Author: Raphaela Gold (Page 2 of 2)

By Luqmaan Bamba

Balance of memory. The politics of remembrance. The singularity of nazism.

These were my novel takeaways from this afternoon’s tour of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg. 

On the balance of memory 

Our guide noted that this camp imprisoned and killed Jews, but in the early days of the camp the focus was political dissidents, including communists and anti-Nazi activists. Another challenge of remembering came after the camp was liberated, when it fell under Soviet control and they began targeting anti-Soviet dissidents. In the 1960s, when memorialization started, there was tension among survivors. Which victims should be recognized? To whom should the center be dedicated? If multiple victims are recognized, then to what degree and in what fashion should each be memorialized? The layperson thinking about mid-20th-century events doesn’t typically think about how society grapples with its past. Before this tour, I was included among these people.  

On the politics of remembrance 

One case in point: a police academy on the grounds of sites where the police once collaborated with the Gestapo. The memorial center wanted to narrow its focus to prisoners and manage its priorities and impact. In the 1990s, some of the land surrounding the memorial was handed over to the city, and the local police department decided to build there. A sign facing the camp explains the history of the site. They want to deliberately train officers here so that every day they are reminded of what they shouldn’t be – the dark period in history when law enforcement became the enforcement of terror and torture. 

The police building is an example of the complex questions innate to memory culture. Is it better  to destroy buildings, or to preserve and contextualize them? Should memorials physically reconstruct history, or do they risk trivializing places and signaling false authenticity?  All answers are riddled with paradoxes. One building, for example, serving as a game center for the SS, has been preserved, but both the memorial and the police academy want nothing to do with a site that represents casual recreation amidst the most brutal tragedies.

On the singularity of Nazism 

A visit to Sachsenhausen raises questions. How could they do it? How did they rationalize and justify it? For the Nazis, these camps had “value” in that they helped entrench political control and hegemony by imprisoning political opponents, dissidents, and citizens. Slave labor was a solution for German companies, like BMW and Siemens, who were losing workers to the German military. 

But the murder of Jews with the aim of extermination raises even harder questions. It is a unique horror.

Last week, German Chancellor Fredrich Merz delayed his government’s decision on whether to approve a package of EU sanctions on Israel. Merz said earlier this month that he would present his coalition’s joint position at an Oct. 1 summit of EU leaders in Copenhagen. But Merz’s delay makes it unclear when or whether Germany will reach a firm decision.

“The history of German support [for Israel] is so great that going for EU-wide sanctions is against the history of the relationship,” said Daniel Marwecki, a lecturer in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong whose research focuses on German-Israeli relations. “Germany is not going much farther than it already has.” 

The sanction package, introduced by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in mid-September, would impose tariffs on an estimated £5.8 billion of imported goods from Israel, while also sanctioning two far-right members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. The Commission also proposed sanctions on 10 Hamas members. To pass, the proposal requires approval by a qualified majority ruling. 

One reason for the Merz administration’s stalling may be the agreement reached on Monday between U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the Israel-Hamas war, according to Marwecki. Though it is yet uncertain whether Hamas will accept all of the conditions in the Trump administration’s 20-point peace plan, many are optimistic that a ceasefire is finally on the horizon.

“For Germany, the ideal outcome would be an acceptance of that plan, and that would allow the government to get out of the current predicament of having to find a tougher, more European stance,” Marwecki explained. In recent months, many other European countries have faltered in their support of Israel, citing human rights violations. 

But Germany has taken a hard-line pro-Israel stance since just after World War II. What would it take for that to change?

Germany faces pressure to change its Israel approach

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Germany has faced increasing internal and external pressure to revise its stalwart stance. Hundreds of thousands of Germans have taken to the streets to protest their government’s military support of Israel. 

According to a poll by public broadcaster ZDF, 76 percent of German voters believe that Israel’s military action in the Gaza Strip is unjustified. A YouGov poll released this week showed that 62 percent of German voters believe Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide.

