(Photo
by
David
McNew/Getty
Images)
Jonathan
Turley
had
a
broken
clock
moment
this
week
when
he
delved
into
the
debacle
unfolding
at
the
Washington
Post,
where
the
venerable
publication
is
hemorrhaging
subscribers
after
announcing
an
11th
hour
decision
to
shelve
an
editorial
endorsement
conveniently
after
Trump’s
people
chatted
with
executives
within
the
Jeff
Bezos
empire.
As
outraged
subscribers
fled
the
paper,
Bezos
penned
a
response
that
is,
correctly,
being
widely
mocked.
Turley
has
offered
Bezos
backup
with
a
Fox
News
post,
writing
that
“Bezos
could
do
for
the
media
what
Musk
did
for
free
speech.”
Which
is
true!
Except
Turley
doesn’t
understand
that
this
is
a
damning
indictment.
So
maybe
it’s
not
a
true
broken
clock
moment.
Is
there
a
“wounded
clock”
concept?
What
does
it
even
mean
to
do
for
the
media
what
Musk
did
for
free
speech?
Because
Musk
has
used
his
resources
to
promote
a
brand
of
“free
speech
absolutism”
that
dangerously
undermines
the
concept
of
“free
speech”
as
understood
as
a
bedrock
principle
of
democratic
governance.
Free
speech
traditionally
means
preventing
government
barriers
to
expression,
allowing
the
marketplace
of
ideas
to
function
without
interference.
Good
ideas
rise
to
the
top,
bad
ideas
flounder.
Musk
has
deployed
his
resources
in
service
of
a
pernicious
trend
to
flip
“free
speech”
into
essentially,
affirmative
action
for
unpopular
views
(and
only
certain
unpopular
views,
mind
you).
It’s
the
same
authoritarian
articulation
of
“speech”
trafficked
by
certain
federal
judges,
that
the
right
should
be
flipped
in
favor
of
obligating
the
government
(or
similarly
situated
authorities)
to
promote
unpopular
speakers
and
crack
down
on
protest
or
criticism.
To
Turley’s
point
about
“what
Musk
did
for
free
speech,”
the
billionaire
purchased
one
of
the
largest
social
media
platforms
and
proceeded
to
watch
racial
slurs
explode
on
the
site,
right-wing
messaging
go
increasingly
(and…
algorithmically?)
viral,
and
white
supremacist
messaging
appear
next
to
trusted
brand
advertisements.
Musk’s
tweeted
himself
about
the
Great
Replacement
Theory!
Which
is
all
certainly
within
Musk’s
rights
as
the
proprietor
of
a
private
company.
He
can
do
what
he
wants
and
deal
with
the
consequences.
Though
he
seems
unwilling
to
do
so,
which
is
why
he’s
filed
a
federal
lawsuit
complaining
that
big,
respected
brands
aren’t
giving
him
advertising
dollars
anymore.
Again,
this
is
free
speech
backwards.
Musk
and
his
fanboy
Turley
suggesting
that
a
private
entity
openly
promoting
fringe
ideas
is
a
“victory”
of
some
kind
for
free
speech
gets
it
all
wrong.
That’s
like
reading
Skokie
and
thinking
the
moral
was
“it’s
good
that
there
are
Nazis.”
There’s
no
intrinsic
value
in
being
unpopular.
That’s
incel
thinking.
It’s
also
exactly
why
Turley
sees
connections
between
Bezos
and
Musk:
I
used
to
write
regularly
for
the
Post,
and
I
wrote
in
my
new
book
about
the
decline
of
the
newspaper
as
part
of
the
“advocacy
journalism”
movement:
“Our
profession
is
now
the
least
trusted
of
all.
Something
we
are
doing
is
clearly
not
working.”
It’s
telling
that
someone
paid
to
be
a
law
professor
describes
banging
out
opinion
columns
for
newspapers
as
“our”
profession.
Though
he’s
not
alone
in
that.
