Everything TFG has a price. Whether it’s one of Melania’s fancy $90 ornaments (I thought she didn’t care about Christmas?) or T Flag wrapping paper at $28 for 4 sheets, or any of the myriad of goodies on Trumpstore.com, everything about him is monetized.

From Religion News this Christmas week, we have this headline:

At Trump’s Inauguration, Reports of a Pay to Pray

(RNS) — President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is reportedly planning an interfaith prayer service the day before his inauguration, where participants can worship alongside the businessman and his wife, Melania.

But those who want to join need to weigh the price of prayer: Tickets to the service will be awarded only to those who donate at least $100,000 to Trump’s inaugural ceremonies, or who raise $200,000.

Jesus continues to weep, as TFG faithful open their wallets.

OK, we now have the official House Ethics Committee finding that Matt Gaetz , who quit Congress last month, violated multiple state laws to sexual and drug misconduct, including with a minor, while in office.

To me, the report raises the obvious questions not only about Gaetz serving as a vocal, often poisonous member of Congress, but about the judgment of Donald Trump in having tapped him to be the U.S. Attorney General. Gaetz withdrew his name before the Senate could refuse to confirm his appointment.

It’s apparent that in nominating Gaetz, Trump didn’t even bother to look at the kind of evidence that was before the ethics committee or before Justice Department officials who decided they could not successfully bring federal charges. It’s all politics, in this view, not a judgment or public acceptance of illegal or immoral behaviors.

The bipartisan ethics panel found there was substantial evidence that the guy who Trump would make the top federal law enforcement official ” violated House Rules, state and federal laws, and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, acceptance of impermissible gifts, the provision of special favors and privileges, and obstruction of Congress” by seeking to hide his behavior. The investigation did not find “sufficient evidence” to show that Gaetz violated federal sex trafficking laws.

The report said that Gaetz “continuously sought to deflect, deter, or mislead the Committee in order to prevent his actions from being exposed.” Gaetz “has acted in a manner that reflects discreditably upon the House,” the report stated, though no criminal charges have resulted. Obviously, he quit before any action to push him out of Congress. The report alleges that despite Gaetz’s denials, he made tens of thousands of dollars in payments to women “likely in connection with sexual activity and/or drug use” from 2017 to 2020, including with a 17-year-old.

Gaetz is now set to join the conservative One America News Network as an anchor in January but has been reported interested in running for governor or Senate in Florida or taking another non-confirmable appointment with Trump.

The Cabinet and Sex

There have been an explosion of private sexual misconduct charges involving Trump’s appointees, including, of course, against the president-elect himself.

Trump was found liable of sexual abuse in what a judge said amounted to rape against E. Jean Carroll and ordered to pay millions in civil defamation suit judgments in a New York court. For years, Trump has consistently denied sexual improprieties, even after multiple convictions in another New York court for trying to hide payoffs to adult movie star Stormy Daniels from election officials. For Trump, denial is more important than moral character.

Pete Hegseth, nominee for Defense Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Health and Human Services Secretary nominee, Elon Musk, the pick to head a budget-cutting effort, Herschel Walker, the former Georgia football star named to be ambassador to Bahamas, all have been targeted in sexual misconduct complaints. The company owned by Linda McMahon, the Education Secretary-designate, has run afoul of sexual abuse complaints involving teens. There are other sexual abuse cases involving those close to Trump, including Corey Lewandowski, who is currently working with the Homeland Security transition team.

Whatever concerns have emerged in the Senate confirmation processes, none of the behaviors have been adjudged by Team Trump to be disqualifying. Indeed Trump and many vocal supporters, including broadcasters Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson, pushed a “restoring masculinity” theme during the election campaign that came across to many as misogynistic.

Trump and his circle don’t even acknowledge that there is an issue here, and certainly say it has nothing to do with the appointees’ collective ability to pursue Trump policy or retribution goals.

Hegseth, who settled an out-of-court sex complaint, has disdained policies that put women in the military in combat roles, but has remained silent about systemic reports of sexual misconduct complaints.  Rather than comment on appointees and sexual abuse complaints, Trump this week summarily again asserted that having transgender troops are a problem that he would solve by dismissing them.

