Democracy under siege and the press, too
On Wednesday afternoon, a mob of right-wing extremists and indignant livestreamers stormed the Capitol. Along their path, they left a note to the journalists who were covering the scene, a message that seemed a harrowing extension of a presidency marked by anti-press virulence: etched into a door was the phrase murder the media. It’s hard not to take that seriously as was noted by Rachael Pacella and Paul W. Gillespie, both journalists who had survived the 2018 mass shooting at the
Capital Gazette, in Annapolis, Maryland. And yet, as Masha Gessen wrote for