Editorial No-Shows
The ad hoc rationales recently published by the owners of the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times justifying the suppression of their respective editorial boards’ recommendations in the upcoming U.S. presidential election are a timely illustration of what Timothy Snyder, an historian of authoritarian regimes, called “anticipatory obedience” in his 2017 book On Tyranny. Snyder’s term identifies the strategy of anticipating a shift in power to avoid winding up on the losing side by hedging your bet, or in the case of the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, publicly declaring neutrality until it’s safe to do otherwise. In Snyder’s phrase. “Don’t protect yourself too early.”
Both the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times are owned by billionaires who have no deep (or even shallow) interest in or understanding of the role of a free press in a democracy — a newspaper is just another toy asset, not unlike a trophy wife. Wendy McCaw, one of the wealthiest women in the United States, had the same attitude when she purchased the venerable Santa Barbara News-Press. She used the paper like it was a personal SUV, and when she was finished with it, drove it off the end of Stearns Wharf and declared bankruptcy (though she is personally worth billions). Her estate recently auctioned off the paper’s print archive in a federal bankruptcy court building in Santa Barbara, which, in a Kafkaesque twist, she actually owns.
Now the community is without a daily newspaper that for nearly a hundred years provided a vital source of local news and a forum to express a wide spectrum of opinions about local, state, national, and even international issues. The Santa Barbara News-Press, at the end, was a long way from its glory days when it won a Pulitzer Prize for its editorial series exposing the John Birch Society, but the paper still had the potential to provide an essential community service, with the right ownership and editorial guidance.
The Washington Post, ironically, got it right: “Democracy Dies in the Dark.” Or to borrow a line from Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Minister on the eve of the First World War (and later British Ambassador to the United States), “The lights are going out all over Europe” and now in the United States.