In some kind of upside-down morality play this week, it was a sexual affair between Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her chief prosecutor Nathan Wade that became meat for Trump prosecutors to drive a court challenge in Georgia towards derailing Jan. 6 criminal charges against Trump. There was no abuse involved, just an on-again, off-again love interest that created what an appeals court of Republican-appointed judges said last week created a conflict of interest for the prosecution team.

Even in a sex-obsessed culture as ours, it is mind-twisting to consider the character issues we choose to ignore in selecting our leaders.

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There’s a sort of parlor game that the economically-minded sometimes play around the Christmas holiday, related to A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. Was Dickens writing his story as an attack on economics, capitalism, and selfishness? After all, his depiction of Ebenezer Scrooge, along with his use of phrases like “decrease the surplus population” and the sarcastic use of “a good man of business” would suggest as much, and a classic example of such an interpretation is here. Or was Dickens just telling a good story with distinct characters? After all, Scrooge is portrayed as an outlier in the business community. The warm portrayal of Mr. Fezziwig certainly opens the possibility that one can be a successful man of business as well as a good employer and a decent human being. And if Scrooge hadn’t saved money, would he have been able to save Tiny Tim?

It’s all a good “talker,” as they say about the topics that get kicked around on radio shows every day. As part of my own holiday break, I republish this essay each year near or on Christmas day.

I went looking for some other perspectives on how Charles Dickens perceived capitalism that were not embedded in a fictional setting. In particular, I checked the weekly journal Household Words, which Dickens edited from 1850 to 1859. Articles in Household Words do not have authors provided. However, Anne Lohrli went through the business and financial records of the publication, which identified the authors and showed who had been paid for each article. The internal records of the journal show that Dickens was the author of this piece from the issue of February 11, 1854, called “On Strike.” (Lohrli’s book is called Household Words: A Weekly Journal 1850-59, conducted by Charles Dickens, University of Toronto Press, 1973. Household Words is freely available on-line at a site hosted by the University of Buckingham, with support from the Leverhulme Trust and other donors.)

The article does not seem especially well-known today, but it is the source of a couple of the most common quotations from Charles Dickens about “political economy,” as the study of economics was usually called at the time. Early in the piece, Dickens wrote: “Political Economy was a great and useful science in its own way and its own place; but … I did not transplant my definition of it from the Common Prayer Book, and make it a great king above all gods.” Later in the article, Dickens wrote: “[P]olitical economy is a mere skeleton unless it has a little human covering and filling out, a little human bloom upon it, and a little human warmth in it.”

But more broadly, the article is of interest because Dickens, telling the story in the first person, takes the position that in thinking about a strike taking place in the town of Preston, one need not take the side either of management or labor. Instead, Dickens writes, one may “be a friend to both,” and feel that the strike is “to be deplored on all accounts.” Of course, the problem with a middle-of-the-road position is that you can end up being hit by ideological traffic going in both directions. But the ability of Dickens to sympathize with people in a wide range of positions is surely part what gives his novels and his world-view such lasting power. The article goes into a fair amount of detail, and can be read on-line, so I will content myself here with a substantial excerpt.

Here’s a portion of the 1854 essay by Dickens:

“ON STRIKE”

Travelling down to Preston a week from this date, I chanced to sit opposite to a very acute, very determined, very emphatic personage, with a stout railway rug so drawn over his chest that he looked as if he were sitting up in bed with his great coat, hat, and gloves on, severely contemplating your humble servant from behind a large blue and grey checked counterpane. In calling him emphatic, I do
not mean that he was warm; he was coldly and bitingly emphatic as a frosty wind is.

“You are going through to Preston, sir?” says he, as soon as we were clear of the
CharPrimrose Hill tunnel.

The receipt of this question was like the receipt of a jerk of the nose; he was so short and sharp.

“Yes.”

“This Preston strike is a nice piece of business!” said the gentleman. “A pretty piece of business!”

“It is very much to be deplored,” said I, “on all accounts.”

