I posted this on Threads a little while ago. And here’s the piece that I wrote for the Phoenix.
How our flawed Constitution is enabling the triumph of authoritarianism
One of the most important books of the Trump era was, and is, “How Democracies Die,” by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. In it, the Harvard political scientists trace how healthy democratic societies are able to fight the contagion of authoritarianism — and what happens when they lose the ability, or the will, to hold the antidemocratic forces at bay.
Among other things, they describe how the Democratic Party machinery prevented the populist demagogue Huey Long’s rise to what might have culminated in the presidency back in the 1930s, in contrast to the Republican Party’s unwillingness to contain Donald Trump in 2016. They also tell us that Italy staved off a right-wing revival at one point when the mainstream conservative party aligned itself with the liberal party in order to freeze out right-wing extremists.
Now Levitsky and Ziblatt are back with a new book, “Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point.” The Atlantic has a lengthy excerpt, and you should read it if you can. In the excerpt, the authors argue that our Constitution is broken, mainly because it is so difficult to amend. They point out that Norway, their lead example, adopted a constitution as undemocratic as ours in 1814 but amended it 316 times over the next 200 years in order to extend the franchise, eliminate provisions that had empowered a minority of voters over the majority, and the like.
The American requirements for amending the Constitution, by contrast, add up to a nearly insurmountable hurdle. In addition to a two-thirds vote by each branch of Congress, which is not unreasonable, the rules also mandate that three-quarters of the state legislatures approve amendments. As a result, we are stuck with undemocratic provisions such as the Electoral College, under which the president can be elected despite losing the popular vote, and the Senate, which super-empowers small states since every state gets two votes. Indeed, the 14th Amendment, which in some important respects reinvented the United States, never could have been passed at any time other than in the post-Civil War environment, when the North controlled the South.
“With the Republican Party’s transformation into an extremist and antidemocratic force under Donald Trump,” Levitsky and Ziblatt write, “the Constitution now protects and empowers an authoritarian minority.” They add:
In 2016, the Democrats won the national popular vote for the presidency and the Senate, but the Republicans nonetheless won control of both institutions. A president who lost the popular vote and senators who represented a minority of Americans then proceeded to fill three Supreme Court seats, giving the Court a manufactured 6-3 conservative majority. This is minority rule.
Currently the antidemocratic impulse is playing out in Wisconsin in a big way. Earlier this year, voters in Wisconsin elected Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Democrat, to the state supreme court, thus paving the way for the protection of reproductive rights and at least a partial reversal of the gerrymandering that has given the Republicans wildly disproportionate power in the legislature.
So what are Republican legislators going to do? They’re going to impeach her — except that they’re not actually going to remove her from office, since that would give Democratic Gov. Tony Evers the opportunity to replace her. Instead, they plan to leave her in limbo, still a member of the court but suspended from taking part in the court’s business. As New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie puts it:
It’s that breathtaking contempt for the people of Wisconsin — who have voted, since 2018, for a more liberal State Legislature and a more liberal State Supreme Court and a more liberal governor, with the full powers of his office available to him — that makes the Wisconsin Republican Party the most openly authoritarian in the country.
We are heading off a cliff, moving closer and closer to authoritarianism in direct contradiction of the will of the majority. And as Levitsky and Ziblatt point out, there’s not all that much we can do about it since we can’t fix the Constitution without the cooperation of those who are benefiting from keeping things the way they are. God help us all.
Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk and the author’s dilemma
Elon Musk may have finally flown too close to the sun. The Washington Post on Thursday published an excerpt from Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Musk (free link) that includes important new details about the erratic billionaire’s decision to cut off (or refuse to activate) internet access in 2022 to prevent Ukrainian military forces from staging an operation in Crimea, a part of Ukraine on the Black Sea that Russia seized in 2014. Ukrainian forces have internet access through Starlink, a Musk-owned company satellite company.
We’ve known about this before; indeed, Ronan Farrow wrote about it in his recent New Yorker profile. What we didn’t know was that Musk made his decision after speaking with the Russian ambassador — or possibly even Vladimir Putin himself. Musk told Isaacson that he feared the offensive Ukraine was planning could lead to nuclear war, and that Starlink would be held responsible.
