Masha Gessen on the "Impulse to Normalize"
The journalist Masha Gessen recently wrote a piece called "Autocracy: Rules for Survival" in the New York Review of Books. Rule #1 is: "Believe the Autocrat. He means what he says." But when a leader makes false statements or contradicts himself, how should he be covered?
Gessen warns that in the Trump era there will be an impulse to normalize, causing coverage and thinking to drift in a Trumpian direction. She saw that drift when she returned to post-Soviet Russia after years of living in the United States, and noticed that even the way certain words were used had become constrained. She talks to Brooke about how the press need to bridge the gap between reporting the facts and telling the truth, and how historical lessons offer a way forward for covering Trump.
Song:
The Hammer of Los by John Zorn
