Journalism in an Autocratic Age
How to build and protect media institutions robust enough to stand against fascism.
Sarah will be talking with Dan Pfeiffer tomorrow night at 9 p.m. eastern about what to expect in the final week of the campaign. If you miss it, it’ll be up the next day at the homepage. Head over to TheBulwark.com/events for more details.
1. Cancel Culture
I am not here to tell anyone what to do with their money. If you want to cancel your subscription to the Washington Post, that’s between you and your God.
I’ll just tell you that I didn’t cancel my subscription. And I’d like to explain why.
The problem isn’t the Washington Post. It’s the owner of the Post.
And realistically, there is no way to send Jeff Bezos a message about your disagreement with his choices for the simple fact that the WaPo is not a revenue stream for him.
The Post’s operating losses/profits exist on a small scale: In 2023 the paper lost $77m. That same year Amazon’s net profits were $30b. With a “b.” Bezos himself is worth $205b. If the Post simply stopped charging anyone for subscriptions, Bezos might not even notice it on his balance sheets.
What’s more: I suspect Bezos doesn’t want to own the Post anymore. It has proved to be more trouble for him than he expected. I suspect that if he could unload it tomorrow, he would.
The problem is that there’s no one to sell it to.
Bezos bought the Post in 2013 for $250m. He didn’t pay that money because the Post was a thriving business. It was a rescue mission and $250m was a token payment—a sign of respect for the Graham family. The real purchase price was that Bezos committed to take on the Post’s liabilities and absorb its future losses.
Who in their right mind would take on such responsibilities today in the era of Trumpism? Anyone with enough money to float the Post will be either (1) a Trump crony or (2) vulnerable to pressure from Trump. As Timothy Snyder said over the weekend, “A problem with the very wealthy is that, alas, the least vulnerable have a tendency to think of themselves as the most vulnerable.”
2. The Business of Media
In an autocratic age, journalism takes on heightened importance. But journalistic institutions cannot rely on billionaire benefactors, because, as Snyder says, those benefactors view themselves as vulnerable.
Which means that the only way to protect journalistic institutions is for them to be profitable.
The catch is that it also matters how they achieve profitability. If revenues are dependent on advertising, then publications are driven not by ideas but an existential need for popularity.
No, the only way to build a media institution robust enough to stand against authoritarianism is for it to be a profitable business supported primarily by its readers.
That’s it. That’s the ball game.
A publication which is solvent and supported by a distributed network of readers—each contributing a relatively small amount of money—is the only way for a media institution to stand against the onslaught.1
You may have noticed that this is how we built The Bulwark. It wasn’t an accident.
I have a number of thoughts about the intersection of journalism, business, and liberal democracy. One of them is that any institution which is not explicitly anti-authoritarian will eventually be coopted or conquered by authoritarians.
Another is that scale matters. The larger the scale of a media organization, the harder it is to maintain an anti-authoritarian ethos.
But those are for another time. Suffice it to say that if you look closely at the business of the The Bulwark you will notice that we are designed—from tip to tail—to resist authoritarian pressure.
Again: This did not happen by chance. We built this place in the shadow of the first Trump administration and we knew what we were doing.
What I want to hammer home for you is something I believe in my bones:
Community is the only way to resist fascism.
This maxim means different things in different contexts. In the context of media it means:
In an autocratic age, it is not enough to be a consumer of media. You must be a stakeholder in it.
You must support the institutions you want to exist in the world. You must help build those institutions. And then you must participate in their defense.
All of which is why we started The Bulwark.
It’s also why I subscribe to a few dozen publications—from the Atlantic, to the New Yorker, to Plough. From Heather Cox Richardson, to Judd Legum, to the UnPopulist.
And it’s why I still subscribe to the Washington Post. I want the Post to be as financially strong as possible so that some day—hopefully soon—it won’t have to rely on Jeff Bezos. Your mileage may vary. But to my mind, making the Post more reliant on its billionaire underwriter only deepens the problem.
Obviously, not everyone has the time or money to support dozens of publications. I work in this space, which is how I justify it to myself. We all have to prioritize as best we can.
