Thread by @ggreenwald

The typical denial from corporate journalists that they're totally free to say whatever they want and operate with no constraints - because they never get memos ordering them what to say - is such a naïve and even infantile way of understanding how corporate power works. Chomsky:

https://twitter.com/crampell/status/1527079803899215872

Of course Bezos, like most owners of major media corporations, doesn't pick up the phone or write emails telling journalists what to say. He doesn't need to. Everyone knows what the taboo ideas are and the pieties they must affirm. Large corporations only hire those who conform.

At the Intercept, Pierre Omidyar never interfered in the editorial process. He never told anyone what they couldn't say.

But he became a fanatical, vocal Russiagater and #NeverTrumper, so senior editors - desperate to keep their huge salaries - hired writers to echo his views.

Everyone who works at the WPost or any other huge media corporation knows the limits on what they can get away with saying. Of course some dissent happens: good for branding and appearances.

But overt censorship isn't needed: they only hire those already well inside the lines.

Barney Frank was a sleazy and corporate-enslaved politician, but for that reason, and because he was around DC for so long, he knew how DC corporate journalists work. Here's what he told NPR about politicians denying that their donors shape their votes:

https://twitter.com/davidsirota/status/1527307023762632705

On a not-unrelated note: corporate journalists always close ranks -- defending one another -- the minute this critique is voiced because they're all in it together. Here's NPR's @PeterSagal and others telling WP's @crampell that outsider-critics like Sirota are unworthy trash: