Each Friday, I write to you with my perspective on the news of the week. If I’m being honest, it’s my favorite column to write. It forces me to make sense of what is happening in politics, law, elections and democracy. Most weeks, after spending some time thinking, the piece writes itself.

Not this week. Candidly, I spent hours last night trying to digest the disparate events of the week into a coherent whole. The end of the government shutdown and the release of the Epstein Files were the biggest stories. I wrote a piece connecting the two that resonated with readers like few things I’ve ever written. On Reddit alone, it had over 1.7 million views. 

While those topics are understandably dominating the current news cycle, I can’t quite shake a different pattern that crystallized for me this week — further evidence that legacy media is either too arrogant or too scared to acknowledge its role in democracy’s decline.

The biggest piece of evidence was the blockbuster Epstein email release.

As I sorted through the documents, I was struck particularly hard by an email in which Jeffrey Epstein offered the recipient photos of Donald Trump and “girls in bikinis in my kitchen.” After further banter, Epstein brags that he “gave” Trump his “20-year-old girlfriend...after two years.”

Then it hit me: Epstein was emailing former New York Times reporter Landon Thomas Jr. Checking the date of this email — Dec. 8, 2015 — I suddenly realized that at the exact same time the newspaper was hyping Hillary Clinton’s emails and castigating her, its own reporter had emails from Jeffrey Epstein that were highly damaging to Trump. 

Why didn’t they release these emails? Why did they participate in such a hypocritical smear campaign? 

And surely now that this has come to light, the New York Times would acknowledge this grave concern and perhaps, at long last, apologize to Secretary Clinton or to their readers. Instead, silence — and not just from the Times, but from virtually every legacy outlet.

It seems we’re asking too much from legacy media. Because on Thursday, it was reported that the president of the BBC — yes, the BBC — sent Trump a personal letter of apology for a documentary that included an edited version of Donald Trump’s speeches on Jan. 6, 2021.

What exactly was the issue here? That they used Trump’s own words? What was the reason for an apology? Grow a spine and stand your ground.

While minor compared to other media capitulations, it still registers as a bending of the knee to appease Trump. 

Something I read over the weekend also nagged me all week. Last Sunday, I came across a CNN story titled, “Images of Trump appearing to close his eyes during Oval Office event spread across social media.” What made me stop was the photo directly beneath the headline, showing Trump with his eyes completely shut, slumped to the side of his chair while a press event was happening around him.

It struck me as odd that CNN included the word “appearing” when his eyes were indisputably closed. If you see the photo, it’s undeniable: just as his tie is red or his face is orange, his eyes are clearly, indisputably shut.  

It was enough to get me to read the entire story, and as I did, the article grew stranger. One particularly tortured sentence read: “At moments, Trump’s eyes appeared closed, and at others he seemed to struggle to keep them open.”

“At moments?” “Appeared closed?” “Seemed to struggle?” It reads as if perhaps Trump was blinking — when he clearly looks to me to be asleep.

Then it got even worse: “All presidents, at moments, have appeared tired in public. Even a much younger president like Barack Obama would occasionally rub fatigued eyes during long summits.”

The point is not that Trump appeared tired — he always looks tired. He didn’t rub his eyes; they were closed. And Trump was in the Oval Office, not at a long, exhausting international summit. 

Each of these incidents, standing in isolation, could be dismissed. But they aren’t in isolation. They are part of a disturbing pattern that has existed since Trump first descended the escalator in 2015.

It may have started with an unstated — and still unadmitted — bias in favor of Trump in the 2016 election, but it has metastasized into outright capitulation and collaboration. The BBC’s apology is not a $16 million payment, but it’s still more than it would offer any other president under similar circumstances. The New York Times’ behavior is inexcusable, and its arrogance shows it still doesn’t understand why much of the public doesn’t trust legacy media.

As for CNN, I’m not suggesting that the author of the piece or those involved in editing it consciously agreed to pull their punches. They didn’t have to.

Everyone who works in corporate-owned legacy media understands the political environment. They know their owners are — or pretend to be — fans of Trump. They know consolidation is happening in the media industry, and that means the administration has leverage to approve or block mergers. Even more importantly, they are keenly aware of how thin-skinned Trump is and that a story stating plainly that he was asleep during a press event might provoke an outburst.

Without a word needing to be said, everyone involved understood it was safer to soften the coverage. And it’s not just this story. It’s every story. And Trump knows it.

Nearly a year ago, standing at the New York Stock Exchange, the then-president-elect bragged: “The media is tamed down a little bit. They like us much better now, I think. If they don’t, then we’ll just have to take them on again, and we don’t want to do that.”

As I wrote at the time, he was right. And now, that truth is abundantly clear. Trump bullies media outlets because it works. Each time he attacks a major news organization, others rush to limit their exposure to his anger. The result is a feedback loop that rewards softer coverage.

When I started Democracy Docket in 2020, I promised it would always be fiercely independent and unapologetically pro-democracy. For us, it’s not an empty slogan or something that changed when President Joe Biden was elected or now that Trump is back in office. It is who we are and what we do.

I wish I could say that about more of the former leaders in the industry.

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