In a post yesterday, I wrote, in the final note on the ethical implications of this week’s election results,

“None of this would have unfolded in quite the same way, I am certain, without a corrupt journalism sector that has totally abdicated the duty of its profession in favor of partisan propaganda. I am more convinced than ever that the Republic will not function efficiently or engender responsible citizenship until there is news media commitment to fair, objective, responsible, unbiased and honest communication to the public of what it needs to know to make intelligent decisions about their governance. There has been some progress toward that end this year, but not nearly enough.”

Well, evoking William Barrett Travis when Santa Anna demanded the surrender of the Alamo, the New York Times “answered with a cannon shot.”

“The Times’s Profit Jumps With 460,000 More Subscribers” the headline today reads. “The Times now has 12.33 million total subscribers to all of its products. It has said it is aiming for 15 million by the end of 2027.” The article (gift link!), which you can read yourself if you have the stomach for it, has lots of other good news for the Times bottom line,

There are many reasons for the Times’s success. Presumably many of the new subscriptions are from Washington Post refugees who abandoned that extreme pro-progressive, anti-conservative, anti-Trump paper because it has made some minor tacks against the Leftist wind. Also if one is Trump Deranged and has the ability to read (presumably most MSNBC watchers do not) the New York Times is the go-to source for biased propaganda, and it has puzzles, entertainment news, a book review publication and an ethicist too!

The Times also wisely bought “The Athletic,” a thorough, professional sports publication at a time when sports pages in papers are shrinking, Sports Illustrated has fallen into ruins (with AI writing no-one-knows-how many of its articles) and ESPN has been so wokified that it is nauseating.

I was going to complain about how Americans who care about democracy and the critical role “the press” plays in the Founder’s vision are fools to let the New York Times, arguably the head of that rotting fish, thrive by continuing to pay for its propaganda, but realized that I subscribe to the damn thing myself. It is still the best news source out there in the gutter, and also necessary for me to read because it so frequently proves just how partisan and unethical the news media is.

Meanwhile, the Times is taking a victory lap, pleasing its readers with news stories and pundit pieces gloating about the election, moaning about the poor “refugees” who are having trouble getting into the U.S. now that the government isn’t declaring de facto open borders, treating the announcement that Ethics Villain Nancy Pelosi isn’t running for re-election as a blow to the nation rather than the too-long-delayed gift that it is, and gratuitously criticizing and impugning President Trump at every opportunity.

My favorite example of the latter, I think, is in the interview with novelist John Irving. Despite noting that the interview covered many hours, the Times headlined the story, “The World According to John Irving” (evoking his most famous novel) “The literary titan is still publishing books, and still pushing envelopes, at 83. But you will not see him in the United States anytime soon.”

Gee, I wonder why?

The discussion with Irving was, appropriately focused on his writing, his career and his work habits, but the Times couldn’t resist including this: “I could not, would not, in good conscience go to my birth country,” Mr. Irving said, “when there is such an authoritarian bully in the White House, and when the craven Republicans in the House and the U.S. Senate are complicit in their silence.” I couldn’t care less what an expatriate American—Irving left the U.S. in 2015, when Obama was President” thinks about the Trump Presidency. If he would leave the U.S. for Canada, he neither appreciates nor understand his own nation, and his opinion now is approximately as useful or worth quoting as that of Jennifer Lawrence, and probably less so: at least she’s smart enough and American enough to stay here.

But I digress: the point is that American journalism is led by unethical journalists, editors and publications that profit from their woke and leftist biases. Until that changes, they won’t change, and until they do, our democracy, the American culture and our way of life will be in intensifying peril.