HAVING JUST SUFFERED another 300 newsroom layoffs, the closure of sections and bureaus, the exodus of many of its most venerable journalists, and the “moral infirmity” — in the words of a former editor — of transforming its editorial page into a Trumpist mouthpiece, The Washington Post is a dead newspaper walking.
It is far from alone in the graveyard.
In the US, most newspaper chains are controlled by hedge funds milking them dry, or by billionaires — The Post’s Jeff Bezos or the Los Angeles Times’ Patrick Soon-Shiong — harpooning their souls.
Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos (l) owns The Washington Post, while Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong owns the Los Angeles Times.
Magazines, as a media genre, are a ghost of their former selves. In the US — unlike in Europe — broadcast radio has become irrelevant. Broadcast television’s audience is geriatric, and its owners are gutless media conglomerates.
Disney knuckled under to Trump and pulled Jimmy Kimmel off ABC. CBS is now in the clutches of mini Murdochs named Ellison and their agent of destruction, contrarianist Bari Weiss, who has turned the networks’ once revered nightly news into state media.
On shrinking cable, Fox News is the Murdochs’ political organ, MSNOW (née MSNBC) has been sloughed off onto a funereal ice floe by Comcast-NBC, and CNN is at risk of also falling under the Ellisons’ thumb.
Larry Ellison, left, daughter Megan Ellison and David Ellison, right. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo
Ah, but you say, at least America still has The New York Times. Yes, and there are good journalists doing good work there. But on the whole, The Times has failed to protect American democracy.
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