“They want to be ground. That’s what they want to bring ’em to their senses,” said the gentleman; whom I had already began to call in my own mind Mr. Snapper, and whom I may as well call by that name here as by any other. *

I deferentially enquired, who wanted to be ground?

“The hands,” said Mr. Snapper. ” The hands on strike, and the hands who help ’em.”

I remarked that if that was all they wanted, they must be a very unreasonable people, for surely they had had a little grinding, one way and another, already. Mr. Snapper eyed me with sternness, and after opening and shutting his leathern-gloved hands several times outside his counterpane, asked me
abruptly, ” Was I a delegate?”

I set Mr. Snapper right on that point, and told him I was no delegate.

“I am glad to hear it,” said Mr. Snapper. “But a friend to the Strike, I believe?”

“Not at all,” said I.

“A friend to the Lock-out?” pursued Mr. Snapper.

“Not in the least,” said I,

Mr. Snapper’s rising opinion of me fell again, and he gave me to understand that a man must either be a friend to the Masters or a friend to the Hands.

“He may be a friend to both,” said I.

Mr. Snapper didn’t see that; there was no medium in the Political Economy of the subject. I retorted on Mr. Snapper, that Political Economy was a great and useful science in its own way and its own place; but that I did not transplant my definition of it from the Common Prayer Book, and make it a great king above all gods. Mr. Snapper tucked himself up as if to keep me off, folded his arms on the top of his counterpane, leaned back and looked out of the window.

“Pray what would you have, sir,” enquire Mr. Snapper, suddenly withdrawing his eyes from the prospect to me, “in the relations between Capital and Labour, but Political Economy?”

I always avoid the stereotyped terms in these discussions as much as I can, for I have observed, in my little way, that they often supply the place of sense and moderation. I therefore took my gentleman up with the words employers and employed, in preference to Capital and Labour.

“I believe,” said I, “that into the relations between employers and employed, as into all the relations of this life, there must enter something of feeling and sentiment; something of mutual explanation, forbearance, and consideration; something which is not to be found in Mr. M’CulIoch’s dictionary, and is not exactly stateable in figures; otherwise those relations are wrong and rotten at the core and will never bear sound fruit.”

Mr. Snapper laughed at me. As I thought I had just as good reason to laugh at Mr. Snapper, I did so, and we were both contented. …

Mr. Snapper had no doubt, after this, that I thought the hands had a right to combine?

“Surely,” said I. ” A perfect right to combine in any lawful manner. The fact of their being able to combine and accustomed to combine may, I can easily conceive, be a protection to them. The blame even of this business is not all on one side. I think the associated Lock-out was a grave error. And
when you Preston masters—”

“I am not a Preston master,” interrupted Mr. Snapper.

“When the respectable combined body of Preston masters,” said I, ” in the beginning of this unhappy difference, laid down the principle that no man should be employed henceforth who belonged to any combination—such as their own—they attempted to carry with a high hand a partial and unfair impossibility, and were obliged to abandon it. This was an unwise proceeding, and the first defeat.”

Mr. Snapper had known, all along, that I was no friend to the masters.

“Pardon me,” said I; ” I am unfeignedly a friend to the masters, and have many friends among them.”

“Yet you think these hands in the right?” quoth Mr. Snapper.

“By no means,” said I; ” I fear they are at present engaged in an unreasonable struggle, wherein they began ill and cannot end well.”

Mr. Snapper, evidently regarding me as neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, begged to know after a pause if he might enquire whether I was going to Preston on business?

Indeed I was going there, in my unbusinesslike manner, I confessed, to look at the strike.

“To look at the strike!” echoed Mr. Snapper fixing his hat on firmly with both hands. “To look at it! Might I ask you now, with what object you are going to look at it?”

