The Washington Post, pornography and darkness

Ann Telnaes was one of the star cartoonists of the Washington Post. One day in early January, the Pulitzer Prize-winning ninotaire saw one of her drawings rejected. It featured a handful of billionaires kneeling, reverenced by a giant statue of Donald Trump, then president-elect. They included Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg; Sam Altman of OpenAI; Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of Los Angeles Times, and Mickey Mouse, the emblem of Walt Disney. And also Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon and –this is the most relevant– of Washington Post Telnaes knew that her cartoon would upset the newspaper's editors and probably wanted to see if the freedom of expression—of opinion—she had enjoyed since its debut in the newspaper's pages in 2008 remained the same or had diminished. The editor in charge of the newspaper's opinion pages, David Shipley, returned the cartoon. And she responded by folding it and recounting what had happened in a text on the Substack network. He spoke of a "tipping point" and warned that what's happening is dangerous.

He Washington Post It's not a newspaper like any other, by any means. It's the newspaper that uncovered the Watergate scandal, which ultimately led to the fall of President Richard Nixon. Washington Post He's a symbol for anyone who loves journalism. As are the journalists who investigated the case, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein; the editor at the time, Ben Bradlee; and the publisher, Katharine Graham. In November 2022, I had the opportunity to attend a talk with Woodward, right at the Watergate Hotel, the epicenter of the case that ended Nixon's career. I was able to greet him personally. It was an honor for me.

Less than two months after Telnaes's abrupt departure, Shipley, the person who had rejected her drawing, also resigned. Jeff Bezos, the newspaper's owner, had posted the following on X (formerly Twitter): "I am writing to inform you of a change coming to our opinion pages. We will be writing every day supporting and defending two pillars: personal freedoms and the free market," concluding: "We will leave the points of view opposed to these pillars. Elon Musk applauded Bezos publicly and obscenely. The turning point that our cartoonist – who has a clean and extremely elegant style – had detected was evident.

In fact, the problems had begun earlier, during the election campaign, when Bezos prevented his newspaper from publishing an editorial supporting the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris. It's common for newspapers to come out in favor of one of the candidates in the US. That veto caused the paper to lose a quarter of a million subscribers, and some of its most prominent writers decided to play the two-man band, as Ann Telnaes would later do. The admired Washington Post –which had been the pinnacle of journalistic vigilance against the excesses of the powerful– is currently caught in a downward spiral with an unpredictable outcome. Bezos has squandered his good reputation, and it's well known that in journalism –as in life– a good reputation is earned through a lot of time and effort, but it can be lost in an instant.

What's happening with the Washington Post It's a consequence, one more despite its significance, of the moment the United States is experiencing, and, incidentally, everywhere. It's a dangerous and implausible moment, the fruit of the alliance of the richest men in the world with the president of the United States, a primal and narcissistic man completely out of control. A kind of bully, a schoolyard thorn, whom no one can stop. We're not naive: there has always been a relationship between political power and economic power, but never in the democratic history of the West have they made their unity of action so blatantly explicit. Their vicious communion. The inauguration, the images of Musk wagging his tail in front of the secretaries of state, the video about Gaza, the insults and humiliation of Zelensky, etc.: pure pornography. Pornography of the worst kind, nauseating. If we take into account that Trump's new friends control the networks and some important media outlets, the situation is distressing.

In his farewell address, President Joe Biden, a politician of the classical school, warned us of the impending aberration, of the conspiracy of the powerful to impose their most delusional impulses without nuance: "The free press is collapsing [...], social media is abandoning fact-checking, the truth is being drowned out by lies told for power and profit. We must hold social platforms accountable to protect our children, our families, and our democracy from the abuse of power."

Abuse of power. Direct and brutal. Blatant and proud. Without dissimulation or subterfuge. Exhibitionist. Pornographic. A time of darkness has begun.