No Middle Ground

Reflections on My Resignation from the LA Times Three Weeks Later

Three weeks ago, I explained in these pages why I was leaving my position as senior legal editor at the LA Times. The response has been far stronger than I anticipated. Many of you shared thoughtful comments and subscribed to the Substack, and coverage of the resignation appeared in unexpected places.

The resignation ordinarily would have been a non-event, but it happened to catch a wave at a critical point in history for both our media and our politics. The wave is powered in part by deep concern over where Trump is already taking the country and in part by deep disquiet over the apparent capitulation to it within traditional media organizations.

Why I Just Resigned From The Los Angeles Times

I think we are in a fairly dark spot as a country, so I want to begin with the silver lining of your amazing response. The Substack is quite young, but it feels as if I’ve stumbled into a fantastic community of patriots who are eager to engage and push back against authoritarianism however they can. It’s hard not to feel crestfallen—or exhausted—in the wake of the election. But it’s clear that many people are resolved to dust themselves off and get back in the fight. I’m immensely grateful to have connected with so many of you who share this resolve and determined, for my part, to live up to your support.

Two things seemed clear at the time, and they have only gotten clearer since. The first is that we are watching a genuine crisis play out in real time as Trump moves to break down the constitutional and cultural protections against authoritarianism. The majority of the country doesn’t seem to share that alarm, which is deeply disappointing but only increases the urgency.

The second is that Trump’s successful attacks on a series of critical guardrails make it all the more crucial for media to fulfill its traditional role as vigorous defenders of the public’s right to know.

That means, at a bare minimum, distinguishing between truth and falsity—or, more to the point, calling out the lies that escape Trump’s lips on an hourly basis. It is media’s bedrock responsibility to point out that the emperor has no clothes and ignore the chirping of his courtiers about how well-dressed he is.

That urgency doesn’t diminish as Trump adds to his landspeed record for lies by a president. The country has never experienced such a steady diet of falsehoods as Trump supplies. Sometimes it feels as if his lies are ignored because they are so constant, or they’re dismissed as “just Trump being Trump.” But that’s a dangerous non sequitur. The 1,001st lie is no less false—and possibly more damaging to the country—and it’s no less important to call it out.

The news from just the last few weeks sharpens the concerns. Without dragging the LA Times through the mud again, a quick report of recent developments demonstrates that the project of placating Trump is in full bloom in El Segundo, where the paper now publishes. The owner reportedly blocked an editorial that was critical of Trump; he then insisted on reviewing drafts of any editorials about him; he ordered that editorials critical of Trump (but not other topics) be accompanied by favorable ones; and most recently, he issued an edict against writing about Trump at all.

It’s clear that the forced friendliness to Trump can’t be defended as a course correction or an epiphany about Trump’s policies. Going easy on Trump means going easy on lies. The owner has declared (on Fox News, in fact) that the paper’s coverage will be more “fair and balanced,” but nobody has pointed to any inaccurately negative reporting that calls out for revision. The rebalancing is just a euphemism for an artificial increase in coverage that placates Trump, accuracy (and public awareness) be damned.

Trump’s menacing gestures toward media to make nice or face his wrath is no great surprise. In fact, it’s directly out of the authoritarian playbook. But it is a profound disappointment that media has begun to fall in line.

Compare the way the press stepped up during Watergate in the face of direct threats from the White House. John Mitchell, Nixon’s Attorney General, famously warned the Washington Post in response to its aggressive reporting that “Katie Graham’s [the Post’s publisher] tit is gonna get caught in a wringer.” But the Post didn’t buckle, and along with other outlets, it played perhaps the principal role in forcing Nixon’s resignation.

The post-election response to Trump’s victory on the part of some of the country’s most prominent outlets revealed a structural weakness most of us hadn’t previously contemplated: vulnerability to Trump’s pressure based on corporate holdings apart from the news organization itself. That’s part of an overall difficult trend in journalism—big cable players and most of the largest newspapers are part of umbrella corporate consortiums with multiple holdings. The owners of the Washington Post and LA Times, unlike many more struggling media organizations, have the financial wherewithal to fight back against Trump’s influence, but they have their other holdings to worry about, which may have competing interests.

This was the takeaway lesson of the ABC settlement, which shifted the power balance between Trump and the media one more notch in Trump’s direction. It’s near certain that ABC would have vigorously fought the defamation case Trump brought against it and George Stephanopoulos anytime in the last 50 years until a few months ago. But the sweetheart settlement was decided in the boardroom of Walt Disney, a massive entertainment conglomerate, which, like every other company, is figuring out how to make its way with a new boss in town.

Et Tu, ABC?

You can be certain that every smaller outlet in the country took notice of the conduct of the big players and wondered if they could afford to be on the front guard in the media pushback against Trump, when one defamation suit—even meritless—could ruin them.

But if the hope is that a modicum of capitulation will induce him to play nice, legacy media is kidding itself. Trump’s goodwill lasts only until the latest perceived slight. The most recent case in point: Trump’s preposterous lawsuit against the Des Moines Register for publishing a poll that, as it turned out, understated his eventual support in Iowa. The lawsuit has nothing to do with recovering damages—there are none—and everything to do with bringing the press to heel and making them shy away from truthful negative coverage.

These developments are alarming, but they are also clarifying. The primary lesson they drive home is that the survival of democratic rule in this country is intimately tied to truthful reporting. That may mean looking to new sources of reporting that are fully independent. They are out there, and this Substack will remain one. It’s a lot easier to be scrappy when there’s no boardroom to answer to.

Calling out lies—and there’s always a lie to call out where Trump’s power-mongering is concerned—is a journalist’s perennial first responsibility. But I think more is required of the media in our current straits. That is not to capitulate to assaults on democratic norms. Daily life feels largely unchanged, and it can be hard to appreciate the import of Trump’s constitutional abuses as they are happening. So it’s urgent for people with a platform to sound the alarm, and sound it again and again. It feels like a somewhat upstream impulse when Trump is getting a pass—or at least indifference—from many quarters for his baldly authoritarian maneuvers. No matter: this is a time for choosing. It’s Trump or truth, and Trump or constitutional rule. There is no “fair and balanced” middle ground.

Talk to you later.