Have American journalists woken up?
In 2016, they didn't seem to care that Armageddon was looming. They preferred to focus on Hillary Clinton's email server instead of the eloquent warnings she gave about how disastrous a Benedict Donald Presidency would be. They rarely challenged outrageous Republican lies while giving statements by Democrats the 12th degree. They didn't even seem swayed by the tauntings and abuse they suffered from the MAGA crowd at Trump rallies. And of course they assumed they were fulfilling their professional responsibilities by having two talking heads, one from the right and one from the left, yell over each other on TV.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin was killing journalists, Donald Drumpf was talking about "rewriting the libel laws," and the Beltway pundit class couldn't have cared less.
The murder of Jamal Khashoggi, however, might have finally gotten their attention.
Sure, Khashoggi was a Washington Post contributor, so this one hits closer to home. But the gruesome details of his death have unnerved the press — more than Anna Politkovskaya, ambushed and shot in a Moscow elevator, more than Natalya Estemirova, kidnapped and dumped in the woods, and more than Yuri Shchekochikhin, who family members are certain was poisoned.
We don't know why the current and well-deserved alarm over Khashoggi took so long, but we won't quibble if American journalists have finally had their come-to-Jesus moment. Still, it's infuriating how their inside-the-newsroom bubbles gave them a false sense of security — blinding them to the dangers posed by the mobster Trump and the unsavory dictators with whom he makes, or wants to make, money. Did we say "unsavory"? Perhaps the better word is "murderous." We cats HISS.
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