As we get closer to the election, the frenzy of the media becomes increasingly apparent. All the stories about polls, about uncommitted voters, about wild rumors about immigrants, etc., it all has a purpose — to make us increasingly anxious and desperate for more “news”, that is, the stuff the media tells us will help us resolve our uncertainty. Except, of course, it isn’t what we need. I know how I’m going to vote, I informed my opinion on that by seeing what the candidates do and say, and all the caterwauling about how my neighbors will vote or how people a thousand miles away will vote doesn’t matter.

But that is what the media feeds on.

The machine is churning so fast right now that the works have been exposed. Sprockets have sprung, circuits are frayed, the housing is cracked, and the real engines of the news are exposed. It’s billionaires meddling.

The choice in the next election is obvious to every informed citizen, but the Washington Post went full chickenshit and decided this was the year they can’t make an endorsement. The publisher, William Lewis, had to twist himself into knots to justify that act of cowardice.

“We recognize that this will be read in a range of ways, including as a tacit endorsement of one candidate, or as a condemnation of another, or as an abdication of responsibility. That is inevitable,” Lewis wrote. “We don’t see it that way. We see it as consistent with the values The Post has always stood for and what we hope for in a leader: character and courage in service to the American ethic, veneration for the rule of law, and respect for human freedom in all its aspects.”

In the name of ethics, the rule of law, and respect for human freedom, the paper nobly refuses to support the candidate who opposes a fascist with no ethics, contempt for the law, who wants to lock up and deport millions of Americans. That is such a chickenshit excuse. You know the real motivation: they are afraid Trump might win, and they are preemptively kneeling before the monster who’d abuse his power to silence media that is critical of him.

And, of course, the Washington Post is owned by a billionaire, Jeff Bezos, who is probably pissed off at the only reasonable (if flawed) candidate who is talking about mild policy that might cost him another yacht. The thumb is on the scales.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, another major newspaper, the LA Times, refused to endorse a candidate who opposes Trump, and has lost the support of much of its staff.

Mariel Garza, who was until days ago the Los Angeles Times’ editorials editor, said she resigned from her post in protest after the paper’s owner, billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, blocked an endorsement the editorial board had planned to make for Harris. Soon-Shiong appeared to push back in a social media post, in which he claimed the editorial board was asked to “draft a factual analysis of all the POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate” so readers could make an informed decision, but claimed the board did not follow through. Editorial board members Robert Greene, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and Karin Klein also resigned in protest, with both citing their disappointment over the blocked endorsement.

Patrick Soon-Shiong is a South African billionaire who bought his way into a position of influence. I can think of another South African billionaire who is poisoning our democracy. Maybe we should deport them all?

There are things we can do — weak, belated things, but it’s something. You can write a letter to the editor of the WaPo. It probably won’t get published, but increasing the tally of people who state their contempt for the editorial cowardice can help. Do like Martin Baron.

Former Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron, who led the newsroom to acclaim during Trump’s presidency, denounced the decision starkly.

“This is cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty,” Baron said in a statement to NPR. “Donald Trump will celebrate this as an invitation to further intimidate The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos (and other media owners). History will mark a disturbing chapter of spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”

Or even better, if you are a subscriber, cancel it right now. I did. The darkness approaches. Don’t expect the Washington Post to light a candle.

Great. We’re having a another presidential debate tomorrow. I predict it will be a debacle.

I won’t predict who will win, because that is going to be shaped by people’s subjective impressions and the way impressions will be shaped by the media. And one thing I can definitely predict is that the media will fuck it up.

The first thing to say about the hate and scorn currently directed at the mainstream US media is that they worked hard to earn it. They’ve done so by failing, repeatedly, determinedly, spectacularly to do their job, which is to maintain their independence, inform the electorate, and speak truth to power. While the left has long had reasons to dismiss centrist media, and the right has loathed it most when it did do its job well, the moderates who are furious at it now seem to be something new – and a host of former editors, media experts and independent journalists have been going after them hard this summer.

Longtime journalist James Fallows declares that three institutions – the Republican party, the supreme court, and the mainstream political press – “have catastrophically failed to ‘meet the moment’ under pressure of [the] Trump era”. Centrist political reformer and columnist Norm Ornstein states that these news institutions “have had no reflection, no willingness to think through how irresponsible and reckless so much of our mainstream press and so many of our journalists have been and continue to be”.

Most voters, he says, “have no clue what a second Trump term would actually be like. Instead, we get the same insipid focus on the horse race and the polls, while normalizing abnormal behavior and treating this like a typical presidential election, not one that is an existential threat to democracy.”

This debate shouldn’t be happening, because in a functional democracy the senile narcissist running for the Republican party should have been repudiated long ago.