DEMOCRACY dies in darkness. The Washington Post’s tagline for the Trump era, introduced after Amazon’s Jeff Bezos bought the paper in 2013, has become prophetic, with Bezos himself casting a shadow over the publication. News that the Post laid off 300-plus journalists — a third of its newsroom — may seem a distant concern for most Pakistanis. But it signals the deepening of trends that will affect free speech and democracy worldwide.

Events have unfolded almost as a caricature of media capitulation under authoritarianism. The cull of Post journalists (whose collective salaries would barely dent the fortunes of the world’s fourth richest man) coincided with the release of an obsequious film about US First Lady Melania Trump, on which Bezos spent $75 million. Many believe Bezos is gutting the Post to appease the US president in the hope of winning government contracts for his other businesses.

The sackings have drawn attention as Donald Trump seems to have gotten the better of the paper most famous for investigative reporting on the Watergate scandal. But it is only the latest morbid milestone in the decline of global independent journalism. Over the past 20 years, the US has lost a third of its newspapers and two-thirds of its reporters.........

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