As Josh Marshall points out at Talking Points Memo, Musk was using his privately held company, richly funded with U.S. government contracts, to play geopolitics at odds with official U.S. policy. At the very least, there needs to be a congressional investigation, and you’d like to think that Democrats and the majority of Republicans who support Ukraine could get together and make that happen. They should consider nationalizing Starlink and putting it under direct federal control. As Farrow’s reporting revealed, it has become untenable for one billionaire to control so much crucial infrastructure — not just Starlink but also SpaceX, currently NASA’s only means for launching satellites, and even the Platform Formerly Known as Twitter, though that’s a more complicated issue.
People more knowledgeable than I will hash through those issues. At the moment, I’d like to consider a different issue — the fact that Isaacson sat on his scoop for a year. As he describes it, Musk texted him while Isaacson was at a high school football game in September 2022. Isaacson went behind the bleachers to respond. Isaacson writes:
“This could be a giant disaster,” he texted. I went behind the bleachers to ask him what the problem was. He was in full Muskian crisis-hero-drama mode, this time understandably. A dangerous issue had arisen, and he believed there was “a non-trivial possibility,” as he put it, that it could lead to a nuclear war — with Starlink partly responsible. The Ukrainian military was attempting a sneak attack on the Russian naval fleet based at Sevastopol in Crimea by sending six small drone submarines packed with explosives, and it was using Starlink to guide them to the target.
Although he had readily supported Ukraine, he believed it was reckless for Ukraine to launch an attack on Crimea, which Russia had annexed in 2014. He had just spoken to the Russian ambassador to the United States. (In later conversations with a few other people, he seemed to imply that he had spoken directly to President Vladimir Putin, but to me he said his communications had gone through the ambassador.) The ambassador had explicitly told him that a Ukrainian attack on Crimea would lead to a nuclear response. Musk explained to me in great detail, as I stood behind the bleachers, the Russian laws and doctrines that decreed such a response.
Throughout the evening and into the night, he personally took charge of the situation. Allowing the use of Starlink for the attack, he concluded, could be a disaster for the world. So he secretly told his engineers to turn off coverage within 100 kilometers of the Crimean coast. As a result, when the Ukrainian drone subs got near the Russian fleet in Sevastopol, they lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly.
Did Isaacson have an obligation to report what he knew in real time rather than saving it for his book? It’s an issue that has come up over and over in media circles, especially whenever Bob Woodward of the Post publishes a new book, or when Maggie Haberman of The New York Times published her Trump book last year.
As I wrote at the time, I didn’t have a problem with Haberman, who emerged from her book leave on several occasions to report scoops she’d come across. And I don’t really have a problem with Isaacson, either. Unlike Woodward or Haberman, he’s a freelancer and doesn’t have an obvious outlet. Of course, he’s also one of the most prominent journalists in the country and would have had no problem working with a reputable news organization to get the story out. But that would have been the end of his relationship with Musk — bad for Isaacson’s book, obviously, but also bad for whatever other storylines he was able to develop in the months ahead.
In addition, Isaacson’s Starlink scoop was incremental. The news that Musk may have been taking dictation from a high-level Russian official is devastating, but, as I said, we’ve known that Musk cut off Starlink access to harm Ukraine’s war effort for quite some time. Farrow’s story wasn’t the first occasion that had come out, either. Nevertheless, the implications of Isaacson’s account are enormous. Here’s Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, writing on Twitter:
Sometimes a mistake is much more than just a mistake. By not allowing Ukrainian drones to destroy part of the Russian military (!) fleet via #Starlink interference, @elonmusk allowed this fleet to fire Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian cities. As a result, civilians, children are being killed. This is the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego. However, the question still remains: why do some people so desperately want to defend war criminals and their desire to commit murder? And do they now realize that they are committing evil and encouraging evil?
Late though Isaacson’s account may be, he, like Farrow, has done a real service by revealing that Musk’s behavior is quite a bit worse — and more damaging — than most of even his harshest critics understood. That’s really saying something given that Musk and his followers this past week launched attacks that fed into antisemitic tropes against the Anti-Defamation League. It is time for this dangerous spoiled brat to face some real consequences.
The Eagle-Tribune accidentally publishes a page-one memo
The Eagle-Tribune, which is based in North Andover and serves the Merrimack Valley, accidentally published its page-one memo for Aug. 3 on its website. An alert reader sent it to me. It has since been taken down, but I saved it in Evernote. Nothing scandalous, but I thought you might get a kick out of getting a look at the sausage-making process. Below is the front page that the memo describes.