From
the
Bezos
response
piece:
In
the
annual
public
surveys
about
trust
and
reputation,
journalists
and
the
media
have
regularly
fallen
near
the
very
bottom,
often
just
above
Congress.
But
in
this
year’s
Gallup
poll,
we
have
managed
to
fall
below
Congress.
Our
profession
is
now
the
least
trusted
of
all.
Something
we
are
doing
is
clearly
not
working.
You’re
also
not
a
journalist,
dude.
What’s
with
all
the
stolen
valor?
You
boys
ever
been
working
for
a
local
paper
in
Topeka
waiting
on
a
source
to
call
back
and
confirm
while
a
deadline
looms?
“Our”…
get
outta
here
with
that
noise.
Turley
continues:
Washington
Post
publisher
and
CEO
William
Lewis
promptly
delivered
a
truth
bomb
in
the
middle
of
the
newsroom
by
telling
the
staff,
“Let’s
not
sugarcoat
it…
We
are
losing
large
amounts
of
money.
Your
audience
has
halved
in
recent
years.
People
are
not
reading
your
stuff.
Right?
I
can’t
sugarcoat
it
anymore.”
Lewis
is
full
of
shit.
The
audience
for
legacy
media
undoubtedly
shrunk
as
cable
media
expanded
and
then
went
into
something
of
a
free
fall
as
social
media
created
a
whole
new
ecosphere
of
short
clips
and
independent
news
(or
fake
news)
regurgitators.
When
everyone
gets
their
news
from
a
Facebook
post
with
a
short
Newsmax
clip
featuring
a
story
from
some
right-wing
Substack…
yeah,
the
national
newspapers
are
going
to
suffer.
BUT
when
he
says
“We
are
losing
large
amounts
of
money”
it’s
not
an
audience
issue,
it’s
an
advertising
issue.
The
only
reason
Jeff
Bezos
owns
the
Post
is
that
the
Graham
family
couldn’t
overcome
the
loss
of
advertising
revenue
that
followed
Google
cornering
the
market
on
digital
ads.
THERE’S
A
WHOLE
FEDERAL
CASE
ABOUT
IT
RIGHT
NOW!
Lewis,
a
Rupert
Murdoch
acolyte,
clings
to
the
belief
that
brought
the
Murdoch
empire
so
much
success
in
past
decades:
if
you
trash
it
up
and
appeal
to
the
lowest
common
denominator,
good
things
happen!
But
those
days
are
gone.
The
Washington
Post
isn’t
going
to
get
a
million
more
subscribers
by
turning
it
into
The
Sun.
And
even
if
it
did,
it’s
not
closing
its
revenue
shortfall
without
advertisers
coming
back.
And
you
know
why
advertisers
might
not
come
back
(even
aside
from
Google
being
a
more
efficient
advertising
play)?
BECAUSE
THEY
DON’T
WANT
TO
BE
ASSOCIATED
WITH
THAT
CONTENT.
Maybe
that’s
how
Bezos
will
do
for
media
what
Musk
did:
piss
off
all
the
advertisers!
Fox
News
built
its
advertising
bundle
on
reverse
mortgages
and
erection
pills.
There’s
not
enough
of
that
to
go
around,
and
the
audience
that
might
want
to
buy
the
Washington
Post
isn’t
the
audience
those
advertisers
want
anyway.
Anyway,
Turley
has
a
different
theory:
He
could
create
a
bulwark
against
advocacy
journalism
in
one
of
the
premier
newspapers
in
the
world.
Students
in
“J
Schools”
today
are
being
told
to
abandon
neutrality
and
objectivity
since,
as
former
New
York
Times
writer
(and
now
Howard
University
journalism
professor)
Nikole
Hannah-Jones
has
explained, “all
journalism
is
activism.”
Interesting
that
Turley
snidely
dismisses
the
critique
of
“objective
journalism”
by
quoting
a
notable
Black
woman
in
the
field.
