"Democracy Dies in Darkness" (#1,012)

October 28, 2024 / Kurt F. Stone

Edward Gray, 1st Viscount of Fallodon (1862-1933)

Back in 1897, Adolph S. Ochs, the owner of The New York Times, created the famous slogan “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” which still appears on the daily print edition’s masthead. (In recognizing that “The Times, they are a-changing’” the slogan on their digital edition has been changed to “All the News That’s Fit to Click”). In 1897, the then 39-year old Ochs (1858-1935) wrote that the paper’s front-page slogan would serve as a declaration that it was his intention that The Times’ would forever more report the news impartially. (When Ochs purchased his first newspaper, the Chattanooga Times, at age 20, he told the folks of his hometown that his paper would “. . . give the news impartially, without fear or favor.” Eventually nicknamed “The Gray Lady,” Ochs’ the New York Times - which is, in 2024 - owned and published by AG Sulzberger, the Great-Great-Great Grandson of Adolph Ochs, has long been globally accept as “America’s Paper of Record” . . . to almost everyone except, It who considers it to be nothing more than “a failing rag of a paper. . . . fake news.” Sorry, It, but you are wrong, wrong, wrong. The NYT still publishes “without fear of favor.”

A brief tour through American newspapers will find a ton of slogans . . . some heartfelt, others absurd. Here’s a handful:

The Wall Street Journal: “The daily diary of the American dream.”
The Scripps Company: “Give light and the people will find their own way.”
The New York Sun: “It shines for All.”
The Hartford Courant: “Older than the nation.”
USA Today: The Nation’s Newspaper.”
Long Island’s Newsday: “Truth, Justice and the Comics” (a nod to “Superman”).
Detroit Free Press: “On Guard Since 1831.”
The Atlanta Journal Constitution: “Covers Dixie Like the Dew.”
Aspen Daily News: “If you don’t want it printed, don’t let it happen.”
The Washington Post: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

This last slogan - that of The Washington Post - is unique. How so? Well, to begin with, the Post, which had been founded in 1877 by Stilson Hutchins (1838-1912) - a Southern sympathizer and an outspoken racist against African Americans, Asian Americans and immigrants - had never carried a slogan until February of 2017, a month after IT began his first (and, some of us pray his only) term as POTUS. In other words, it took Jeff Bezos, the owner and publisher of The Post (who had purchased it for $250 million from the Graham family), less than 30 days to adopt a slogan that seemed to be sending a loud warning to the 45th POTUS; to wit, that they were on to him, to his lies, mistruths and total unfitness for leading a Representative Democracy. At first, it seemed as if Bezos (1964- ), the founder, president and CEO of Amazon, and one of the world’s richest people (c. $205.6 billion as of 2024) would a watchful challenger; a beacon of light in what promised to be an ever-darkening world.

One of Bezos’ first steps was to beef up the paper’s column - “The Fact Checker” - described as a "truth squad.” In the four years of IT’s presidency, the squad catalogued and published 30,573 lies - an average of more than 50 per day, 365 days a year.

But something must have happened, because just the other day, Jeff Bezos exercised one of his inalienable rights as publisher, by turning out the very lights by which Democracy survives: he refused to endorse either IT or V.P. Kamala Harris for President. Writing in The Conversation (a highly recommended online journal) Denis Muller said that Bezos’ decision not to endorse either of the two “. . . disgraces journalism, disgraces the papers’ own heritage and represents an abandonment of civic responsibility at a moment when the United States faces its most consequential presidential election since the Civil War.” Whatever in the world led Jeff Bezos to such a craven decision? My guess is a mixture of cash and cowardice. In a joint statement, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame, called the decision “surprising and disappointing;” 2 columnists, Robert Kagan and Michele Norris, resigned in protest. And thousands of subscribers (myself included) cancelled their subscriptions.

But it wasn’t only the Washington Post that withheld an endorsement . . . thereby losing longtime editorial writers and subscribers. Two days before the Post’s Bezos decided that his paper would remain neutral, the Los Angeles Times which, like the Post, is owned by Dr. Soon Shiong, M.D., a multi-billionaire without a nanoparticle’s worth of journalistic experience, let it be known that likewise his paper would not be endorsing a candidate in 2024. According to Dr. Shiong’s daughter Nika said, in a statement to The New York Times that the reason for the non-endorsement was V.P. Harris’ continued support for Israel: “Our family made the joint decision not to endorse a Presidential candidate. This was the first and only time I have been involved in the process,” Ms. Soon-Shiong, who has no formal role at the paper, said in her statement. “As a citizen of a country openly financing genocide, and as a family that experienced South African Apartheid, the endorsement was an opportunity to repudiate justifications for the widespread targeting of journalists and ongoing war on children.”

When asked to respond to his daughter’s statement, Dr. Shiong merely said “Nika speaks in her own personal capacity regarding her opinion . . . She does not have any role at the LA Times, nor does she participate in any decision or discussion with the editorial board.” He further added that his decision not to offer readers a recommendation would be “less divisive in a tumultuous election year” . . .that he "feared that picking one candidate would only exacerbate the already deep divisions in the country.”

In other words, there no way of knowing precisely what led the owner of the Times (like the owner of the Post) to withhold their papers’ endorsements. And so we are left to figure it out for ourselves. I for one believe the two billionaire owners are first, participating in anticipatory kowtowing; they are worried sick that if elected in November, IT will make good on his continual promises to extract retribution from those who have been disloyal to him. Second, people like Bezos and Schiong want something from IT should he wind up back in the White House. We already know that back in 2017, Dr. Schiong, a transplant surgeon who made his first billion by inventing the drug Abraxane (which is one of the medical world’s best-selling, most-used chemo drugs for lung, breast, and pancreatic cancer) contributed a ton of money to a MAGA PAC in the hopes of being named the newly-elected President’s “Health Czar.” So far as what Bezos might want . . . perhaps we need look no further than his latest business venture: Amazon Prime “One Medical.”

What Bezos and Schiong have done at the very tale-end of the 2024 campaign is nothing short of what might be called either “an act of journalistic sedition” or the “euthanizing of Democracy.” Compare their death by a thousand cowardly cuts to the pride and patriotism of The New York Times’ ringing 1,925-word endorsement of Kamala Harris precisely one month ago. It begins with words meant to shock and shame:

It is hard to imagine a candidate more unworthy to serve as president of the United States than Donald Trump. He has proved himself morally unfit for an office that asks its occupant to put the good of the nation above self-interest. He has proved himself temperamentally unfit for a role that requires the very qualities — wisdom, honesty, empathy, courage, restraint, humility, discipline — that he most lacks.

and ends with 6 words meant to bring light back to the world:

Kamala Harris is the only choice.

Symbolically, the Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times have gone dark at a time when America needs now, more than ever, to continue being a beacon of light for world. This is the worst possible time for the light to go out. It is reminiscent of a remark made 110 years ago by Britain’s longest-serving Foreign Minister, Edward Gray, 1st Viscount of Fallodon (that’s him in the painting at the beginning of this essay). Just as England was about to enter the “Great War,” as WW1 was then known, Sir Edward remarked to a friend:

The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.

There are but 8 days left until Election Day. May we be the torch-bearers who continue providing light for the world, and with all due apologies, to Sir Edward . . . as well as the likes of Bezos and Schiong . . . prove them to have been terribly, terribly wrong. For as we know, Democracy does die in Darkness.

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