26 Comments
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J.Douglas  Buser's avatar

Yes, this most certainly should have been front page news in BOLD headlines! As time goes on and he continues to make these statements it gets normalized. But this is NOT normal and should not be accepted. It should also have been the leading story on broadcast news. Truthfully I am scared for our country, a country that my father gave his life for in WWII.

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Susan Bodiker's avatar

Bravo! It pains me that my hometown paper, the NYT, still doesn’t get it. Politesse and protocol get you just so far and even tho the Times is talking to the choir, it still needs to more aggressively call out the lies and sharpen its focus. I’ve given up on the Post. I miss some of the reporters but the editorial voice is putting the owner’s profits ahead of principle.

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Lux's avatar

The problem is that they DO "get it", sadly, they know PRECISELY what they are doing. It is past time that we called them out for the quislings they are, they haven't been the "fourth estate" for at least a decade now, that title has passed to independent, citizen "journalists", who are doing a much better job.

There is no longer a need for a degree in the subject, since apparently the institutions that used to teach it, are teaching somethimg else now. I can't say I've been to one of these schools, but I'd bet my last dollar they spend more time teaching students how to maximize profits for the publications' owners with their reporting, than they do on why they are doing it.

Time to just admit this shit isn't accidental, it's intentional, the bug has become the feature. The most unfortunate thing is that if you zoom out, you will see this is all a part of the very same, much larger pattern. This may be thought of as the old southern plantation owners' revenge, and reaching back out after all these years, to destroy collective action on the part of the people, once and for all. Buying up all of the press was a part of this strategy, because if it isn't reported on, for many people, it simply isn't happening.

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This Woman Votes's avatar

Oh look, another day, another front-page failure by the so-called “guardians” of democracy!

When the President of the United States shrugs off his oath to the Constitution like it’s a parking ticket, and the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal collectively yawn, that is unadulterated dereliction of duty. This isn’t editorial oversight. It’s complicity by omission.

We have a President who, when asked if he’s obligated to uphold the Constitution, responds with “I don’t know.” That’s not a gaffe. That’s a five-alarm fire under the Republic. And the best these editorial boards could manage was to bury it under TikTok drama, Jair Bolsonaro retrospectives, and Newark Airport updates? If I didn’t know better, I’d think they were actively auditioning for the Ministry of Truth.

Thank god for the local editors who still seem to understand what the Fourth Estate is for. When the Asheville Citizen-Times is out-journalism-ing the New York Times, we’re not just in a crisis. We’re in a collapse.

The press is not supposed to be a neutral mirror to authoritarian erosion. It is supposed to be the fire alarm. If you’re in a newsroom and you’re worried that reporting a constitutional breach too loudly might “look biased,” you’ve already chosen a side, and it’s not the Constitution’s.

Want a fix? Start every day with a Democracy Under Siege section, above the fold, in bold. Put a damn countdown to civil liberties lost, oaths broken, and laws ignored. Or better yet, start hiring from the local newsrooms who still have a pulse.

Because right now, too many elite editors aren’t covering the coup. They’re platforming it.

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Lisa Appleton's avatar

Thank you! This story — and the ongoing siege against our democracy — need to be front and center daily. I have considered canceling my NYT subscription but haven’t yet. Maybe now’s the time — or start with a clearly worded, angry letter?

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Pat Kenney-Moore's avatar

Just canceled mine. While sad to let this once great newspaper go, I can no longer stomach the utter lack of veracity and failure to uphold and protect the fourth estate.

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Mighty's avatar

Hit them where it hurts. You won’t be alone.

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Diane Giron's avatar

Nor have they covered the protests!

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Mighty's avatar

I’ll continue protesting regardless! Chickens all.

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Sabrina Haake's avatar

NO MSM covered the protests! WTF??

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Patricia Williams's avatar

I’ve been saying this for several years. There is no question in my mind about their partisanship and i find it disgusting as well as unAmerican—and actually criminal as it fosters false understanding of events.

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Nora West Terres's avatar

So glad I canceled my Post subscription, after 30 years.

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Heidi Jon Schmidt's avatar

It's an outrage, and it's a serious barrier to Democrats and others fighting fascism. People WANT to believe everything is okay, and the newspapers allow them to go along, feeling that everything is more or less all right, instead of recognizing and reacting to the danger.

When Trump has turned ICE into his own police force and is pursuing and imprisoning anyone who disagrees with him, it will be too late for us to see what has happened. We need to know now, and the fourth estate has failed miserably in its duty to warn.

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Patricia Williams's avatar

Makes one oner how many of their owners and/or editors are really Trump/Project 25 supporters. The anti democracy traitors have done their groundwork well. We should all have realized this when they refused to print the truth about Trump in the run up to the election.

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Mighty's avatar

They’re intimidated by Trump, just like some law firms and universities. As usual, the dollar supersedes telling the truth. And the people suffer. We old ladies are not intimidated!

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Sabrina Haake's avatar

Restacked. Thank you. Trump's denial of the Constitution amounts to yet another iteration of the same message: that trump, not the judiciary, decides what the law is. This has not been the case since Marbury v Madison, decided in 1803. Trump’s attacks on the rule of law, in concert with his deliberate weakening of national security, are acts of sabotage. He is wrecking our constitutional form of government in an effort to replace it with something else. From this perspective, it is difficult to see Trump’s strategy as anything short of treasonous. Corporate owned media have failed to identify this basic truth.

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Jarno Jokinen's avatar

Worst is yet to come. Donald "The Beast" Trump is building a wall once again. Colossal tariff wall that is the beginning of the end for the system of down. At first the beast will pull the plug out of the global economy. The worst financial crisis of human history will pull a swarm of the banks underwater and the bank run begins. Then the beast will collapse a mountain of debt shattering the backbone of the monetary system causing a systemic risk to realize. Finally the beast will cast American citizens into a system slavery under the name of Ronald Wilson Reagan, just to "honor his legacy" count the number. After the destruction a new world order will be established in the US. And the Golden Age begins from the ruins of the world wide collapse. All of the system slaves will love it. No more cash - just digital transactions. No more traditional criminal activity. No more tax evasion. No more transactions without the "all seeing eye". Outcasts will hate the world without freedom, hope and privacy. To cover up the mess and distract the public by smoke and mirrors, the beast will engage in a war with Iran. Lies and deceit, corruption and decay, dancing on the graves will continue. Until; Black hole sun, won't you come, won't you come... I want to play a game. Time has come to opt out of the empire of filth. Live or die...

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Dreamer's avatar

Mass cancellation of subscriptions - via phone call and tell them the reason is these examples and then go with the independents.

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PLawson85's avatar

They STARTED kissing his ass 10 years ago.

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Sandy's avatar

Criminals are liars, liars are criminals.

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Pat D's avatar

Reporters always complaining of his actions and words being normalized are complicit.

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