But public sentiment and foreign policy are often misaligned. Dr. Naama Lutz, an Israeli scholar of migration at the Social Science Center in Berlin, has watched public sentiment shift since the start of the war and seen the pro-Palestinian protest movement bloom. “But it just kind of feels like a drop in the ocean,” she said. “The core of Germany’s foreign policy is pretty unwavering in its support of Israel.”

The country is also facing external pressure, growing isolated among its Western allies, many of whom have recently recognized a Palestinian state. Germany has not taken this step, and has thus far avoided applying the term “genocide” to Israel’s actions in Gaza. 

There has been at least one significant policy shift. In August, Germany said it would no longer issue licenses for weapons “clearly usable in Gaza.” According to reporting by Politico, this language suggested that other types of weapons would still move forward, which they recently did — last week, Germany approved a batch of arms exports to Israel again. 

Still, Germany’s history is not easily shaken off, nor is its national identity easily disentangled from that of Israel. 

Germany’s reason of state

After World War II, Germany needed to regain standing in the eyes of the international community. Supporting Israel as a Jewish state was an obvious way for Germany to symbolically and materially absolve its guilt.

Marwecki explained that Germany’s very “staatsraison” — or, reason for statehood — was formed via the way it used Israeli nationalism to create its own, making Germany the only country whose “staatsraison” is another country’s “staatsraison.”

Lutz noted that even today, the German citizenship test — which she herself took in June — requires applicants to check two boxes: one denouncing antisemitism, and the other accepting the legitimacy of Israeli statehood. 

“Everyone has to check this box,” she explained. “This is a very core principle of who [Germany] is. It’s very open and straightforward.”

According to Marwecki, when Germany supported Israel industrially and militarily after World War II, it was born not out of a true moral reckoning, but rather out of a self-serving need for rehabilitation and reintegration into the Western block. 

Former German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer hinted at this on German television in 1965, when he said, “We had done the Jews so much injustice, committed such crimes against them, that somehow this had to be expiated or repaired if somehow we were to regain our international standing.” 

Thus, Germany’s aid was instrumental both in establishing Israeli statehood and re-establishing its own. The irony is that the formation of Israel led to a massive Palestinian refugee crisis in 1948. According to Marwecki, some say this renders the “Palestinian problem” also a German problem. 

Nowadays in Berlin, a common protest sign reads, “Free Palestine from German Guilt.” Activists argue that Germany’s longstanding support of Israel and commitment to preventing future atrocities after the Holocaust should give it even greater reason to support Palestinians in this conflict.

This leaves Germany at a crossroads. “They know what’s happening in Gaza can’t go on, and now they have to wash their hands clean,” Marwecki said.  

But with a ceasefire deal on the table and an enduring staatsraison, this may not be an area in which Germany feels it can afford to budge, including on the EU sanctions. “When it comes to anything that sanctions Israel or targets the economy as a whole,” Marwecki said, “I just don’t think Germany will support that.”

Watching Nuremberg left me feeling as if I had been allowed a glimpse into the inner workings of the Nuremberg trials and the minds of both the prosecution and those on trial — but a few parts were still unsatisfying. 

To begin with the satisfying bits, I enjoyed the psychological elements of the film, particularly watching Captain Gilbert interview the defendants and extract from them morsels of guilt. The image of a Jewish psychologist sharing a room with Nazi criminals and genuinely trying to understand how they came to commit the atrocities they did was striking. Though Gilbert’s revelation of evil as the “total lack of ability to feel empathy with another human being” felt a bit dramatic, he reached his conclusion through these conversations in which some of the defendants broke down completely, unable to understand their own actions, wrought with guilt, while others were completely unfazed and unreflective. 

I also thought Göring’s relationship with Tex, to whom he bestows the swastika-branded lighter, was a fascinating one which may speak to how fascism appeals to so many young white men today. Here was this terrible criminal, Göring, and this young, disillusioned American. The former exudes power and confidence despite his imprisoned state, the latter wants that same power and confidence for himself and finds in Göring not a terrible criminal, but rather a sympathetic mentor — both being white men who see their power slipping away and wish to hold onto it. 

