Many newsrooms, in their attempt to cover the movement against democracy across the country, have hired more reporters to cover threats to democracy. That’s an important investment, but many outlets are failing to meet the challenge. That’s because they are treating the threats as a free-floating danger as opposed to the operating procedure of one party.
The nonpartisan group Protect Democracy recently published a guide for media that provides a helpful guide to identifying authoritarians’ playbook. It lists seven tactics:
1) They attempt to politicize independent institutions.
It shouldn’t take long to recognize that Donald Trump engaged in virtually all of these. He certainly politicized institutions. (As Protect Democracy reports, “Trump especially embraced emergency powers, pardons, and acting appointments while ignoring congressional subpoenas and spending appropriations, rejecting legislative oversight, and claiming immunity from judicial accountability.”) He never stopped disseminating lies, culminating in his false claims of election fraud. And from his remark that there were “very fine people” in the Charlottesville riot to his instructions for the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,” Trump used or encouraged violence, a violation of the fundamental principles of democracy.
Equally apparent is that the GOP continues to support this conduct. The party continues to politicize election administration, perpetuates the “big lie” of a stolen election and flirts with...
Government agents were confronted by protesters outside the Philippine Senate when they tried to arrest former president Rodrigo Duterte's chief drug war enforcer, but visuals shared online do not ...