Amid the continuing layoffs and plummeting public trust, traditional mainstream media have tended to favor censorship far more than they used to. As John Lloyd, co-founder of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, put it recently at Quillette,

The US media enjoys the world’s strongest protections of speech and publication, so it might have been counted on to oppose this movement in the name of those freedoms. But instances of journalists being fired or forced to resign for writing or saying the wrong thing have been growing, and these cases tend to follow a similar pattern. First, a writer or editor publishes a piece that is deemed offensive to one or more groups of “marginalised” individuals. Second, activists, influencers, celebrities, and not infrequently the writer’s/editor’s own colleagues informally collaborate in a sustained social-media mobbing of the publication in question and any staffers unwise enough to defend the article at issue. Third, following a period of agonised indecision, the writer/editor is pushed out and the publication releases a craven apology detailing the hurt caused and the lessons learned. Upshot? The mob is greatly empowered and the spectrum of permissible opinion shrinks.

John Lloyd, “Lights Out in America,”Quillette, January 5, 2024

For what it’s worth, even as late as the turn of the millennium, media people tended to be reflexively against censorship. That’s partly because most treasured the hope of discovering an embarrassing or unspeakable truth. Bluntly, that made a journalist’s career. But today, major media no longer exist to inform the public so much as to convey to the public the values that the medium’s key personnel believe they should have. So censorship feels much more comfortable now.

One factor that probably helps media personnel feel that way is the sense of belonging to an academic elite. Far more journalists today have degrees:

Master’s degrees in journalism now dominate the hiring at newspapers. Newspapers prefer degrees from prestigious schools, which always made me smirk because if you have a degree from Harvard, why are you working for peanuts at the Charleston Gazette in West Virginia?

Don Surber, “An anti-Semitic press lies to destroy Israel,” 404 Journalism, 25 October 2023

Some are trying to fight back though

Filmmaker and former network news producer Ted Balaker points out, that “The New York Times stood its ground when confronted by GLAAD, and execs at HBO (now Max) ever-so-cautiously announced a partnership with the formerly untouchable J.K. Rowling.”

If Cancel culture finally expires some day, its obituary should recognize these profiles in courage (or profit seeking—under normal conditions, it wouldn’t take courage to partner with the world’s most successful author).

Ted Balaker, “Comedians to the Rescue: Bill Burr’s New Movie Helps Hollywood Find Its Spine, Shiny Herd, October 24, 2023

But fighting back will mean acknowledging that the publication exists for the readers, not for Cancel Culture — and yes, that will take courage.

James Bennet, one of the journalists fired in the same New York Times purge that claimed Bari Weiss, offered a key observation late last month at The Economist: Courage is what media don’t have any more.

The Times’s problem has metastasised from liberal bias to illiberal bias, from an inclination to favour one side of the national debate to an impulse to shut debate down altogether. All the empathy and humility in the world will not mean much against the pressures of intolerance and tribalism without an invaluable quality that [his former boss publisher, A.G.] Sulzberger did not emphasise: courage.

James Bennet When the New York Times lost its way, 1843 Magazine/The Economist, Dec 14th 2023

The reality is that journalism schools do not even value debate any more; they deride it as “bothsidesism.”

Government-funded news media?

Employment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reports that broadcast, print and digital outlets all together experienced “2,681 journalism job cuts in 2023, up 48% from 1,808 in 2022 and 77% from 1,511 in 2021.” Media analysts now warn of “news deserts” to come, as a result. But that, of course, is nonsense. People are largely curating their own news now, as they often must.

However, the Canadian solution — the government funds the legacy media — is starting to be spoken of in the United States in veiled terms:

“All available evidence suggests that the commercial future for journalism is especially dire,” Victor Pickard, a professor of media policy and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, told The Wrap. “We cannot simply let the market drive local journalism into the ground. I expect to see more legislative efforts, especially at state government levels, aimed at shoring up and even expanding local journalism.”

Natalie Korach, “As More Media Layoffs Ring in the New Year, Americans Face Prospect of ‘News Deserts,’ Yahoo, December 18, 2023

For that, read: The government subsidizes the legacy media to stay in business and they act thereafter as public relations outlets for the governments that fund them. Expect to see such proposals floated more often in the United States in the next few years.