Democracy is in peril because ‘both sides’ journalists let MAGA spread disinformation | Opinion

They say democracy dies in darkness. That’s what The Washington Post has been telling us anyway, ever since MAGA rose to power in 2017 — our daily reminder that without a free press to shine its light on wayward politicians, democracy will eventually succumb to bad actors like Donald Trump and his pro-Vladimir Putin enablers in Congress.

I never liked that slogan, not because it’s a little too melodramatic, but because it’s wrong. Our democracy is in peril because of today’s free press, not for want of it.

I’m not talking about the David Pecker brand of yellow journalism that’s easy to spot, the kind that’s been around since Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst invented it back in the 1890s, with its catch-and-kill schemes and its creepy feedback loops (Putin and Tucker Carlson, Trump and Jesse Watters). I’m talking about a relatively new kind of journalism. Let’s call it “blue-sky journalism.”

Blue-sky journalism is more insidious and dangerous than yellow journalism because it’s subtle and slick and classy, in the same way that subtle and slick and classy racism is more effective than a mulleted screamer with a pointy white hood and a tiki torch he got on sale at a big box store. Blue-sky journalism is respectable because it’s perpetrated by respectable journalists who probably don’t shop there, folks who move with ease in the bluest of circles, like Anderson Cooper, Chris Licht, Carrie Budoff Brown and Lesley Stahl.

Inevitably, in today’s ratings-obsessed newsrooms, for every Jake Tapper or Margaret Brennan or Abby Phillip with the backbone to say no, there’s a Kaitlan Collins with the ambition to say yes, to platform a demagogue in the name of “fairness to both sides.” At least that’s what she tells herself — presumably — in makeup before going on air: “Mirror mirror on the wall, I do this not for ratings at all. I do this because I’m a good, objective, nonpartisan journalist, and doggone it, both sides deserve to be heard.”

But do they? Do they really? Russian disinformation deserves its rightful place in our American town hall conversation? That’s the hill you’re planting your fair and balanced flag on? Our former Republican vice president’s daughter Liz Cheney deserves to be heard. Her fellow former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger deserves to be heard. Past GOP presidential candidate Sen. Mitt Romney deserves to be heard. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene does not.

And let’s stop calling them never-Trumpers and start calling them what they are: decent conservatives.

Trump supporters showed they will use violence

Blue-sky journalism is going to get a lot of people killed if it delivers the Electoral College to MAGA in November. And the violence won’t start with SEAL Team Six knocking on Rachel Maddow’s door. Instead, Trump will follow his Russian mentor’s playbook by giving all the Proud Boys out there the only thing they need: a wink and a nod. These are the kinds of people who would drag a 14-month-old puppy to a gravel pit and blow its brains out, for goodness’ sake. These are the kinds of people who would kill 100,000 Ukrainians just to make Russia’s coin-operated grocery carts great again.

So do not underestimate MAGA’s willingness to “make the hard choices that need to be made.” And by the way, why hasn’t SEAL Team Six issued a statement yet? If the Supreme Court was spitballing my name as some kind of depraved homicidal slave to Trump, I’d want very much to set that record straight. And why do we all just know that in a second Trump term, the makeup of SEAL Team Six will go from 90% MAGA to 100% MAGA? If we let Trump back in the White House again, are we going to need a SEAL Team Seven to protect us from SEAL Team Six?

Here’s the point: We are on our own. There isn’t going to be a Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to turn darkness to light and save the day this time. The world just doesn’t work that way anymore. If anything, there’s too much light, and it’s blinding us to the danger we’re in. For the news media has lit up our politics like the clear blue sky — less in the name of fair and objective journalism, and more in the name of TV ratings mastermind Arthur C. Nielsen.

And if you think our military will save us from the MAGA gravel pits to come, think again. Trump may be book dumb, but he’s street smart. He would replace Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, probably with conspiracy theorist Michael Flynn or someone Flynnish. Heck, we can’t even rely on the better angels of the Supreme Court — that judicial centipede of textualist hypocrisy — which right now is shamelessly dragging at least nine of its 18 feet in a cynical attempt to put the kibosh on Judge Tanya Chutkan’s trial of Trump for the Jan. 6 insurrection, as it bends over backward to help Trump normalize a thing that isn’t supposed to be a thing: American autocracy.

Our only hope is us, we the people, on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024.

And should we fail on that day, I don’t know about you, but I’d be willing to jump in front of a bullet to protect Liz Cheney, and I disagree with almost everything she’s ever said.

Tom Heehler is the author of “The Well-Spoken Thesaurus” and “Notes Ex Machina,” a pro-democracy almanac debuting in 2025 — assuming it isn’t banned by a coming Trump administration. He lives in Lolo, Montana.