“Certainly,” said I. ” I read, even in liberal pages, the hardest Political Economy—of an extraordinary description too sometimes, and certainly not to be found in the books—as the only touchstone of this strike. I see, this very day in a to-morrow’s liberal paper, some astonishing novelties in the politico-economical way, showing how profits and wages have no connexion whatever; coupled with such references to these hands as might be made by a very irascible General to rebels and brigands in arms. Now, if it be the case that some of the highest virtues of the working people still shine through them brighter than ever in their conduct of this mistake of theirs, perhaps the fact may reasonably suggest to me—and to others besides me—that there is some little things wanting in the relations between them and their employers, which neither political economy nor Drum-head proclamation writing will altogether supply, and which we cannot too soon or too temperately unite in trying to
find out.”

Mr. Snapper, after again opening and shutting his gloved hands several times, drew the counterpane higher over his chest, and went to bed in disgust. He got up at Rugby, took himself and counterpane into another carriage, and left me to pursue my journey alone. …

In any aspect in which it can be viewed, this strike and lock-out is a deplorable calamity. In its waste of time, in its waste of a great people’s energy, in its waste of wages, in its waste of wealth that seeks to be employed, in its encroachment on the means of many thousands who are labouring from day to day, in the gulf of separation it hourly deepens between those whose interests must be understood to be identical or must be destroyed, it is a great national affliction. But, at this pass, anger is of no use, starving out is of no use—for what will that do, five years hence, but overshadow all the mills in England with the growth of a bitter remembrance? —political economy is a mere skeleton unless it has a little human covering and filling out, a little human bloom upon it, and a little human warmth in it. Gentlemen are found, in great manufacturing towns, ready enough to extol imbecile mediation with dangerous madmen abroad; can none of them be brought to think of authorised mediation and explanation at home? I do not suppose that such a knotted difficulty as this, is to be at all untangled by a morning-party in the Adelphi; but I would entreat both sides now so miserably opposed, to consider whether there are no men in England above suspicion, to whom they might refer the matters in dispute, with a perfect confidence above all things in the desire of those men to act justly, and in their sincere attachment to their countrymen of every rank and to their country.

Masters right, or men right; masters wrong, or men wrong; both right, or both wrong; there is certain ruin to both in the continuance or frequent revival of this breach. And from the ever-widening circle of their decay, what drop in the social ocean shall be free!

The post Charles Dickens on Management and Labor first appeared on Conversable Economist.

Charles Dickens wrote what has become one of the iconic stories of Christmas day and Christmas spirit in A Christmas Carol. But of course, the experiences of Ebenezer Scrooge are a story, not a piece of reporting. Here’s a piece by Dickens written for the weekly journal Household Words that he edited from 1850 to 1859. It’s from the issue of January 26, 1856, with his first-person reporting on “A Nightly Scene in London.” Poverty in high-income countries is no longer as ghastly as in Victorian England, but for those who take the time to see it in our own time and place, surely it is ghastly enough. Thus, I repeat this post each year on Christmas Day.

Economists might also wince just a bit at how Dickens describes the reaction of some economists to poverty, those who Dickens calls “the unreasonable disciples of a reasonable school.” In the following passage, Dickens writes: “I know that the unreasonable disciples of a reasonable school, demented disciples who push arithmetic and political economy beyond all bounds of sense (not to speak of such a weakness as humanity), and hold them to be all-sufficient for every case, can easily prove that such things ought to be, and that no man has any business to mind them. Without disparaging those indispensable sciences in their sanity, I utterly renounce and abominate them in their insanity …” 

Here’s a fuller passage from Dickens:

A NIGHTLY SCENE IN LONDON

On the fifth of last November, I, the Conductor of this journal, accompanied by a friend well-known to the public, accidentally strayed into Whitechapel. It was a miserable evening; very dark, very muddy, and raining hard.

There are many woful sights in that part of London, and it has been well-known to me in most of its aspects for many years. We had forgotten the mud and rain in slowly walking along and looking about us, when we found ourselves, at eight o’clock, before the Workhouse.

Crouched against the wall of the Workhouse, in the dark street, on the muddy pavement-stones, with the rain raining upon them, were five bundles of rags. They were motionless, and had no resemblance to the human form. Five great beehives, covered with rags— five dead bodies taken out of graves, tied neck and heels, and covered with rags— would have looked like those five bundles upon which the rain rained down in the public street.

