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Comment by EnPissant | Hacker News Reader

> its not widely reported on because the media is a mix of institutiins which tend to be either in support of the Administration doing it or in fear of being targeted in retaliation for reporting on topics like that.

Here is a list of major news media outlets from Wikipedia[1].

Which of the following do you think either supports the current administration or fears being targeted by it?

ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, NBC News, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Politico, Bloomberg, Vice News, HBO, HuffPost, TMZ, CNET, NPR, The Hollywood Reporter, Newsweek, The New Yorker, Time , U.S. News & World Report

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_media_in_the_United_State...

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If anyone's wondering whether this list of news companies is larger than the list of owners of those outlets: yes.

> Which of the following do you think either supports the current administration or fears being targeted by it? [ long list of media ]"

They all support it and none of them is afraid of being targeted because... they all support it, albeit in ways that are discernible only to those who can read between the lines.

Fox News supports and many of the others fear being targeted by it, some are a bit in between like Washington Post and LA Times (billionaire owners sucking up to the dictator, as is tradition when such regimes rise to power)

Unless you think threats of DOJ investigation, pulling broadcast licenses, or extremely expensive lawsuits don't produce fear? In that case you should let authoritarians know their playbook is out of date. Of course it's not, which is why authoritarians follow such a distinct pattern.

Look at the first 30 headlines when searching for Trump on the Washington Post and tell me they fear him in any way: https://www.washingtonpost.com/search/?query=trump

I suspect people will say they are critical of him, but "not enough" or cherry-pick 1 or 2 neutral headlines in a sea of critical ones.

No no, for WaPo one need only know that Bezos spiked the Editorial Board's endorsement of Harris and then Blue Origin executives met with the Trump campaign literally hours later.

Oh yeah and that they wouldn't publish a cartoon poking fun at the kleptocracy. The artist resigned in protest and went on to win a Pulitzer, which WaPo had no problem taking credit for.

Is it fair to say that Navalny didn't fear Putin because he was actually quite vocal against Putin?

I see. So "not enough" then.

Nope, that's actually not what I said. Nice try though!

So the Washington Post is extremely anti-Trump but once or twice the owner stepped in and forced them to remain neutral _maybe_ so as not to jeopardize government contracts for one of his other companies. But also there was a big backlash, and he probably could never do this again or the very least extremely infrequently?

> So the Washington Post… owner stepped in… so as not to jeopardize government contracts for one of his other companies

I see. So “in fear of being targeted in retaliation” then?

Those are almost all sanewashing headlines for truly terrible acts.

Literally things that you'd expect to find in an Alan Moore dystopian graphic novel, or as world building background TV headlines in a gritty Robocop described in peppy business as usual terms.

The top one is an alcoholic Fox News host being appointed as an Attorney General to replace a disastrous one that couldn't even get Republican support to be confirmed, a brief summary of his 120 days:

> He represented Jan. 6 defendants before getting the job, punished and demoted their prosecutors when he got it, and launched a series of ideological investigations (wokeness in medical journals, a five-year old Chuck Schumer gaffe) that went nowhere.

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