As for the unsatisfying bits, I wish the film hadn’t wasted time on Robert Jackson and Elsie’s romance, and instead had given us a bit more legal background so that we could truly understand the charges at the end of the film. It felt very abrupt to suddenly be presented with these four counts on which the defendants might be charged, including “Crimes against Humanity,” a completely new charge born out of the Nuremberg trials themselves. We didn’t get a sense for which charges were considered worse, or worthy of more severe punishment, according to international law. We also learned very little about some of the defendants, such that seeing them all be sentenced was confusing because we didn’t have enough background information as an audience to deliberate for ourselves whether they deserved their sentences. I went in expecting a true, Twelve Angry Men– style courtroom drama, and came out feeling as if I’d experienced a psychological thriller of sorts.

That being said, Nuremberg reaffirmed a lot of my research and reporting on the current German ethos to the Israel-Gaza War and how the German “staatsraison” or raison d ‘etre of the state, is so deeply dependent on reclaiming its international reputation through supporting Israel as a Jewish state. Though the film did not deal with the formation of Israel directly, the trials were also a crucial part of German rehabilitation in the eyes of the international community. In many ways, the trials were less about convicting Nazis, and more about a) making an example of them on an international stage to prevent further such atrocities and define terms for how to deal with such crimes in the future and b) to absolve Germany and present the appearance of an “old Germany” (the fascist, Nazi Germany), and the “new Germany” which wished to be seen as nationally powerful without being associated with the old regime (despite incorporating some former Nazis into the new government). These politics continue to undergird German foreign policy and domestic conversations today, so I do think this film is a useful background to anyone hoping to report on modern Israeli and/or Palestinian experiences in Germany.

Option 1: “As musicians, we use our way of expressing ourselves: music,” says Arne-Christian Pelz, founder of music for humanity. “But I don’t know what it takes to finally put an end to this.” Since October 7, musicians across Europe have been coming together to call attention to the suffering in Gaza and Israel through concerts which double as public demonstrations. The dynamic is particularly fascinating in Germany, as Chancellor Merz has stated that the country unequivocally supports Israel. At the same time, Germany is home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian migrants, as well as an increasing number of Israeli expats in the past decade. I’m interested in further exploring how the arts scene in Berlin, particularly music, factors into the ecosystem of Arab and Israeli migrants in the city as a form of connection and activism. 

While pro-Palestine demonstrations in Berlin have resulted in police brutality and even some deportations, these musical flashmobs have remained peaceful, largely, according to Pelz, due to the support of pro-Palestinian Israeli activists whose presence helps protect protesters. In particular, there is a Gazan singer named Wafaa Saied who it would be fantastic to get an interview with. Professor Uli Brückner of Stanford in Berlin also recommended Igor Levit, a pianist who has performed concerts against antisemitism and to call attention to the hostage situation, as a source (although I understand he is quite famous and will probably be nearly impossible to get in touch with). I want to get beyond the “how does music bring people together across cultures/across the aisle” thing and get more into what this form of protest can/can’t accomplish as opposed to other forms, and how in particular it might make it more possible for vulnerable communities, like Palestinian migrants, to participate in protests because it is nearly guaranteed that they will be more peaceful. 

Potential sources:

• Wafaa Saied, Gazan singer who has been prominent at musical flashmobs and online 
• Daniel Marwecki, originally from Berlin (now a professor in Hong Kong) who wrote a book on Israel relations with Germany (Germany and Israel: Whitewashing and Statebuilding)
• Arne-Christian Pelz, founder of Music for Humanity (who could plug me in with more sources)
• Udi Raz, Israeli pro-Palestinian activist based in Berlin who has been arrested at multiple protests 
• Alma Itzhaki, one of the founders of Israelis for Peace in Berlin (which helped organize the massive rally on Sept. 27)
• Marija Ristic, formerly an investigative journalist and war crimes reporter and OSINT expert, now works in crisis management at Amnesty International, which has been a major organizer in recent mass pro-Palestine protests in Berlin (could be helpful in plugging into a wider circle of activists)