“What is this! ” said my companion. “What is this!”

“Some miserable people shut out of the Casual Ward, I think,” said I.

We had stopped before the five ragged mounds, and were quite rooted to the spot by their horrible appearance. Five awful Sphinxes by the wayside, crying to every passer-by, ” Stop and guess! What is to be the end of a state of society that leaves us here!”

As we stood looking at them, a decent working-man, having the appearance of a stone-mason, touched me on the shoulder.

“This is an awful sight, sir,” said he, “in a Christian country!”

“GOD knows it is, my friend,” said I.

“I have often seen it much worse than this, as I have been going home from my work. I have counted fifteen, twenty, five-and-twenty, many a time. It’s a shocking thing to see.”

“A shocking thing, indeed,” said I and my companion together. The man lingered near
us a little while, wished us good-night, and went on.

We should have felt it brutal in us who had a better chance of being heard than the working-man, to leave the thing as it was, so we knocked at the Workhouse Gate. I undertook to be spokesman. The moment the gate was opened by an old pauper, I went in, followed close by my companion. I lost no
time in passing the old porter, for I saw in his watery eye a disposition to shut us out.

“Be so good as to give that card to the master of the Workhouse, and say I shall be glad to speak to him for a moment.”

We were in a kind of covered gateway, and the old porter went across it with the card. Before he had got to a door on our left, a man in a cloak and hat bounced out of it very sharply, as if he were in the nightly habit of being bullied and of returning the compliment.

“Now, gentlemen,” said he in a loud voice, “what do you want here?”

“First,” said I, ” will you do me the favor to look at that card in your hand. Perhaps you may know my name.”

“Yes,” says he, looking at it. ” I know this name.”

“Good. I only want to ask you a plain question in a civil manner, and there is not the least occasion for either of us to be angry. It would be very foolish in me to blame you, and I don’t blame you. I may find fault with the system you administer, but pray understand that I know you are here to do a duty pointed out to you, and that I have no doubt you do it. Now, I hope you won’t object to tell me what I want to know.”

“No,” said he, quite mollified, and very reasonable, ” not at all. What is it?”

“Do you know that there are five wretched creatures outside?”

“I haven’t seen them, but I dare say there are.”

“Do you doubt that there are?”

“No, not at all. There might be many more.”

”Are they men? Or women?”

“Women, I suppose. Very likely one or two of them were there last night, and the night before last.”

“There all night, do you mean?”

“Very likely.”

My companion and I looked at one another, and the master of the Workhouse added quickly, “Why, Lord bless my soul, what am I to do? What can I do ? The place is full. The place is always full—every night. I must give the preference to women with children, mustn’t I? You wouldn’t have me not do that?”

“Surely not,” said I. “It is a very humane principle, and quite right; and I am glad to hear of it. Don’t forget that I don’t blame you.”

“Well!” said he. And subdued himself again. …

“Just so. I wanted to know no more. You have answered my question civilly and readily, and I am much obliged to you. I have nothing to say against you, but quite the contrary. Good night!”

“Good night, gentlemen!” And out we came again.

We went to the ragged bundle nearest to the Workhouse-door, and I touched it. No movement replying, I gently shook it. The rags began to be slowly stirred within, and by little and little a head was unshrouded. The head of a young woman of three or four and twenty, as I should judge; gaunt with want, and foul with dirt; but not naturally ugly.

“Tell us,” said I, stooping down. “Why are you lying here?”

“Because I can’t get into the Workhouse.”

She spoke in a faint dull way, and had no curiosity or interest left. She looked dreamily at the black sky and the falling rain, but never looked at me or my companion.

“Were you here last night?”

“Yes, All last night. And the night afore too.”

“Do you know any of these others?”

“I know her next but one. She was here last night, and she told me she come out of Essex. I don’t know no more of her.”

“You were here all last night, but you have not been here all day?”

“No. Not all day.”

“Where have you been all day?”

“About the streets.”

”What have you had to eat?”

“Nothing.”

