Watchdogging MAGA
Is Trump II An Existential Challenge For Mainstream Media?
This column has been pinging around in my head (insert “empty head” jokes here) since America broke bad on November 5th.
I planned to offer my fellow newsies some ideas for covering inauguration day. Newsrooms need a plan for days like this one. I believed my experience would be helpful. After starting and stopping this column multiple times, I hit a wall. It wasn’t writer’s block. All my ideas seemed flat. Frankly, the immensity of January 20th feels overwhelming.
I believe the MAGA machine will quickly deliver on its most heinous promises, starting Monday at noon Eastern Time. Human rights will be trampled. Thought police will attack dissent and dissenters. Christian nationalist thugs will cross the church-state line with impunity. Corrupt billionaire oligarchs will thrive on the government dime at the expense of all of us. Multiple so-called “national emergencies” have the potential to dilute if not obliterate our freedoms. The blunt instrument force of a wannabe fascist dictator, enabled by the legislative, judicial, and local government he controls, could overwhelm American liberalism.
Overwhelming
Never has the threat to our freedoms been greater. Never also have the limits of local newsrooms been more exposed.
Small staffs, inexperienced reporters and leadership, declining societal support are among the torpedoes hitting the Good Ship Journalism. The corporate parents of your local newsrooms face a MAGA mob, its misinformation machine, and its legal weaponry. They’re feeling crippling financial pressure from fearful advertisers and shareholders who question the good sense of anyone who questions the Mad King. The core function of newsrooms – confronting authority with facts, with truth, with watchdog chops – is incredibly tough in the best of times. In the next few hours, it may feel impossible
Still, it’s our duty to report MAGA’s coronation. It’s also our duty to challenge whatever version of “American Carnage” comes in this inaugural address and whatever executive actions will immediately follow.
Fortunately journalists in Arizona know this playbook very well.
Since State 48 was MAGA before MAGA, like in the 1950’s and 60’s, (Barry Goldwater, Joe Arpaio, Russell Pearce, Evan Mechem, etc.), I thought some guidance and perspective might be helpful for news leaders.
So, I’ve settled on this broader message to my colleagues around Arizona (and everywhere else). Seven points for journalists to consider/remember as, America embraces a hateful authoritarian.
Don’t conflate WWE theatrics with actual governance. Governance is the slogging work of policy development, brokering support from a very divided and distracted congress, and executing the plan. It’s infinitely easier to deliver a blockbuster inaugural address amplified 1,000% by the MAGA misinformation machine. Expect a performance of red hot language, ever-nastier insults to domestic enemies, threats to foreign enemies (China) and allies (NATO), declarations of White Christian superiority, and mega simplification of extremely complex issues (Ukraine, inflation, immigration, housing, climate change). Staging will mimic Nazi rallies, a celebration of the dear leader while pumping up the mob. And, as with all actual and wannabe dictators, you’ll hear many versions of “only I can fix this.” The fix offered is more likely grievance not governance.
Expect shock and awe tactics. Fact check. Fact Check. Fact Check. Here, we are reminded of Steve Bannon’s strategy: “The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.” Expect the Mad King to flood the zone with tons of executive orders. He’ll announce mass deportation, pardons for January 6th insurrectionists, elimination of the Department of Education, investigations of Jack Smith and others, surgical strikes on Mexican cartels, seizure of the Panama Canal, and on and on and on. His promise to declare national emergencies and the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity give him broad, dictatorial powers. Have experts ready to truth test his moves and answer the question, “What is hype, versus what is actually happening or going to happen, versus what is actually legal?”
Are state and local agencies carrying out the shock and awe? Are they legally authorized to do so? Will the Arizona National Guard become an armed strike force “secure (ing) our southern border”? Will school systems be forced to turn in undocumented students? Will churches be prohibited from offering sanctuary? I expect Arizona sheriffs will be some of the muscle used in mass deportation, but what about local police? This is especially relevant as the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department and we taxpayers foot the multi-million dollar bill from DOJ oversight, the penalty for Joe Arpaio’s 2005 immigration sweeps.
The largest deportation in U.S. history hasn’t accounted for its debilitating economic impact. A recent New York Times editorial offering solutions to our broken immigration system reminds us that “Immigrants are now the ‘dirty-work doers.’ Americans rely on people born in other countries to pick crops, pluck chickens, build homes. Visit a wealthy neighborhood in the middle of the day, and you will find the streets alive with immigrants caring for the children, the dogs and the lawns.” As the inauguration day round-up is underway, it is appropriate to ask, “What’s the plan to replace these essential workers?”