So if you decided to cancel your WaPo subscription so that you could support, say, Arc Digital, I understand that.
But my larger point remains: We no longer have the luxury to be passive consumers of media. We have to support the media institutions that we want to exist in the world.
In an autocratic age, everyday acts of civic responsibility—like reading the newspaper or voting—take on outsized importance and require commitment, intentionality, and courage.
And the best way to foster those virtues is in community with others who remain committed to the liberal project.
If you want to join us here at The Bulwark, I hope you do. We only exist because of the support of our members.
But also: No true community should be gated only for those with the ability to pay. If you want to be part of The Bulwark but can’t swing it financially, just hit reply to this email and we’ll work something out. Everyone who wants to belong to this community, can. (And a big thanks to our founding members for making this policy possible.)
3. Popular Interest
also understands that having oligarchs own important media outlets as a hobby is problematic:The Washington Post, unlike Amazon and Blue Origin, has been a money loser for Bezos, reportedly running a deficit of $100 million last year. More importantly, Bezos believes that former President Trump’s hostility toward the Washington Post, which produced critical coverage of Trump’s presidency, cost his companies billions in government contracts. In 2019, Amazon sued the federal government for awarding a $10 billion cloud-computing contract to Microsoft, alleging that Amazon lost out on the contract based on Bezos’ ownership of the Washington Post. . . .
In a few months, it is possible that Trump will be president again. This time, Bezos faces an even more acute threat to his business interests. Elon Musk, who owns Blue Origin’s chief rival SpaceX, has aligned himself closely with Trump, spending tens of millions in support of Trump’s campaign and making appearances in swing states on Trump’s behalf. . . .
Robert Kagan, who worked at the Washington Post for two decades and resigned immediately following Lewis’ announcement, said the meeting was evidence of a quid pro quo. “Trump waited to make sure that Bezos did what he said he was going to do, and then met with the Blue Origin people,” Kagan told The Daily Beast. “Which tells us that there was an actual deal made, meaning that Bezos communicated, or through his people, communicated directly with Trump, and they set up this quid pro quo.”
According to CNN, “Amazon CEO Andy Jassy also recently reached out to check in” with Trump.
The apparent capitulation to Trump illustrates the danger of billionaires scooping up major media organizations as a side hustle. For nearly everyone, the price Bezos paid for the Washington Post is an unfathomable amount of money. For Bezos, it’s less than half the $575 million he paid for his new 417-foot superyacht, Koru, and its 246-foot support yacht, Abeona, which has a helipad, accommodations for staff, and storage for smaller boats and jet skis.
Bezos did not get to the point where he could afford such yachts through his dedication to journalistic integrity. He became the second-wealthiest person in the world by prioritizing the bottom line. And it appears that continues to be his priority. . . .
Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the LA Times, also abruptly demanded his publication stay neutral in the presidential election. Soon-Shiong bought the paper for $500 million in 2018.
Soon-Shiong is a healthcare and biotech entrepreneur whose companies rely on the federal government. His companies regularly seek FDA approval for new drugs, vaccines and therapies and federal funding for research.
The editorial board had planned to endorse Kamala Harris and publish a series of columns tentatively titled “The Case Against Trump.” But in a post on X, Soon-Shiong said he offered the LA Times editorial board “the opportunity to draft a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate during their tenures at the White House, and how these policies affected the nation.” Soon-Shiong said that “[i]nstead of adopting this path as suggested, the Editorial Board chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision.”
Soon-Shiong did not explain why he did not demand a similar approach for U.S. House and Senate races, state ballot initiatives, and many other contests facing California voters. Beginning in September, the LA Times has endorsed in dozens of races up and down the ballot.
Read the whole thing. Like the LA Times, the Washington Post hasn’t sworn off endorsements entirely: They’ve made three since late September in Senate and House races.
There’s danger in relying solely on your subscribers, too. The risk is that a publication can be captured by its audience and forced to never tell readers things they don’t want to hear.
I worry about that for The Bulwark, too. This is why you will occasionally see me in the comments suggesting to a subscriber that they cancel their subscriptions if it appears that the person only wants to hear cheerleading or happy talk.