“Come!” said I. “Think a little. You are tired and have been asleep, and don’t quite consider what you are saying to us. You have had something to eat to-day. Come! Think of it!”

“No I haven’t. Nothing but such bits as I could pick up about the market. Why, look at me!”

She bared her neck, and I covered it up again.

“If you had a shilling to get some supper and a lodging, should you know where to get it?”

“Yes. I could do that.”

“For GOD’S sake get it then!”

I put the money into her hand, and she feebly rose up and went away. She never thanked me, never looked at me— melted away into the miserable night, in the strangest manner I ever saw. I have seen many strange things, but not one that has left a deeper impression on my memory than the dull impassive way in which that worn-out heap of misery took that piece of money, and was lost.

One by one I spoke to all the five. In every one, interest and curiosity were as extinct as in the first. They were all dull and languid. No one made any sort of profession or complaint; no one cared to look at me; no one thanked me. When I came to the third, I suppose she saw that my companion and I glanced, with a new horror upon us, at the two last, who had dropped against each other in their sleep, and were lying like broken images. She said, she believed they were young sisters. These were the only words that were originated among the five.

And now let me close this terrible account with a redeeming and beautiful trait of the poorest of the poor. When we came out of the Workhouse, we had gone across the road to a public house, finding ourselves without silver, to get change for a sovereign. I held the money in my hand while I was speaking to the five apparitions. Our being so engaged, attracted the attention of many people of the very poor sort usual to that place; as we leaned over the mounds of rags, they eagerly leaned over us to see and hear; what I had in my hand, and what I said, and what I did, must have been plain to nearly all the concourse. When the last of the five had got up and faded away, the spectators opened to let us pass; and not one of them, by word, or look, or gesture, begged of us.

Many of the observant faces were quick enough to know that it would have been a relief to us to have got rid of the rest of the money with any hope of doing good with it. But, there was a feeling among them all, that their necessities were not to be placed by the side of such a spectacle; and they opened a way for us in profound silence, and let us go.

My companion wrote to me, next day, that the five ragged bundles had been upon his bed all night. I debated how to add our testimony to that of many other persons who from time to time are impelled to write to the newspapers, by having come upon some shameful and shocking sight of this description. I resolved to write in these pages an exact account of what we had seen, but to wait until after Christmas, in order that there might be no heat or haste. I know that the unreasonable disciples of a reasonable school, demented disciples who push arithmetic and political economy beyond all bounds of sense (not to speak of such a weakness as humanity), and hold them to be all-sufficient for every case, can easily prove that such things ought to be, and that no man has any business to mind them. Without disparaging those indispensable sciences in their sanity, I utterly renounce and abominate them in their insanity; and I address people with a respect for the spirit of the New Testament, who do mind such things, and who think them infamous in our streets.

The post Charles Dickens on Seeing Poverty first appeared on Conversable Economist.

Trump On the Offensive Against Freedom of the Press

Now the news is rising from Donald Trump’s raucous interactions with the news industry itself.

The ever-angry Trump, who has a wide choice among half the country in finding political opponents, is following through on threats to “go after” those in the news media and elsewhere who write, speak or do research that puts what he says and does in poor light.

What puts this adopted Trump aggressiveness into a dangerous category is the speed with which other sources of accountability — Congress, courts, the law itself, business — are caving to the reality that Team Trump has the reins. By comparison, a news industry that just does its normal job of holding a mirror to Trump actions and speeches is looking more to him as a source of opposition than a first attempt to capture current history.

Clearly emboldened by a settlement with ABC last week over a lawsuit alleging defamation for a star host referring to Trump having been found “liable for rape” rather than “liable for sexual abuse,” Trump is creating headlines by suing The Des Moines Register over a pre-election poll he found objectionable.

Trump’s lawsuit calls the poll results — which turned out to be wrong when the votes were counted in Iowa — consumer fraud. Ann Seltzer, the pollster in question has since retired but insists that the pro-Kamala Harris tilt of her results is what she got from her polling. This case looks to be a relatively weak lawsuit, but that seems secondary to its filing in the first place.

