Alexey Kovalev is a critical Russian journalist who’s lived through Putin’s gutting of the Russia’s press freedoms, producing a tame, whipped domestic press who act as stenographers for Putin’s annual four-hour Christmas press-conferences.
After witnessing Trump’s post-election press-conference, in which the next president used paid shills to applaud his talking points and boo unfriendly journalists and declared that he would not entertain questions from CNN, and would punish Buzzfeed because of their reporting on him, Kovalev offers some grim commiseration and advice for American journalists preparing to live through four years of autocratic rule.
• You’re always losingThis man owns you. He understands perfectly well that he is the news. You can’t ignore him. You’re always playing by his rules—which he can change at any time without any notice. You can’t—in Putin’s case—campaign to vote him out of office. Your readership is dwindling because ad budgets are shrinking—while his ratings are soaring, and if you want to keep your publication afloat, you’ll have to report on everything that man says as soon as he says it, without any analysis or fact-checking, because 1) his fans will not care if he lies to their faces; 2) while you’re busy picking his lies apart, he’ll spit out another mountain of bullshit and you’ll be buried under it.
A Russian Journalist writes “A message to my doomed colleagues in the American media” [Alexey Kovalev/Skepchick]