The best way to avoid audience capture is to actively (and frequently) level-set expectations.
The Post is losing money. I continue to subscribe because it makes me happy to think my subscription is COSTING Bezos money. I unsubscribed and re-subscribed at one third of the cost - so I'm costing him even MORE money.
I think Bezos is just a pragmatic billionaire, not a dyed in the wool fascist, like Musk. When Musk took over twitter, it immediately devolved into a fascist spouting outlet, because that's what Musk wanted. I don't think Bezos actually cares - he'll let The Post carry on until it impinges in any significant way on his bottom line. Which it doesn't at the moment - except that he has to toss a few crumbs to trump.
Rather like big business felt about Hitler in the 1930's "Oh, what he's doing won't affect US! - and look at the money we're making. . "
Until it all went pear shaped.
I strongly respect the Bulwark for its deliberate statements that it will not be captured by its audience. I don’t _want_ to just be told what I want to hear.
So, I’m gonna go into a tangent here about another site on this, and it’s not even the usual suspects. I was struck by an article on the Vox web site over the weekend, in which it was positing the question, as though it were still a question, as to whether a year into the Gaza war, Israel is guilty of genocide.
So… here’s some relevant facts that should dispense with that question:
1. By Hamas’ own numbers — and I think we can all agree that Hamas is not in any way trying to downplay the death toll — roughly 40-45k people have died in Gaza. Now, here’s the figures for the other four major wars in south Asia since the turn of the century:
Syria: 500k, including over 300k civilians, amidst rampant WMD use and massacres by both the Syrian government and ISIS in populated areas
Yemen: 150k killed in combat, plus another 250k or more who have died of actual starvation
Iraq: estimates range from 200-500k, with more than a few massacres from ISIS and other groups
Afghanistan: 176k dead, as a lower bound
2. About 30k of that death toll in Gaza happened in the first weeks of airstrikes. The rate of casualties has strictly gone _down_ since then as Israel has put boots on the ground and largely gained functional conform of the strip.
3. While there’s hunger in Gaza, Hamas bears at least as much responsibility for that as Israel. Food aid _does_ go in, but Hamas routinely steals it and routinely threatens and fires upon civilians who try to get any of it. There’s an old saw among cynics, “It’s not really a famine if the soldiers aren’t skinny.”
4. Even to the degree that that’s happening, we are simply not seeing mass starvation deaths. Look at Hamas’ numbers again, and then Yemen’s, where there WAS large scale starvation. We’ve been getting told Gaza is on the brink of mass famine for most of the last year (you know, right alongside the claims of genocide), but even according to the group that would most want us to believe that is true, it simply is not borne out in the death toll.
5. Similarly, there simply is no sign of massacres, round ups into camps, death squads, WMD usage, or any other things that a reasonable person would consider an obvious sign of mass extermination.
So what does the article focus on? Back benchers in the Knesset talking about sieges and the like. None of the quotes are from anyone in the Israeli Cabinet or the chain of command, nor do any of them have any decision making authority. That’s used as evidence of some nebulous “intent,” and that, plus… whatever, is hand waved into questions of genocide.
And this, again, amidst what is by far the least bloody war in south Asia this century, and where the real rate of casualties is going down, not up, as Israel gains functional control of the enclave — and that is all ACCORDING TO HAMAS’ OWN NUMBERS, taking them at their word that this is how many dead there are.
So… somebody explain to me why this article appears, as though there is a serious question here.
Audience capture. Vox knows their left wing readers want to hear that they’ve been marinating in antisemitism on this subject roughly as much as Fox News’ viewers want to hear that Joe Biden did, in fact, win the 2020 election. And so, even though the facts on the ground OBVIOUSLY are those of a war in an urban area (side note: it’s amazing how massive airstrikes in Iran don’t produce any known civilian casualties when the military targets are NOT being sited under kindergartens), they are unwilling to simply say, “while there’s some extremist rhetoric floating around, and this war has resulted in significant displacement as wars in populated areas often do, the facts on the ground simply do not support any conclusion or suspicion that genocide or any other form of mass extermination is underway.”
And there’s too much of that going around.