Anyone believing this will be the last news industry challenge should re-check the MAGA retribution scorecard. Trump and members of his inner circle like Kash Patel, tapped to take over the FBI, have threatened to de-license major television networks, and to pursue both civil and criminal charges whenever the fancy strikes him, or a publication takes a position involving him that he hates.

This is about intimidation.

An Air of Withdrawal

The worst effects may not even be from the warning note from Trump for the news media to back off. With few exceptions, the worst may be in news industry moves to withdraw in aggressiveness in covering an incoming administration, whether for fear, greed, or some kind of appeal for audience from those turning away. The Guardian, among others, calls it “The Great Capitulation.”

Just last week, Patrick Shoo-Shiong, biomed technology billionaire owner of The Los Angeles Times killed an editorial  that questioned qualifications of some of Trump’s Cabinet choices unless the editorial staff could produce — on deadline — an intelligible column or editorial that presented the opposite point of view, that Trump’s choices are good ones. That, of course, obviates the need or purpose of an editorial.

Shoo-Shiong has been pursuing a campaign at the newspaper to present “balanced” views that would allow readers to choose which is more “true.” He wants an AI-written “bias meter” attached to articles — he now says he will use it in the opinion section rather than the news sections — to allow readers better editorial orientation to what they are reading. But it comes across as protecting Trump from public criticism.

At The Washington Post, owner Jeff Bezos, who had ordered an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris for president, held back, now has joined the Big Tech billionaires visiting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago — meetings that seem aimed at “normalizing” relations with a president who repeatedly shows disdain for the role of journalism in our society or any protocols involving respect of law that do not serve him.

The Morning Joe crew that went to meet with Trump at Mar-a-Lago off the record is still trying to salvage any perception of independence — for a news commentary show.

The right-leaning media are having a field day ridiculing any efforts to question Trump’s appointments, for example, as opposition rather than discovery about who they are, what they stand for, and what conflicts of interest they may be bringing to a government post.

The inside reports on why ABC News and its owner, the Disney corporation, reached a settlement with Trump suggest that the error or overstatement of charges by anchor George Stephanopoulos about “rape” rather than “sexual assault” came about more out of worry about the jury pool in Florida and comments from the judge about the legal shakiness of their defense than over a commitment to journalism. Nevertheless, ABC News has now made itself a target for constant examination of whether they are holding back in rigorous pursuit of journalism involving the president.

And they have provided Trump with $15 million to go after other news organizations.

The Point: Back Off

It is that withdrawal that is the Trump point, after all.

These shots across the journalistic bow are meant to tell reporters and editors that even normal journalistic practices that end up with articles that Trump may see as unsupportive will generate retribution, whether through lawsuits, tax filings, unwarranted FBI investigations, Congressional subpoenas and more.

With corporate ownership of news organizations increasingly mightily, an audience of readers who prefer social media over-simplifications to articles that can survive rigorous editing, and an attitude that may favor access over the appearance of opposition, we’re heading into turbulent waters for journalism.

The clear media trend is that audiences are turning to podcasts and their own social media postings to follow the news rather than tuning in to professional news outlets. The weekend’s messy government shutdown dance reflected the power of an Elon Musk to send hundreds of tweets in a day to rile up a MAGA base towards a legislative defeat of a bipartisan budget deal.

What reporters must do is follow through on policies and appointments, to detail the effects of Team Trump actions and statements on the full range of policies being proposed. Where are the stories from Ohio about pet-eating immigrants — did the pet-eating just go away with a 1% “landslide” vote margin in the election? Where are the stories analyzing how egg prices are continuing to rise after the election rather than fall or how housing is no more available now than two months ago?

Trump is in war mode against the people who cover his administration with anything but flattery. News organizations trying curry even the appearance of favor in preemptive legal defense are in appeasement mode.

The alternative is aggressive, rigorous journalism that measures results, holds behavior against what was said and that exposes misstatements and hypocrisy.

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The post Targeting the News Media appeared first on DCReport.org.

This one is older than I am by a couple of years. Seems appropriate. Tip of the hat to the WaPo for resurrecting it. Have as Happy Holidays as possible.