The Guardian: ‘Anticipatory obedience’: newspapers’ refusal to endorse shines light on billionaire owners’ motives

Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men in the world, now owns the Washington Post. Photograph: Gary Cameron/Reuters

 Lois Beckett in Los Angeles, California

Sat 26 Oct 2024 09.14 EDT

 

The Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post both declined to endorse a candidate – a sign of political media capture

 

When two American billionaires blocked the newspapers they own from endorsing Kamala Harris this month, they tried to frame the decision as an act of civic responsibility.

“I think my fear is, if we chose either one, that it would just add to the division,” Patrick Soon-Shiong, the biotech billionaire who owns the Los Angeles Times, said. He emphasised that though some might assume his family is “ultra-progressive”, he is a registered “independent”.

At the Washington Post, which reported that its billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, was behind the decision, publisher William Lewis described the retreat from making presidential endorsements as “a statement in support of our readers’ ability to make up their own minds”.

Veteran journalists and media critics are using a very different phrase to describe Soon-Shiong’s and Bezos’s choice: they’re saying the two billionaires, among the richest men on the entire globe, are performing “anticipatory obedience” to Donald Trump.

Yes, “cowardice” has also been a popular way to describe the choice by the billionaire owners of two of the country’s major newspapers to not to risk angering Trump by allowing their papers to endorse his opponent.

But “anticipatory obedience” is more specific. The term comes from On Tyranny, the bestselling guide to authoritarianism by Timothy Snyder, a historian of eastern and central Europe. The phrase describes, in Snyder’s words, “the major lesson of the Nazi takeover, and what was supposed to be one of the major lessons of the twentieth century: don’t hand over the power you have before you have to. Don’t protect yourself too early.” It’s a way of describing what Europeans did wrong as totalitarians came to power: by “mentally and physically conceding, you’re already giving over your power to the aspiring authoritarian”, Snyder explains...  READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/26/anticipatory-obedience-newspapers-endorsement-refusal

 [AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

It's an open book test #FreePalestine ... Pro-Palestinian protesters target White House Correspondents Dinner

LIBERTY & free speech today

 

Chants of ‘shame on you’ greet guests arriving for the annual White House correspondents’ dinner

 

CBS News: White House Correspondents' Dinner overshadowed by protests against Israel-Hamas war

"..... With hundreds of protesters rallying against the war in Gaza outside the event and concerns over the conflict and humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the perils for journalists covering the conflict, the war hung over this year's event. But speakers inside made only passing mention of the conflict despite some having to run a gauntlet of demonstrators. Mr. Biden's speech, which lasted around 10 minutes, made no mention of the ongoing war or the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

"Shame on you!" protesters draped in the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh cloth shouted, running after men in tuxedos and suits and women in long dresses who were holding clutch purses as guests hurried inside for the dinner.

Chants accused U.S. journalists of undercovering the war and misrepresenting it. "Western media we see you, and all the horrors that you hide," crowds chanted at one point.

Other protesters lay sprawled motionless on the pavement, next to mock-ups of flak vests with "press" insignia.

Ralliers cried "Free, free Palestine." They cheered when at one point someone inside the Washington Hilton — where the dinner has been held for decades — unfurled a Palestinian flag from a top-floor hotel window.

Criticism of the Mr. Biden administration's support for Israel's six-month-old military offensive in Gaza has spread through American college campuses, with students pitching encampments in an effort to force their universities to divest from Israel...."  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/white-house-correspondents-dinner-overshadowed-protests-israel-hamas-war/

 

Pro-Palestinian protesters target White House Correspondents Dinner

Protesters greeted administration officials, journalists and celebrities as they arrived at the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner in D.C. on Saturday, demanding that President Biden do more to protect Palestinian lives in Gaza.

Why it matters: The Democratic Party is divided over Biden's approach to the war in Gaza, with some Arab Americans threatening to withhold their support for Biden until he puts more pressure on Israel to minimize Palestinian casualties and allow more humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.

• With tensions flaring at university campuses across the country, Democrats are concerned that division over Gaza will fracture the winning coalition that Biden assembled four years ago.
• More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed since Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

Driving the news: "Why are you attending a party when people are dying," one of the protesters shouted.

https://www.axios.com/2024/04/27/palestinian-protesters-white-house-correspondents-dinner 

NPR: A demonstrator with red paint on their hand and face is seen behind a police barricade during a pro-Palestinian protest over the Israel-Hamas war at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, Saturday April 27, 2024, in Washington. photo Terrance Williams/AP

If you are not careful...

 

CONNECT THE DOTS: 1917 ... 1948 ... 2023

RACISM: 1917 "Jerusalem Is Rescued By British After 673 Years Of Moslem Rule"

 

1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights "Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world..."

The Beginning of Forced Displacement of Palestinians

The Nakba
During 1947 and 1948, Israel systematically demolished 531 Palestinian villages inside the area that became Israel. More than 200 of these villages were destroyed, and between 250,000 and 350,000 people were displaced before May 1948 when the first Arab-Israeli war officially began.

A 67-year-old Palestinian man in the Dehaishe refugee camp displays the original key and title deeds to the home his family abandoned when they fled their village in the 1948 war in Israel

1948 UN Resolution 194: The United Nations General Assembly adopts resolution 194 (III), resolving that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.”  ....

Greenwashing refers to when a state or organization appeals to environmentalism in order to deflect attention from its harmful practices. Robbing The Refugees   

 

Since 1948, thanks to Zionism

 

 

My letter to my local newspaper The Patriot News RE Retraction for our 1863 editorial calling Gettysburg Address 'silly remarks': Editorial

RE: Retraction for our 1863 editorial calling Gettysburg Address 'silly remarks': Editorial
http://www.pennlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/11/a_patriot-news_editorial_retraction_the_gettysburg_address.html

Dear Editor,

LOVED your Editorial "Retraction for our 1863 editorial calling Gettysburg Address 'silly remarks'"!!!

Hindsight certainly is 20/20!  It really is totally impossible to know beyond an educated guess what speeches and stances will stand the tests of time, as well as what ideas and projects are a worthwhile investment.  However we can try our best to be educated- and compassionate, as well as humble, knowing that, as my brother was fond of saying when we were little: "No one is perfect."

In light of that fact I can not help but wish the Patriot News the best of luck, and hope that you have many many more years ahead of publishing good, bad, and atrocious news & opinions. 

Oh and just because I clicked onto your article via facebook, does not mean we prefer online news: My family, plus many of our friends, have been subscribers for years and we would all much prefer to have a daily newspaper arrive every day, ready to be savored and shared at our unplugged leisure as part of an every day daily routine.  It is more satisfying, more convenient, and it is infinitely more trustworthy, for we know the words won't be changed, and the information won't be disappeared.

Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab

Lincoln's few appropriate words were to dedicate a national cemetery, the first of its kind in American history. The idea of creating a National Cemetery sprang directly from the horrors of the aftermath of the battle at Gettysburg and also reflects changing notions of the government's responsibility to its citizen soldiers, a result of the clash between the reality of war and prevailing notions of a proper death. 11/13/2013 Sean Simmers | ssimmers@pennlive.com The Patriot News

(2013) A Patriot-News editorial retraction: The Gettysburg Address 

Living on the wrong side of history? The Harrisburg Patriot & Union's notorious 'review' of the Gettysburg Address

Seven things you may not have known about Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

***

the text of 

Abraham Lincoln's 

The Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. 

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.