Last week, the Washington Post unveiled a new slogan displayed just below the paper’s masthead: “Democracy dies in darkness.” As Count Floyd might say, “Scary stuff, huh, kids?”
The Post‘s new slogan may be hilariously overwrought, but it does suggest a parallel motto: If democracy dies in darkness, journalism surely dies in self-aggrandizement.
For the last few weeks, the scribblers and prattlers of the press have been plumping themselves as civilization’s last best hope. There they are, manning the barricades, militants of a movement. The New York Times no longer merely asks people to subscribe, it pleads with them to “SUPPORT OUR MISSION.”
We don’t dismiss Trump’s attacks on the media lightly. Indeed, The Scrapbook wishes he would spare us all the “media is the enemy” hoo-ha—mainly because it just inflates reporters’ already intolerable sanctimony.
If there is an imminent threat to journalism, we suspect it is less in the bluster of one Donald J. and more in the self-regard of the Fourth Estate.