74,999,166: The number of voters who chose Kamala Harris over the Mad King. Harris lost the electoral vote. But, she received 48.3 percent of the popular vote to Trump’s 49.8, a difference of only 1.5 percent. Most notably, Trump didn’t win 50 percent. Though MAGA claims a mandate, the 2024 election wasn’t one. The talking points “weaving” from the podium and echoed by MAGA surrogates will insist the nation has demanded their leadership. Fact is nearly 50 percent of voters demanded something very different. While Monday is MAGA’s day to celebrate, we should also give voice to the 48.3 percent whose views matter almost as much.
Inauguration Day is also Martin Luther King Day. The contrast between these two people could not be bigger. And yet, the two have at least one common foil. The King family believes the FBI facilitated MLK's murder and MAGA wants the bureau abolished. No state has been MAGA longer than Arizona. And no state fought the MLK holiday more. It took losing the 1993 Super Bowl for Arizona to recognize the MLK holiday. In one of the most MAGA of all states on the most MAGA of all days, how will Dr. King be remembered and honored?
Be proud of our work. We ARE NOT the “enemy of the people.” We advocate and practice independent reporting delivering actual facts and truth. Since 2016, constant attacks by Trump and his surrogates have damaged our credibility. Misses on election polling haven’t helped. However, with all its flaws, our work remains essential to a functioning democracy, as we are reminded by James Madison: “To the press alone, checkered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.” Without your reporting, the community is left with MAGA’s “alternative facts.” Generally these are lies, or non-contextualized, non-sourced statements cherry picked to normalize or defend their actions. Let’s give them our best journalism instead.
Brace for Impact
The backlash and pressure on mainstream media to become yet another MAGA mouthpiece is immense. As you know, watchdog reporting always pisses off the powerful. Used to be, shooting the messenger came in the form of tantrums, teeing up a scoop for a competitor, or cancelling advertising. Those are tinker toy tactics now. Instead broadcasters are threatened with having their FCC licenses pulled. Media owners with government contracts are expected to toe the line or lose the cash. That’s led to rapid capitulation, as we’ve seen at Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post, Patrick Soon-Shiong’s LA Times, Disney and ABC News lawsuit settlement, and on and on. It’s now routine and expected for the MAGA mob on X to harass and dox reporters and editors.
It's going to be very difficult to do our jobs. It would be very easy to just give up.
Doing so would be cowardly. The stakes are so high, the responsibility to watchdog this government is so important, bowing to pressure is equivalent to a soldier abandoning his/her post in a fire fight.
My father grew up in the Great Depression. He fought the Nazis in World War II and then fought the McCarthyism, John Birchers, and the Nixon-Reagan-Bush axis at home. He saw horrible human suffering in the Depression. He saw the evil born of hatred in the war. In the 71 years after returning from battle, he resisted the attacks on working people and the New Deal. His way wasn’t always popular with relatives and neighbors. Yet, he stayed vigilant until his death at age 93 in 2016. His actions are my north star. No matter the MAGA attacks, I intend to find the truth and the facts.
A Cinematic Inspiration
Finally, I highly recommend watching “Number 24” now streaming on Netflix. The film is the true story of a man named Gunnar Sønsteby who served in the Norwegian Resistance in World War II. Sønsteby, an unassuming accountant before the war, transforms into a focused and fearless saboteur and assassin taking on Norway’s Nazi occupiers. Among the film’s timely lessons: 1) never take your freedoms for granted and 2) a free press is as vital to maintaining freedom as oxygen is to life.
One of those freedoms is the right to speak and the right to publish. Before becoming a highly lethal force, Gunnar Sønsteby fought the Nazis for those rights in an information war.
Norwegian citizens were in a news blackout. Nazi occupiers had outlawed independent, uncensored journalism from sources inside and outside of Norway. They jammed broadcast signals and eliminated independent newspapers. Nazi propaganda, actual “fake news,” replaced the real thing. Norwegian journalists who didn’t get with the program were imprisoned or murdered. Norwegian citizens were deprived of the truth.
Sønsteby beat the blockade by transcribing BBC broadcasts he tuned in using an illegal radio receiver. He lifted stories from newspapers smuggled from London, Paris, and Sweden. He and his team rewrote the stories (on manual typewriters) and literally cut and pasted them (with scissors and glue) into underground newspapers, then clandestinely distributed them throughout Norway. The Nazis responded with brutality, arresting and detaining over a thousand Resistance journalists and executing at least 200.
The Nazis knew what MAGA and every authoritarian movement understands with 100% clarity. Suppressing real news and replacing it with propaganda (“flood the zone with shit”) is essential to acquiring and holding power.
January 20 might be our Gunnar Sønsteby moment. 74,999,166 Americans and 1,582,860 Arizonans are relying on us to neutralize MAGA’s propaganda machine by delivering facts and truth.
I’m confident we’ll come through. Democracy depends on us.