin slice of Democratic voters were secretly planning to vote for Trump but told pollsters otherwise, we’d be in trouble. That margin could theoretically be the difference. 

But this is one of those instances where folk are taking social science concepts designed to explain a very specific phenomenon that took place at a very specific point in time and applying it without fully appreciating the current context. The election that generated the concept happened over 40 years ago. It is far more normal to vote for candidates of color in general and black candidates more particularly than in 1982. Used to be the case that (with exceptions like Bradley and former Chicago Mayor Harold Washington) pretty much the only way to get black people in office was to ensure that more than 50% of their potential constituents were black. This isn’t the case anymore. Harris herself was elected to office statewide in an election in which black voters constituted a small minority of voters. 

So no, the central challenge isn’t one of voters telling pollsters one thing and then doing another thing when they get in the voting booth. The real challenge we have is that she’s running against a racist with fascist desires and one of the things he brought with him in 2016 is a return to old school racism. The biggest concern I have, (even bigger than the now debunked possibility that Trump tries to October Surprise the election to the House) is that there’s a fascist electoral apparatus with the power to mobilize low propensity voters in rural areas in large numbers, that is far larger and more extensive than we realize. Such an apparatus would basically be a political movement with an electoral arm. I have some expertise in traditional politics. I don’t have expertise in right wing political movements. I can imagine a scenario in which, say, Christian nationalists cum evangelicals are performing the deep organizing work that a normal political campaign would perform, getting people out to vote and muck up the election in droves. I just can’t see that scenario as plausible though. And this is where I could be really really wrong. 

We’ll see.