Almost
as
though
he
wants
to
dress
up
the
notion
in
racist,
misogynist
baggage.
In
fact,
the
clear-eyed
critique
of
the
industry’s
flawed
reliance
on
contrived
objectivism
goes
back
much
further.
To
quote
an
esteemed
Doctor
of
Journalism
covering
the
1972
election
(who
was
also
a
white
guy
to
the
extent
Turley’s
audience
would
care):
Some
people
will
say
that
words
like
scum
and
rotten
are
wrong
for
Objective
Journalism—which
is
true,
but
they
miss
the
point.
It
was
the
built-in
blind
spots
of
the
Objective
rules
and
dogma
that
allowed
Nixon
to
slither
into
the
White
House
in
the
first
place.
He
looked
so
good
on
paper
that
you
could
almost
vote
for
him
sight
unseen.
He
seemed
so
all-American,
so
much
like
Horatio
Alger,
that
he
was
able
to
slip
through
the
cracks
of
Objective
Journalism.
You
had
to
get
Subjective
to
see
Nixon
clearly.
The
blindspots
that
Hunter
S.
Thompson
outlines
have
grown
more
pronounced
with
time.
It’s
how
Trump’s
remarks
get
routinely
“sanewashed”
into
something
vaguely
resembling
a
policy
rather
than
directly
quoting
insane
ramblings
about
how
Democrats
are
banning
windows
and
cows.
Media
that
won’t
call
out
that
one
candidate
is
batshit
insane
for
fear
of
reprisal
that
does
a
lot
more
to
erode
its
credibility.
Few
can
stand
up
to
this
movement
other
than
a
Bezos
or
a
Musk.
However,
the
left
has
long
created
their
own
monsters
by
demanding
absolute
fealty
or
unleashing
absolute
cancel
campaigns.
Simply
because
Bezos
wants his
newspaper
to
restore
neutrality, the
left
is
calling
for
a
boycott
of
not
just
the
Post
but
all
of
his
companies.
That
is
precisely
what
they
did
with
Musk.
You
know…
a
“cancel
campaign”
sounds
a
whole
lot
like
free
speech.
Turley
here
is
really
arguing
that
billionaires
should
use
unchecked
market
power
to
force
citizens
to
accept
viewpoints
they
otherwise
would
disagree
with.
Presumably
Turley’s
principled
stance
would
be
the
same
when
evangelicals
boycott
Disney
for
accepting
gay
people
as
human
beings.
Spoiler:
he
thought
consumers
should
punish
Disney
for
its
political
stance.
James
Clavell
wrote
a
cautionary
tale
called
The
Children’s
Story
back
in
the
60s.
Clavell
imagined
a
classroom
transformed
into
servants
of
a
totalitarian
invader
simply
by
cleverly
twisting
the
words
of
the
Pledge
of
Allegiance.
Basically,
he
warned
that
empty
patriotic
pablum
lights
an
easy
path
to
authoritarianism.
I
think
about
that
story
whenever
these
free
speech
debates
come
up.
When
guys
like
Turley
take
a
civic
virtue
and
cynically
contort
the
language
around
it,
play
on
our
reverence
for
the
concept,
and
then
twist
it
all
into
calls
for
billionaires
to
stifle
dissent
and
schools
to
punish
picketers,
it
moves
the
country
a
little
closer
to
the
brainwashed
kids
at
the
end
of
that
Clavell
story.
Anyway,
Bezos
could
do
for
the
media
what
Musk
did
for
“free
speech.”
Hopefully
he
doesn’t.
Joe
Patrice is
a
senior
editor
at
Above
the
Law
and
co-host
of
Thinking
Like
A
Lawyer.
Feel
free
to email
any
tips,
questions,
or
comments.
Follow
him
on Twitter or
Bluesky
if
you’re
interested
in
law,
politics,
and
a
healthy
dose
of
college
sports
news.
Joe
also
serves
as
a
Managing
Director
at
RPN
Executive
Search.