On anticipatory obedience and the media

[Quiet Em]

Trump’s campaign against the Fourth Estate has been unfolding before our eyes—far more effectively than some in the press would like to believe.

In early 2017, Princeton professor Kim Lane Scheppele, an adviser to our organization, Protect Democracy, who’d spent roughly a decade living in Hungary during the rise of Viktor Orbán, offered us a warning: beware that the newly elected American president might copy Orbán’s autocratic technique of using the regulatory state to punish media outlets whose coverage he dislikes.

Prime Minister Orbán did this to great effect. The barrage of audits, investigations, and regulatory harassment he directed at his media critics, coupled with orders that his government agencies direct public advertising dollars only to media sufficiently loyal to him, drove independent media from the field. Orbán didn’t neutralize the media overnight. It happened gradually and in plain sight.

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/anticipatory-obedience-bassin-potter-scheppele-orban-trump-hungary-media-punish.php

[The Roux Comes First]

1. Open-minded, Strong-willed Independent Media Not 90%-focused on Thrilling Their Owners and Stockholders

Are already an endangered species, on the fringe of extinction.

Newspapers brave enough to offer an opinion that offends the maggots and deplorables or admit that fascism is in the air are certainly a rarity already.

We're way beyond "It Can't Happen Here."

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R