Mainstream media needs to start taking the threats to our democracy seriously

D. Earl Stephens
02 March 2024
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Dear Mainstream Media:

I want you all to stop whatever it is you think you are doing right now, and listen to me — and listen good. I am proposing some big changes that will affect far too many of you, but could well result in you still having a job after the 2024 presidential election.

You can thank me later, but for now, sit down and shut up. I am done f------ around with you.

Starting now, you are to stop embarrassing yourselves, and all of us who gave our professional lives to working in the free press. You are to do this IMMEDIATELY.

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I want to tell you, because apparently nobody else has, that way too many of you aren’t performing journalism, you are doing performative journalism, which is a dangerous waste of everybody’s time.

I have no idea how or why this is happening, but it must stop NOW.

Starting today, you will start covering Donald Trump like you are professional journalists. You are to start framing what is at stake in this election. You are to make it crystal clear in every story you edit and/or produce about the election, who Trump really is, his myriad transgressions in the past, and any other background material that will inform readers and viewers about his extreme threat to America.

This is the BARE MINIMUM your newsroom managers should be asking of you before you file any story about this man and this election. Context and background information are everything when covering a story of this importance. Somehow you have either forgotten that, or have made the catastrophic and intentional decision not to include it in your reporting.

If you don’t understand by virtue of his caustic words and dirty deeds that Trump means this country, and many of the people in it, harm, not only are you devoid of any news sense, you should check your pulse because you might be dead.

This man is incredibly dangerous. This is not conjecture, it is an absolute fact, and you know it.

YOU KNOW IT.

Starting IMMEDIATELY, in EVERY STORY you write about Trump, this needs to be included near the top:

“Despite losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden by more than seven million votes, Trump lies about the results every chance he gets. This lie, his refusal to concede that election, and his many failed attempts to have it overturned have ripped America apart, radicalized his base, and resulted in the worst attack on our Capitol since 1812. Federal and state charges are pending in the attack that resulted in the deaths and beatings of law enforcement officers, and sent lawmakers running for their lives.”

Listen to me, dammit: You CANNOT write a story about a man who is running for the president of the United States, without mentioning his open hostility to America and her democracy, and his sympathetic treatment of dictators like the murdering Putin and others like him across the globe.

He is the greatest threat to our democracy on Earth.

Not mentioning these things, would be like writing a story about a person who is interested in purchasing a major bank, but not informing your readers/viewers that this person is a known bank robber.

Actually, now that I think about it, it would be like reporting on Trump purchasing a bank, without letting readers/viewers know about his scores of business failures and bankruptcies, and that he is currently facing close to $500 million in fines for his dirty financial dealings.

Look, you are failing in your jobs so completely right now, if I’m being honest, I would just fire all but a few of you given the opportunity. You literally don't know what you are doing, and you make me sick.

I wish I could turn your desks over, put a foot up your asses, kick you out the door, and then fumigate your empty newsrooms.

Once I was convinced the stench of shoddy, rotten journalism had abated, I would open them back up for business and start filling them with real journalists, who have real news sense. These journalists would be free of any rotten habits, and have the ability to spot one of the biggest stories in our nation’s history, and report on it with the accuracy and urgency this situation demands, and your audience deserves.

I would assemble democracy desks, which would be the hub of these newsrooms, that did nothing but report on the threats to America if God forbid this unhinged, racist maniac was elected.

We all know, or should, that there are scores of stories about Trump and his willing Republicans cohorts that aren’t being written each day. Barring breaking news elsewhere, these stories would get top-line, above-the-fold treatment, and be blasted out the minute they were filed and edited. They would be dedicated to coverage of the biggest threat to our Democracy since the Civil War.

They would provide readers/viewers the much-needed context of what would happen if an authoritarian regime took over Washington. They would talk about how our electoral process would be demolished, our courts and the rule of law would be destroyed, and millions of lives would be threatened because Trump would lay waste to any checks and balances as a ruling dictator.

And if a few of you are still dumb enough to be doubting me right now, you are to read Project 25 when I am done taking you to the woodshed, and start reporting on its chilling contents daily. Again, Trump and his Republicans mean us harm.

They are telling us this and putting it in writing, you morons.

I have been writing with some urgency lately about how appalling I think you are, and how I simply don’t recognize a media I left more than a decade ago. I just don’t know what the hell has happened to you.

My breaking point came on Sunday morning when I went through the lead stories on both The Washington Post and The New York Times about the South Carolina primary and NONE of the above context was mentioned about the dangers of another Trump presidency.

NOT ONE WORD.

We are simply NOT going to put up with this anymore.

YOU ARE FAILING THIS COUNTRY.

At the end of your stories about the threat to our Democracy, you will be permitted to add this:

“The fall of America’s Democracy and the rise of an authoritarian regime would almost certainly mean the end of our free, independent press in America. Your right to fair, balanced and timely reporting would be over, and we no longer would be able to call power into account without being jailed. We encourage you to take this threat very seriously.”

Are we clear on this, people?

Good.

Now go back to work and start acting like a working press that is worth saving.

Sincerely,

D. Earl Stephens

P.S. — If any of you dare to use the pathetic excuse that you are being forced to comport yourselves in this amateur fashion by your corporate overlords, because they allegedly want the 2024 race close for financial reasons, then, no surprise, you are completely missing yet another huge story.

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D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. Follow @EarlofEnough and on his website.

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