Vicarishame - 4

It is not my fault. But as someone who teaches media and communication, I feel deeply vicarishamed for the Time's decision to name Trump "Person of the Year" for the second time (2016 was the first, also after the election).

Time, of course, is justifying this by impact rather than by the quality of influence the person of the year had, “for better or for worse… on the news.” Hitler was the person of the year in 1938, Stalin - twice (1939 and 1942), Khomeini in 1979, and Putin in 2007. So naming the villains a person of the year is not new for Time.

But do they really have to be this obsequious? They know perfectly well that Trump is all about performance and magazine covers, why fan his megalomaniac flames so openly and deliberately? This is what the Democracy Docket founder and the leading Democratic lawyer Marc Elias calls "anticipatory obedience" and "kissing the ring": Trump is not sworn in as the president yet but the corporate media owners are lining up and goose-stepping to show him that they are, in Trump’s own words, a bit tamer now.

The whole mission of traditionally liberal, or as they are called today, legacy media -- to be a watchdog of democracy, the fourth estate -- has now been hollowed out and perverted. Democracy died in twilight when Bezos told The Washington Post not to endorse Harris. Recently he donated $1M to Trump's Inaugural Fund (so did Mark Zuckerberg). The New York Times now leads with the propaganda pieces from right-wing media ecosystem. The Los Angeles Times owner drove its editor into resignation over the decision to publish more right-wing opinion pieces. One by one, major newspapers are folding at Trump’s feet. It is simply embarrassing all around and I am vicarishamed for all of them.

The publications that are still critical and non-bending in anticipatory obedience are the traditionally reliable elite weekly magazines such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The Vanity Fair. However, because they are magazines that are working on the stories longer than newspapers, I find myself going directly to the raw news sources such as Associated Press, Reuters, BBC and NPR for the breaking and developing news stories and analysis. It takes more time but it is worth the effort and in my case - a requirement to stay informed for high-quality teaching.

I have also subscribed to the 1440 news digest that I heard a lot about but never had a chance to check out. It's a start-up news aggregator based in Chicago that defines its mission in this enticing way:

Wading through thousands of headlines, op-eds, and algorithm-driven news feeds has left intellectually curious Americans frustrated with their options. That's why we started 1440 - a fact-driven news and knowledge resource that respects your time and intelligence. Curated by humans, not algorithms.

I will use it for a week or so and then report on my experiences. Here is the link to its daily briefing if you want to check it out on your own:

In addition to the Democracy Docket which is focused mostly on legal issues and cases, I'm getting decent analysis of current events from podcasts such as The Daily Beans, Weekly Show with Jon Stewart, and Heather Cox Richardson's "Letters from an American." Also starting January 21, I will follow Amy Siskind's "Weekly List": in the first Trump's term, she kept the best historical record of Trump's authoritarian actions and initiatives.

While I was working on this story, the news broke that ABC settled with Trump for $15 million in the defamation case before even deposing him. That made me even more vicarishamed because this is definitely not the last example of corporate media folding at Trump's feet. It is deeply embarrassing as the corporate news media are failing us not only at keeping us informed but also at exercising their own First Amendment rights. It is up to us, citizens, now to stay up to date on Trump's deeds and protect democracy from his attacks and the attacks by his lapdog billionaires.

Author's note: Vicarishame (vi-shame) - feeling of vicarious or secondhand embarrassment a decent person experiences for a wrong action committed not by the person but someone else.

I made up the word because I don't think "secondhand embarrassment" is a good phrase for it and because I've always admired the German language ability to come up with precise compound words. So this is my attempt to model the German compound word approach, putting together "vicarious" and "shame."