150 Citizens
some of the negative press he was beginning to receive from the Post, he
posted on Twitter:
The @washingtonpost, which loses a fortune, is owned by @JeffBezos for purposes of keeping taxes down at his no profit company,
@amazon.
Bezos, new himself to Twitter, responded that he could send the candidate into space,
110
but such bravado began to slip as Trump’s hold on the
Republican nomination solidified. In May 2016, Trump began to attack
Amazon’s slippery tax practices, claiming in an interview with Sean Hannity that Bezos was not only using the Post to attack his candidacy but
also to shore up tax benefits: while this was more than a little hypocritical
from a candidate who had refused to release his tax returns, it was also, as
columnists such as Emily Jane Fox observed, an easy strike in an election
in which the aggressive financial gains by big companies since the crash
of 2008 were deeply unpopular.
111
The Post itself played the conflict –
one which would only intensify after Trump became the President – as a
personal grievance on Donald Trump’s part, stemming from his “lifelong
rivalry with billionaires who surpass him on lists of the planet’s richest
men”.
112
As an ad hominem attack, it may have been fairly effective with
its intended, elite audience, but it did little to deter Trump supporters’
distaste for what they saw as a deceitful mainstream media.
In February 2017, for the first time in its 140-year history, the Post adopted a motto: “Democracy dies in darkness”. Response was, to say the
least, mixed, although probably the best rejoinder was Slate’s “15 Metal
Albums Whose Titles Are Less Dark Than The Washington Post’s New
Motto”.
113
According to the Post itself, Jeff Bezos had used the phrase the
previous May, apparently having heard it from Bob Woodward during
a presentation for The Last of the President’s Men. Woodward, in turn,
appeared to have adapted it from Judge Damon J. Keith, who ruled in a
pre-Watergate case that the government could not wiretap individuals without a warrant, remarking that, “democracy dies in the dark”.
114
Numerous
commentators have, unsurprisingly, viewed the motto as a direct rebuke to
President Trump and his repeated attacks on the media as the “enemy of the
people”, evoking the myth of the fourth estate as a watchdog of the state and
the friend, not enemy, of the populace. Yet, a proper public sphere has never
been synonymous with monopolies of the media. Democracy may, indeed,
die in the dark; however, when the few hold too powerful a lamp against
which all other lights fade, democracy may also be too easily blinded.
Far from the Madding Media
A recurring theme throughout this book has been how truly fake
news, of the kind peddled by Infowars and many alt-“journalists”, has
some of the negative press he was beginning to receive from the Post, he
posted on Twitter:
The @washingtonpost, which loses a fortune, is owned by @JeffBezos for purposes of keeping taxes down at his no profit company,
@amazon.
Bezos, new himself to Twitter, responded that he could send the candidate into space,
110
but such bravado began to slip as Trump’s hold on the
Republican nomination solidified. In May 2016, Trump began to attack
Amazon’s slippery tax practices, claiming in an interview with Sean Hannity that Bezos was not only using the Post to attack his candidacy but
also to shore up tax benefits: while this was more than a little hypocritical
from a candidate who had refused to release his tax returns, it was also, as
columnists such as Emily Jane Fox observed, an easy strike in an election
in which the aggressive financial gains by big companies since the crash
of 2008 were deeply unpopular.
111
The Post itself played the conflict –
one which would only intensify after Trump became the President – as a
personal grievance on Donald Trump’s part, stemming from his “lifelong
rivalry with billionaires who surpass him on lists of the planet’s richest
men”.
112
As an ad hominem attack, it may have been fairly effective with
its intended, elite audience, but it did little to deter Trump supporters’
distaste for what they saw as a deceitful mainstream media.
In February 2017, for the first time in its 140-year history, the Post adopted a motto: “Democracy dies in darkness”. Response was, to say the
least, mixed, although probably the best rejoinder was Slate’s “15 Metal
Albums Whose Titles Are Less Dark Than The Washington Post’s New
Motto”.
113
According to the Post itself, Jeff Bezos had used the phrase the
previous May, apparently having heard it from Bob Woodward during
a presentation for The Last of the President’s Men. Woodward, in turn,
appeared to have adapted it from Judge Damon J. Keith, who ruled in a
pre-Watergate case that the government could not wiretap individuals without a warrant, remarking that, “democracy dies in the dark”.
114
Numerous
commentators have, unsurprisingly, viewed the motto as a direct rebuke to
President Trump and his repeated attacks on the media as the “enemy of the
people”, evoking the myth of the fourth estate as a watchdog of the state and
the friend, not enemy, of the populace. Yet, a proper public sphere has never
been synonymous with monopolies of the media. Democracy may, indeed,
die in the dark; however, when the few hold too powerful a lamp against
which all other lights fade, democracy may also be too easily blinded.
Far from the Madding Media
A recurring theme throughout this book has been how truly fake
news, of the kind peddled by Infowars and many alt-“journalists”, has