Option 2: The second option I’m considering for Berlin is to look into the preschool and kindergarten which Chabad Berlin is building for over 60 Jewish Ukrainian refugee children. There’s not been much reporting on the large group of Ukrainians who left Odessa on the 8th day of the Russia-Ukraine War, in 2023, and came by bus via a “green corridor” Germany constructed, so that the Jewish Ukrainians could pass safely to Germany through Romania. Though there has been some reporting on how Jewish Ukrainians have adjusted to life in Berlin, I’m particularly curious about how integration into German culture is feeling three years later, as many were reluctant to return to Germany given its history with the Holocaust. Currently, it seems that the school is still in the works, but I’m curious about how Chabad is building community for Ukrainian refugees and helping children integrate, especially as Chabad schools in the U.S. are known for being particularly unintegrated places — places you send a child to get an exclusively Chabad education, without many secular subjects. 

There are Chabad schools across the country in the U.S. In the U.S., there’s been reporting on how this can alienate students from secular peers later in life, make it difficult to find jobs, and make it difficult to grow. How might this play out with the Chabad school in Berlin? Do the children feel like part of Ukraine or Germany, or that they are in a separate category? For this kind of piece, I would visit Chabad in Berlin and find most of my sources there. It could also be interesting to trace the history of the “green corridor” from Ukraine to Germany and what legal structures allowed that to be possible, because there’s very little about it online. I’m a bit low on sources for Option 2 as of now, but have reached out to the Berlin Chabad house running the program and plan on attending a program and/or shabbat meal during our visit if possible. It would be great to chat with regular chabad-goers, the parents of the children who would be attending the schools, and the children (if at all possible), and to identify people who can tell the story of how they got from Ukraine to Berlin. It would be great to interview experts about what allowed that exception to policy to be possible. 

Questions for the AfD:

The AfD party has emphasized regulating migration by attracting skilled migrant labor. Does the AfD have particular countries in mind from which those skilled laborers ought to be attracted?

The AfD has also advocated a new policy on returns for Germany, including sending people back to their country of origin or to the first EU country through which the asylum-seeker entered the bloc. How and for which immigrant groups would you ideally see this policy play out? 

As of this past September, Germany is no longer the country where the most people apply for asylum in the EU. How do you feel about that trend and what do you believe is the cause?

“We like to think people have a rational relationship with information. We do not. We have an emotional relationship with information.” To me this quote from Bellingcat says it all, or at least, says a lot. The readings this week made me reflect on the irrational way in which we receive information, and whether journalism is up to the task of helping us make sense of the world rationally. It seems to me that Open Source journalism can serve the public in some ways traditional journalism currently does not. I really appreciated the point in Bellingcat about trust works differently for citizen journalism versus professional journalism. In citizen journalism, trust is generated through transparency and providing all of the evidence to support a claim, while traditional journalism often expects to garner the reader’s trust through its standards, authority, popularity, or name (e.g. trusting CNN because it’s CNN, not because it provides a complete evidence trail as to how it obtains its information). 

When Dean of the Columbia Journalism School Jelani Cobb was on campus last semester, he was asked what piece he would choose to write right now, if he could write on any topic, and he said he’d write a long think-piece about public trust. I wonder if and how open source journalism would factor into that think-piece, and whether more people engaging with information gathering by participating in it could increase trust in reporting — whether allowing for mass participation in the act of journalism would give it greater authority than having it concentrated in the hands of a few, in a newsroom.  

