The war on journalists is a war on the truth
Journalists are in a tough spot right now in many places. The assault is particularly aggressive in the US. Here's why, how, and what we can do about it.
And let me start out by saying I am not a journalist. I am just writing about what pops into my head. I am not a professional, have no training, there is little difference between my research and just following online rabbit holes. I have no editor. Real journalists are serious people who hold themselves to higher standards than I could manage.
And they are really getting it tough now. The reason why is the oligarchs who now run the US government and their many oligarch enablers don't want you to know what is going on. The fact that these oligarchs are in this position of leadership as well as their ability to stay there, is due in large part because millions of Americans don't have a clear picture of what these oligarchs are doing. The oligarchs need to keep it that way. And the more terrible things they do, the more spectacular their corruption and stupidity, the greater incentive they have conceal this from as many people as they can. One of the many ways they do this is by making things difficult for the best journalists.
When I say "truth", I am including in that a few different things, some that journalists create and some that they rely on. These include data, data analysis, investigation, reporting, contextualizing, analyzing, framing, summarizing, and finally selecting....as in "what is really important". Ultimately, we want to have confidence that what we getting is based on reliable data, that the framing is based on the data as interpreted by an insightful self-aware human and not on preconceptions, habits, platforms, robots, or market requirements.
In looking at and understanding truth in general, and journalism and journalists specifically, it is key to understand what it means to "flood the zone" which is the key method the oligarchs use to keep us disoriented and exhausted. It comes from a quote by Goebbels-wannabe Steve Bannon to author Michael Lewis in 2018. “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." This is how the oligarchs get to each of us, both the oligarchs who create the "content" and those who control the platforms through which it reaches us. Whatever we understand and do to get at the truth must start from knowing that we must find our way through this zone that specific people have intentionally flooded.
For news or information, stay away as much as possible from any platform that has uses algorithms and certainly don't get your news from there. You think when you get news from social media you are seeing things posted by those you follow. That is a false and dangerous view. All platforms except ActivityPub/Mastodon have an algorithm that conceals what it doesn't want you to see and shows you what will keep you clicking and scrolling. Not only does it control what you think, but it does it in such a way that you don't realize it.
There are lots of ways pressure can be applied to journalists. Which stories legacy media editors will approve, which travel will be compensated, coercive both-sidism, when editors will encourage or force journalists to treat lairs and truth tellers as two sides of a political debate or to demand tepid language. For example when the White House fires strong, able, and impartial leadership and appoints incompetent inexperienced submissive psychophants. For example when this happened in the Pentagon, some media outlets used wildly misleading terms like "reshuffle" or "reorganization". These terms are often forced on the journalists, particularly in headlines.
Another way they hurt journalists is simply by ending grants or support to free and independent media. This past weekend the administration has killed Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Voice of America, and the entire US Agency for Global Media among many many others. This has overnight left many thousands of journalists around the world out of work.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/03/the-voice-of-radical-america/
These media outlets had enormous influence outside of the US; they helped millions around the world stay informed. They were also extremely frustrating for autocrats like Putin in Russia and Orban in Hungary and many others. Make no mistake, buy throwing many thousands of journalists out of work in the US and around the world, it will be immediately and substantially more it difficult for all of us to understand our world.
Another way the current leadership makes things difficult and dangerous for journalists is via stochastic terrorism, a form of political violence that deploys hostile and aggressive public comments, specific enough to be dangerous to the target. This can include doxing, where somebody will leak personal information like phone numbers and addresses to complicit social media accounts. Or more general comments but specific enough for the deranged to start researching which journalists to harass.
Here are some things we can do to help.
Consider a truth budget, meaning, spend some time and money each month. As always, the time and money budget should logically intertwine and there should be some of both. Spend a bit of time, ideally periodically, researching and supporting those who are doing important journalistic work, journalists, magazines, collectives, whoever. If you were going to repost, repost with a comment. If you read or hear something that is important, tell as many people as you can and subscribe. Be deliberate about where your monthly media expenditure should go. If you don't subscribe to any worthwhile media, start. Many of the staff of these outlets the White House just killed are starting newsletters. Find them and support them.
In general, thank journalists. Let them know you follow them and appreciate their work. Amplify them. If you know journalists personally, now is a good time to reach out, listen and ask how you can help, if they are recently and suddenly out of work, and are looking around, help them on LinkedIn, a place to stay, help looking after kids in a pinch, that kind of thing, just like helping anybody. But they are an unusually important group in the struggle for democracy and they are undergoing an unusually aggressive assault.
Many of the best, famous, older journalists are leaving legacy media and setting up newsletters where they can say what they want, unfettered. This is great, support them.
https://contrarian.substack.com/ only started a few weeks ago and already has over half a million subscribers.
https://luciantruscott.substack.com/ with almost thirty thousand subscribers.
They do this because they are brave and fed up, a great combination, but also in part because they are already accomplished and famous and got famous via legacy media before it atrophied and was hoovered up by monopolist oligarchs and technofeudalists. But what can younger journalists do? Are they stuck with legacy media corporations to build their reputation until they can become famous enough to support themselves via their own newsletters? Maybe, but some of the best training grounds are data and investigation focused confederations like,
https://www.occrp.org/en The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, international and amazing.
https://www.propublica.org/ US focused and also amazing, the source of a huge portion of the best investigation in the US.
Thirty Two donors are listed on ProPublica's website as "supporters". Write them and thank them, and tell them to keep it comin'.
Places like these are among the best places younger and not-yet-famous writers can build up their experience, knowledge, and Rolodexes.
There are also others with newsletters who are amazing, for example, Heather Cox Richardson (daily about the US) and Tim Snyder (on Ukraine and US fascism), both historians. In times of uncertainty, listen to the historians....
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/
I also like several sort of "new media" (whatever that means) daily Newsletters that list the important stuff briefly each day, with a bit of commentary or context. The three I read are,
https://www.internationalintrigue.io/ my favorite daily email of what's going on in the world.
https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/brussels-playbook/ Everybody senior person who works for the EU reads this each morning. This is owned by a giant German media conglomerate but the free version is still pretty good.
In general, I find myself more interested in essays than articles. For news I usually just want a paragraph or so from a source I trust telling me the deal. Articles seem to me to be a format designed for newspapers back when they were actually on paper. What I really want to know is big picture framing of the news. There is even a great newsletter about framing itself,
https://www.theframelab.org/ overseen by the framing genius, George Lakoff, Professor at UC Berkeley.
By the way that last newsletter is on Ghost, like this newsletter you are reading now. Ghost is a somewhat more ethical newsletter arrangement than Subtack which is great but trying to become a VC driven social media platform with algorithms, as if we need another one of those.
In any case, great essays come from many many sources and there are very very many sources or ways to find them.
But for me, the Big Three of Context are these:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ Been around a long time, always amazing.
https://jacobin.com/ Bunch of hell raising lefties, many new ideas, thoughtfully put.
https://www.nybooks.com/ Where America's stratospheric egg heads figure out the world.
And of course there are often great essays in legacy papers. I ended my Washington Post subscription well before the election when Jeff Bezos went from periodically nudging editorial decisions to outright rejecting things that might offend delicate oligarchic egos. Nothing sadder than a coward with two hundred billion dollars.
Anyway, for things behind paywalls, if you paste them here, you can read them and will get a link to send around.
If there is a periodical that you enjoy and read with even modest frequency, and can afford it, subscribe. If on the other hand, if you read a good essay in a periodical run by an oligarch, send the essay around liberally via the no-paywall link.
Whatever you like, read, or listen to, please post here, and say what you like about it.
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