Four indicted on federal harassment charges targeting NHPR journalists
A federal grand jury has indicted four men from New Hampshire in connection with what authorities allege was “a conspiracy to harass and intimidate two journalists employed by New Hampshire Public Radio (NHPR).” The case involves vandalism against the homes of NHPR reporter Lauren Chooljian, her parents, and her editor, Dan Barrick. The story has attracted national attention, including a rather harrowing account last June in The New York Times (free link).
There’s an interesting angle to the latest news. In June, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Boston announced that three men had been charged: Tucker Cockerline, 32, of Salem, Eric Labarge, 46, of Nashua; and Michael Waselchuck, 35, of Seabrook. Now a fourth suspect has been added to the list: Keenan Saniatan, 36, of Nashua. Each could face up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
All of this is related to reporting by NHPR that Eric Spofford, the politically connected founder New Hampshire’s largest network of addiction treatment centers, had engaged in sexual harassment. The suspects are allegedly associates of Spofford, who has not been charged. In fact, Spofford is claiming libel in a lawsuit against Chooljian and NHPR. The state judge in the case, Daniel St. Hilaire, raised First Amendment concerns by ordering NHPR to turn over documents so that he could determine whether they supported Spofford’s libel claim. The libel suit, however, is now on hold, according to Nancy West of the investigative website InDepthNH, because St. Hilaire has gone on leave for an unspecified reason.
The vandalism that was allegedly committed by the four suspects was frightening and vile; if you want to read the gory details, it’s all in the press release.
Update: West of InDepthNH tells me that Judge St. Hilaire has been back from leave for a while and that she’ll soon be writing about the latest developments in Spofford’s libel case.
Talking media trust, local news and AI with the folks at ‘SouthCoast Matters’
Thank you to Paul Letendre, the host of “SouthCoast Matters,” and state Rep. Carol Doherty, D-Taunton, for having me on for two recent episodes. We talked about media trust, the challenges facing local news, artificial intelligence and more. “SouthCoast Matters” is recorded at Taunton Community Access and Media and is carried on cable stations in Taunton and the surrounding area. You can watch the two episodes below. (If you’re an email reader, you may have to click through for the web version of this post.)
If you’re a regular Media Nation reader, I hope you’ll become a monthly supporter
If you value a writer’s work enough to read it regularly, then you should be willing to pay a small fee to support that work. That’s why I set up a Patreon account a few years ago. Media Nation will always be free and open to everyone. But I hope that those who do more than drop in here occasionally will decide that it’s worth paying $5 a month to keep it going.
As Samuel Johnson once said: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.”
As an incentive for you to sign up, I’m going to resume the supporters-only newsletter that I was writing for a while. It will be a modest affair — a photo, a song of the week and a round-up of the week’s posts. That last is especially valuable for many readers who may not be able to keep up with the daily posts. Look for it in your inbox on Thursdays or Fridays, starting this week.
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The Globe announces expanded regional coverage of Greater Boston
The Boston Globe is expanding its coverage of the Boston suburbs, adding the inner belt, the North and South Shores and MetroWest to Rhode Island and New Hampshire, where it has set up bureaus during the past few years.
The staffing is minimal enough that the Globe won’t be able to provide granular reporting in each of the many dozens of cities and towns in Greater Boston — although it is promising substantially more coverage of Cambridge and Somerville. But there are strong independent local news outlets in many suburban communities, and I expect that the Globe will be keeping an eye on them for story ideas. And here’s a thought: Perhaps the Globe could work with those outlets as well. In any event, more is more, and more is better than less. I’ve already signed up for the newsletter.
What follows is an email to the newsroom from editor Nancy Barnes and Anica Butler, the deputy managing editor for local news. Nothing coy about where I got it this time — it came directly from the Globe’s PR operation.
Hi all —
We are pleased to announce that we are launching a regional news team to bolster our coverage of news outside of Boston’s city limits, with the goal of meeting our existing readers where many of them are and attracting new eyes from the many surrounding communities.
Think ambitious enterprise and accountability journalism with statewide appeal, accompanied by creative digital storytelling, bolstered by audience engagement. We’ll also have a newsletter dedicated to our regional stories. Sign up here to get the first edition in your inbox.
