"It is a mark of the poor health of our democracy that democracy itself is on the ballot at all. A choice between democracy or not democracy isn’t a choice but an existential threat that doesn’t sustain or nourish civic life."

#KamalaHarris #Trump #democracy #media #CommonGood #SocialContract
/2

"Most of political journalism fails to meet the moment because it has chosen to maintain – or is unable to break free of – the illusion that the 2024 campaign is another in the long line of great quadrennial public debates engaged in mostly good faith by two sides seeking to coalesce the will of the people around their preferred vision for the country."

#KamalaHarris #Trump #democracy #media #CommonGood #SocialContract
/3

Heather Cox Richardson looks at the Atlantic's endorsement of Kamala Harris, only the fifth time it has made such an endorsement since its founding in 1857 and third time it has endorsed Trump's opponent. The journal says that Trump is “one of the most personally malignant and politically dangerous candidates in American history.”

#KamalaHarris #Trump #democracy #media #CommonGood #SocialContract #Atlantic
/4

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-10-2024

October 10, 2024

Hurricane Milton made landfall yesterday evening as a Category 3 storm just south of Sarasota, Florida.

^{Heather Cox Richardson (Letters from an American)}

Richardson finds this endorsement an echo of the Atlantic's 1860 warning that the presidential election “is a turning-point in our history.” As she also notes, both endorsements in 1860 and now show a new press challenging an older system.

She writes,

"In Public Notice today, Noah Berlatsky listed the many articles claiming that Harris is avoiding the press…."

#KamalaHarris #Trump #democracy #media #CommonGood #SocialContract #Atlantic
/5

"In a piece today, Matt Gertz of the media watchdog Media Matters reports that five major newspapers—the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post—produced nearly four times as many articles about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s email server in 2016" (continued in /7)

#KamalaHarris #Trump #democracy #media #CommonGood #SocialContract
/6

(continued from /6) "in the week after then-FBI director James Comey announced new developments in the story than they did about the unsealing of a new filing in Trump’s federal criminal indictment for alleged crimes related to the January 6 insurrection earlier this month.

“'None of the papers ran even half as many Trump indictment stories as they did on Clinton’s server,' Gertz wrote."

#KamalaHarris #Trump #democracy #media #CommonGood #SocialContract
/7

“'Indeed, every paper ran more front-page stories that mentioned Clinton’s server [than] they did total stories that referenced Trump’s indictment.' 'The former president continues to benefit from news outlets grading him on a massive curve,' Gertz wrote, 'resulting in relatively muted coverage for his nakedly authoritarian, unfathomably racist, and allegedly criminal behavior.'”

#KamalaHarris #Trump #democracy #media #CommonGood #SocialContract
/8

Richardson concludes,

"In the past in the U.S., when the media has appeared to become captive to established interests, new media have begun to give a voice to the opposition."

Note how the phrase "captive to established interests" is a huge indictment of the corporate media in this critically important election cycle, and an explanation of why those media have abandoned any pretense of defending democracy.

#KamalaHarris #Trump #democracy #media #CommonGood #SocialContract
/9

"As journalists who focus on social media-enabled disinformation grow overwhelmed by the extent to which broad swathes of Americans have become detached from reality…

NYT decided to do a puff piece on Elon Musk’s support for Trump."

~ Marcy Wheeler

As Marcy Wheeler explains, NYT "misrepresents Elon Musk’s dangerous disinformation" and ignores how he's helping Trump promote fascism.

#KamalaHarris #Trump #ElonMusk #democracy #media #NewYorkTimes
/10

https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/10/11/nyt-censors-elon-musks-jokes-about-assassinating-the-vice-president-and-his-censorship-of-jd-vance-dossier/

NYT "Censors" Elon Musk's Jokes about Assassinating the Vice President and His "Censorship" of JD Vance Dossier - emptywheel

In a piece purporting to explain Elon Musk's role in helping Trump get elected, NYT leaves out Musk's jokes about assassination attempts against Kamala Harris and Trump's hypocritical involvement in getting the JD Vance dossier suppressed.

^emptywheel

Lucian K. Truscott asks why New York Times keeps normalizing Trump's racism and cruelty:

"The New York Times published a story on Wednesday about recent speeches Trump gave when he spoke about 'good genes' and 'bad genes' and called it in the story’s lead paragraph 'another old habit' of Trump’s.

This is what I’m talking about: What the New York Times did in that story was normalize Trump’s white supremacy and cruelty."

#Trump #NewYorkTimes #WhiteSupremacy
/11

https://luciantruscott.substack.com/p/why-does-the-new-york-times-keep

Why does the New York Times keep normalizing Trump's racism and cruelty?

Let’s take a stab right here at the beginning and see if we can agree on what is real and what is not. We have two candidates running for president as major party nominees: One of them is a former district attorney and U.S.

^{Lucian K. Truscott IV (Lucian Truscott Newsletter)}