I was also struck by just how many types of injustice Open Source journalism can help uncover. With just youtube, twitter, and google maps, one could trace an accidental Russian bombing, or re-education campus for Muslims in China, or who committed hate crimes in Charlottesville, or the deportations of thousands of Ukrainian children — not in the past, but in real time. That’s a pretty powerful tool, and clearly it’s really changing the game. Still, it was very cool and surprising to read about the history of Open Source and trace it back to the late 19th century in Colquhon’s piece. Maybe now, it is changing the game less in terms of what we can discover as journalists, and more in terms of how quickly we can discover it and distribute that information. It was also really cool to learn about the history of Open Source and trace it back to. Still, I’m curious about to what extent AI will cast doubts on its efficacy, which Bellingcat did not fully address: as the internet begins to host more fake videos, and those fake videos get better and better, how can we keep trusting that putting these videos together can give us accurate information?

Lastly, the FT piece on tech lords and populists was an interesting look into how people derive power in our modern society. I hadn’t before considered how there have always been powerful digital moguls, and there have always been powerful populist politicians, but now the two are coming together and reinforcing each other’s power. But given this power, it seems OSINT might also gain more significance in holding it accountable, especially as the Trump administration and similarly authoritarian regimes globally are shedding their own layers of accountability. 

We’ve been mostly focused on the “aftermath” of being an immigrant: programs like TPS, suspended visas, refugee aid and resettlement centers. The status of being in limbo. The status of being essentially without status. This week’s news stories were along the same lines, outlining the reinstatement of Syria into BAMF’s Return and Reintegration Assistance Program, in the aftermath of Assad’s fall from power, the fear of Syrian migrants living in Germany of potentially needing to return to Syria  due to the same event, Syrian doctors’ deliberations over whether to stay in Germany or to return to Syria, having filled in critical gaps in the German health sector. All of this reinforces for us the reality that the process of migration continues long after a human being has physically moved across borders. 

But Kingsley’s and Mikhail’s books were critical reminders that we, as journalists, cannot forget to attend to the process of becoming a refugee before reaching one’s destination: both of being persecuted in one’s home country, as The Beekeeper so vividly portrays in the Yazidis’ case, and the harrowing journeys captured in The New Odyssey. It struck me that those living in a country that typically receives immigrants, like many of us in the U.S., might be more inclined to follow the stories that impact migrants once they reach their destination. I find myself naturally hooked to news of Chicago ICE raids, the construction of new inhumane detention centers, the end of protections for certain migrant groups. But I appreciated how these books re-widened my lens on refugeehood into how the process begins with persecution in one’s country of origin and how a migrant might carry that forward: why people need protections in the first place.

The books took different approaches to trying to familiarize the reader with their subjects’ struggles and I think The Beekeeper was more successful. Kingsley was telling a story that had been told before, and he seemed to know it, and play it up. But I was a bit put off by his decision to lean on The Odyssey and classical Greek mythology to tell this modern story. Kingsley writes in the prologue, “Today’s Sirens are smugglers with their empty promises of safe passage; the violent border guard a contemporary Cyclops. Three millennia after their classical forebears created the founding myths of the European continent, today’s voyagers are writing a new narrative that will influence Europe, for better or worse, for years to come” (Kingsley, P. 10-11). But other than dramatic ocean journeys, the Odyssey references feel more like an appeal to Western audiences and classical values than a truly justified comparison. It’s the kind of fun context that usually makes a longer-form story more enjoyable, but this one didn’t do it for me. Is the clever war-hero Odysseus, who was trying to get home for so long, really comparable to the modern refugee? It’s not that I don’t see what Kingsley is getting at, it’s more that I feel stories like Hashem’s flight from Syria can speak for themselves. (And I say all this as someone who really does love the Odyssey). 

Mikhail’s appeal worked much better for me. Part of it was that every sentence was a shock: I’d never before read about the Yazidi genocide and its treatment of women and children, so all was freshly egregious. The refrain of Mikhail’s role as a teacher, and whether she should tell her students stories like Nadia’s, really worked for me because even if she didn’t tell her students, she was telling us. And the reporting and storytelling reminded me of Asmat Khan’s in their meticulousness (the use of Google Maps to scope out areas of Syria and track how they’d changed, the commitment to Abdullah as a main character), but it was more gripping for its book-form. I think Siyeon also really got at the success of the book’s poetic qualities and the blurring of subject and narrator. This week’s readings reminded me to pay attention to the whole arc of migration and how best to narratively capture that arc when writing about it.