Our expanded coverage will reflect the broad diversity in cities and towns outside of Boston, from the Gateway cities to the wealthy western suburbs to the growing Black middle class in Randolph and Stoughton to the new immigrants making their homes in Greater Boston. We will also be making Cambridge and Somerville — Camberville if you will — a beat of its own, reflecting the importance of these cities on Boston’s doorstep.
(And if you’ve already noticed an uptick in stories from outside of Boston this summer, it’s because our team has already gotten a start!)
Here’s the team:
Roy Greene, a deputy metro editor, will bring his great journalistic instincts and creative story ideas to lead this new team. Roy, who has been at the Globe for more than 20 years and has worked on past local news initiatives, lives in East Cambridge.
Assisting Roy in leading the team will be Steve Annear, one of our most creative and enterprising journalists, with an unparalleled ability to put his finger on the pulse of the region and determine which storylines are percolating online. Steve, who lives in Somerville, will edit our Cambridge and Somerville coverage and will lead the team’s digital efforts, including the newsletter.
Here are the reporters:
Spencer Buell, who has a knack for identifying and crafting viral stories (the Cop Slide!), will cover Cambridge and Somerville.
Billy Baker, who most recently showcased his considerable writing chops on the outdoors beat, will cover the North Shore.
John Hilliard, an indefatigable news hound with sources galore, will continue his coverage of the metro west and gateway cities. John always seems to land in the right place when a big story breaks.
Sarah Ryley, a data journalism expert, will cover the South Shore and will also help with metro west.
Roy and Steve will also work with reporters and editors across the newsroom whose beats are unfolding outside the city. So expect plenty of collaboration. And please feel free to send story ideas their way as the team gets going!
Nancy & Anica
My first book, ‘Little People,’ is back in print — and this time there’s a Kindle edition, too
I am thrilled to report that my first book is back in print — and this time there’s an e-book to go with it.
“Little People: Learning to See the World Through My Daughter’s Eyes,” first published in 2003 by Rodale, is a book about dwarfism, part memoir, part journalism, part science and history. In 2008 Rodale allowed it to go out of print, and the rights reverted to me. I put together a print-on-demand paperback edition through the Harvard Book Store, which enabled me to sell a handful of copies over the years. Copies were produced by a printer called the Espresso Book Machine, nicknamed “Paige M. Gutenborg.” I wasn’t entirely happy with it, mainly because the cover was sticky to the touch. But it sufficed, and I later wrote about it for Nieman Reports.
Then, earlier this year, I was poking around the website for “Little People” to see if there was anything that needed to be updated. There sure was. I discovered that in April 2022 the Harvard Book Store had shut down Gutenborg and ended its print-on-demand service. I’m not aware that I was ever informed of this, but maybe I missed the email.
After considering a few alternatives, I decided to go with Amazon. It was the most convenient, offering high quality at a decent price. I was going to have to go to Amazon to set up a Kindle edition anyway, so I figured I might as well let them handle the print version, too. I’m very happy with the results. For the first time, I have a professional-looking paperback with a glossy, non-sticky cover. It includes the 2019 Foreword written by my daughter, Becky Kennedy. I don’t expect to sell a lot of copies, but maybe there will be an uptick. You can find it here.
I want to thank Andrew Blauner, who was my agent for “Little People” all those years ago. He and I spent some time earlier this summer looking into whether a publishing house might be interested, but nothing came of it. Still, it wasn’t for lack of trying, and I am, as ever, grateful for his support. Thanks, too, to photographer Tsar Fedorsky, who took the original cover photo and gave me permission to use it for the new editions.
Google in the dock
The New York Times today reports on the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust case against Google. The federal trial is scheduled to get under way next Tuesday.
The lawsuit, according to the Times’ David McCabe and Cecilia Kang, revolves around accusations that Google monopolizes search by paying off the likes of Apple and Mozilla to make Google their default search engine. But I think a group of newspaper publishers are pursuing a more interesting antitrust case against Google (and Facebook), charging that Google’s control of every aspect of online advertising technology has allowed the giant platform to drive down ad prices and leave media organizations on the sidelines.
Facebook is part of the suit because the publishers claim that Google and Facebook have colluded in order to keep Facebook from setting up its own competing ad system. Separately, Gannett has sued Google, but not Facebook, over the same issues.