Billionaire Judge Dredds
by Tom Sullivan
WNYC’s “On The Media” examined the trend in plutocrats taking over more of the functions of democracy because they can.
Bob Garfield interviewed Brian Knappenberger whose documentary, Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press, examines how wealthy individuals — people who already buy the legislation they want — have moved into silencing the media outlets they don’t already own by suing them or buying them. They’ve got the legislative and executive branches. They are working on the judicial branch. Free press? No, they paid good money for it.
The film looks at how Silicon Valley magnate Peter Thiel secretly backed Hulk Hogan’s sex-tape lawsuit against Gawker. Knappenberger tells OTM that at one point in the case it became clear that something bigger than Hogan’s privacy was involved. Eventually, Forbes revealed Thiel was backing the legal case against Gawker to punish them for outing him in 2007.
Garfield: There’s a point where we learn that they actually reduced their claims in the case for the specific reason of making sure that they could inflict the most pain not only on the corporation Gawker Media, but on founder and CEO Nick Denton and other editors at the publications.
Hogan would get less because insurers would pay less. But Thiel could inflict more pain on individuals he most wanted to hurt.
Sheldon Adelson, the richest man in Nevada, in 2015 secretly purchased the Las Vegas Review-Journal, a regular thorn in his side. The paper’s own reporters uncovered his involvement. From The Guardian review:
The new management promptly declared that star columnist John L Smith could no longer write about Adelson, who had in fact already sued him. Most of the paper’s talent quit, but it was an extraordinary putsch.
The OTM interview continues:
Garfield: Alright, this is America. Historically rich people buy newspapers and they use them to flog their own politics, their own values, their own personal interests. There’s nothing new about that. Why is the Adelson case so concerning?
Knappenberger: It’s the secrecy. And it’s the same thing that bothers me about the Thiel example. That, combined with the fact that we’re in a kind of new period now in which inequality has gotten so staggering — it’s been growing for decades. And you pair that with the fact that media in general has become so vulnerable. Particularly, independent watchdog journalism has lost a lot of its revenue and financial underpinnings to the Internet and others while the über-rich have gotten much, much richer and much more powerful. So that’s the moment that I am trying to describe here.
Media-abusing Donald Trump too has made a pact with Sinclair Media for more favorable coverage. Sinclair is buying up local TV stations projected to reach 72 percent of American households with nightly right-wing commentaries its local outlets must run.
NYU professor Jay Rosen ties the three threads together in the film:
I think the common thread among the Peter Thiel story, the Adelson story, and the Trump story is billionaires who are proclaiming, We are not vulnerable to truth. We are invulnerable to the facts. And it simply doesn’t matter what you say, what the press does. We are more powerful than the truth.
Knappenberger sums up the interview:
Knappenberger: I found that statement by Jay to be very powerful. I do think that’s essentially what we are facing now. This notion that the truth doesn’t matter if you’re rich enough.
“I am the law!” declared Judge Dredd. Billionaires have declared themselves the truth. And the lawmakers. And the courts. And now the press.
If unchecked, the only places these trends can lead are unpleasant. Like Charlottesville, only more systematized.
Now would be a good time to get off the couch.
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