Asmat Khan’s investigation series in the Times struck the impressive balance of being both very repetitive and very gripping. On a technical level, the structure worked so well because it fit the content perfectly. The point was to demonstrate repetition, to provide irrefutable evidence that these civilian casualties have not been the exception but the rule, and to suggest that the pattern of deaths that emerged through the reporting is perhaps baked into the military system that allows for them and makes these mistakes time and again. By part two of the investigation, I was expecting to become desensitized to the barrage of civilian injuries and deaths, but couldn’t because each of Khan’s stories were hard-hitting and unique despite being representative of statistics of a much greater magnitude.

Following on last week’s drone conversation, the “gamer-boy” quality of modern warfare continues to trouble me. The part of the investigation I found myself rereading was the section titled “Play Time?” and the terminology “poppin.” One could imagine the exact same dialogue unfolding between two 13-year-old boys playing Fortnight from the comfort of their separate homes. The system seems designed to build just that—comfort—into the conducting of modern warfare. The technology lauded as “precise” clearly has its faults. But continuously using the language of precision to describe these acts of “mistaken” carnage they were carrying out allowed the American soldiers to remain a certain degree of separation from their actions and write off their errors as exceptional flaws. That drones could also come to provide some level of comfort to Afghan civilians was also a shock which we didn’t touch on when we spoke of the use of drones in Ukraine last week. It makes sense, but is also staggering, that the sight of a drone could bring a civilian a sense of security that they are being surveilled and therefore hopefully being accounted for by the U.S. army. But as we learn throughout the pieces, the idea that if you are seen by the technology, you are safe from its violence is a false narrative. Yet it might be a necessary false narrative that unites both the U.S. army and Afghan civilians in their ability to continue going about their lives without being consumed by guilt on the one hand and fear on the other.  Overall, the investigation series deepened my understanding of how drones are transforming war, and I’m curious about how this transformation is changing war-related migration patterns as well.

As for the shorter news pieces, I was interested in German churches’ capacities to shelter “irregular” migrants in light of chancellow Merz’ immigration crackdown and deportations. I’d like to learn more about the rise in immigration bans across Europe and in the U.S., and whether the increase in politicians campaigning on “tough” immigration policies can be traced to the same cultural and societal shifts in both places. The Reuters piece also points to an interesting gender dynamic in immigration practices, with the assumption that “sunni men in particular are not at risk under the Taliban.” Linking this back to the drone-warfare element makes me wonder how more technologically advanced wars are changing the proof required to demonstrate one is imperiled or persecuted in one’s country of origin. Based on the investigations, wouldn’t all civilians be sufficiently endangered?

While it does not surprise me that the war in Ukraine is marked by technological advances, as are most wars, it is interesting that the rapidity with which drone technology is advancing is engendering a technological battle between nations off of the physical battlefield. The “First World Drone War” is not limited to the material reality of drones hitting targets in Ukraine and the struggle to gain advantage over the skies, but has spread to how allied nations share the secrets of this technology with one another, such as Ukraine using it as a bargaining tool for U.S. aid. In a way, even if the war in Ukraine does not truly encompass the whole world (aside from the obvious direct and indirect global consequences), it is serving as a long, grueling lesson in modern warfare. Other countries are studying this new technology, preparing themselves, trying to learn from the warring nations. This raises questions which I wish the news pieces had been able to address more in depth: What kind of new technological regulation will accompany the new technology? And will AI powered drones be better or worse at civilian discrimination? Another layer I hadn’t thought about before reading the “First World Drone War” piece was that people now can get individual alerts for drone strikes, which may even include drone location in some cases. Is war and defense becoming more individualized as tech advance? 

