No one was particularly surprised when Vladmir Putin recently won reelection by a landslide. The near universal reaction could be characterized by a roll of the eyes and a sighed “what do you expect, it’s Russia.” We’ve seen this before, after all — it is his fifth term — but there is something new in its significance for us. What’s changed is the newly fragile condition of our own democracy, making the Moscow “election” emphatically relevant to America. Many are the differences between Russian and American society, but one of those gaps has shrunk with alarming speed over the past decade. Putin’s power has been built on the bones of a free press. America once had a fiercely independent media that was not just the hallmark of our liberty but also the guardian that kept our society free. But our mainstream press has abandoned its sentinel post, leaving America vulnerable as we move toward the most important election in generations.
The Supreme Court recently cast a spotlight on the health of our free speech when it examined the Administration’s efforts to stifle critics through manipulation of social media. Reports on the hearing, however, missed the fundamental issue. Apologists asserted that there had been no top-down coercion of speech — “nothing to see here, move on.” But the ultimate issue wasn’t that the Administration initiated censorship, it was that our leaders were enabled by the repression of speech that was already endemic in the popular media. The Supreme Court will decide if indirect manipulations violate constitutional protections. Whatever the outcome, we are learning a bitter lesson: the Constitution, in all its brilliance, does not protect us from repression that grows outside government, from within our culture. Free speech relies on the Constitution, yes, but it also relies on our social compact and its moral framework of truth, which is collapsing in vital parts of society.
Our mainstream media has been surrendering its freedom for years, not by any dictate from the top but by a seismic shift in its values and self-perceived role in society. The process started slowly, long ago, when publishers and editors discovered a gold mine in obsessing over celebrity heroes, then accelerated when they found that a celebrity villain offered the same rewards. They learned to favor sensation over substance, never worried that their chosen villains are not always evil, nor their heroes always virtuous. For them an off-color remark or over-the-top boast from one of their celebrities becomes more important than any substantive dialogue about policy. Why worry about terrorists infiltrating across Pexels/Eva Bronzini
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