The piece on civilian volunteers led me down a similar train of thought, especially in terms of the individual choice to stay at home rather than flee to bomb shelters, which is a very individual choice despite the very collective circumstance of the war. I was also intrigued by the paying of volunteer civilian drone killers and how that has innovated the defense system. Essentially, Ukraine is integrating a makeshift volunteer civilian defense group with a wage-based economic system, essentially transforming the work into a government job. In that case, what differentiates these civilians from members of the army, besides having other jobs that they continue on the side?

And, speaking of volunteers, the Faith Under Siege documentary gave me pause as to the benefit of foreign volunteers in war. It felt ironic to me that a film so vehemently against Russian Christian nationalism was so tinged with American Christian nationalism throughout. The film’s sole focus was on Russian forces shutting down Ukrainian churches and persecution against Christians in Ukraine, when we know that Ukrainians of all religious affiliations are persecuted by Russian forces. Labeling the war Russia’s “Holy War” against the West felt like an erasure, or at least an omission, of the other religious and non-religious communities that Russia has targeted during this war. To the film’s credit, it got some incredible access and the drone footage taken from the Wall Street Journal was particularly impressive, but I was left feeling like the film was by American Christian nationalists for American Christian nationalists, to encourage more to volunteer in Ukraine. And while that is an understandable goal, it also made me wary of trusting the film as a whole. 

On a disconnected note, the piece on the Unity Hub from the Kyiv Independent piqued my curiosity about how the war has affected local news in Ukraine and whether global journalists have been able to work with Ukrainian journalists and Ukraine’s pre-existing press to report on this war. This piece from a year ago helped answer some of those questions for me. 

What struck me most throughout these readings is the confluence of multiple forms of power working against the media, both from within and without. As Gibbs points out in her analysis of Musk’s earlier role in the Trump administration, “he is the richest man in the world and owns a major media platform. We have not seen that convergence of power, influence, and levers before.” For-profit media outlets owned by multi-billionaires is a marriage of financial, attention/media, and often political power that, as others have already pointed out, presents journalism with an unprecedented challenge. Coupled with other forms of power, like technological power or the power over particular platforms (like X and BlueSky), certain media outlets are forming information empires which play into the hands of the very seats of power they are meant to be checking and holding accountable.

At the same time as power is concentrated among the few, access is dispersed among the many, across a multitude of platforms, filtered extensively through non-professional voices (i.e. friends and family, as Gibbs says), more than ever before. It can be difficult to follow how various stories and events are connected when they are dispersed in such small, short-form quantities. This filtration leads to people being less “riveted” by journalism than they once were, less moved to act or shape their views according to what they are reading in the news. At the same time, media platforms without political, financial, and technological ties to the Trump administration (those which seem to be destroying themselves from within), are either being attacked by the Trump administration via lawsuits or are preemptively capitulating. Whether the lawsuits have merit, as Alison Durkee explains, seems to bear little influence over how it plays out. The attention grabber is the lawsuit itself, and the power that the Trump administration wields over journalists through the law. In an attention economy which leads people to stop absorbing information at the headline or soundbite, the content holds less import than its packaging, and that packaging can do little to reflect the nuance of any given story — or so some of these pieces suggest.

I also appreciated Rebecca Hamilton’s point that the Trump administration does not need to sue every “disobedient” outlet to make a point. Rather, as the administration is doing with universities and colleges, it can make an example out of a few to influence the actions of the many. At the same time, like Miriam, I would push back against the notion that the Trump administration as a whole is winning against the media. I was very compelled by Gibbs’ points about the importance of explanatory journalism during uncertain times, in which understanding systems of power and how they intertwine is more crucial than ever. It almost makes the act of investigation simpler: rather than uncovering information, we need only explain it and leverage the power of storytelling and good writers to do so.

I was left with the questions: How can we adapt to make our journalism more riveting? And is good writing, or skilled manipulation of any medium of expression for that matter, enough to do it? I’m also wondering how professional journalists themselves are experiencing these attacks, and whether it is leading to any form of journalistic nihilism within media communities. Do journalists still believe in their own ability to win public trust? Is public trust still attainable?