As the US media floundered this year, I couldn’t help but think: ‘Thank God I’m at the Guardian’

It might be most generous to characterize the behavior of major US media organizations since 2024 as negotiating between competing incentives.

On the one hand, billionaires have consolidated their ownership over major news outlets and platforms. The Murdochs are squabbling over Fox. Jeff Bezos has remade the Washington Post in his own image. The pharmaceutical magnate Patrick Soon-Shiong places a thumb on the scale at the Los Angeles Times, and the Trump-aligned Ellison family has taken over Paramount and CBS, and spent the final weeks of this year making hostile takeover bids for CNN owner Warner Bros. The influence of these billionaire personalities has often reshaped their organizations’ newsrooms and editorial boards, directing investigations and particularly opinion sections towards ownership’s pet projects and preferred policies.

On the other hand, US media organizations are also facing tremendous pressure from the Trump administration – and from Donald Trump personally, who has used a combination of frivolous defamation suits and weaponized regulatory agencies to extract vast sums from outlets that publish coverage he does not like and threaten the licenses of broadcasters who host voices critical of his movement. He extracted a vast settlement from CBS over a shockingly banal concision edit to a Kamala Harris interview on 60 Minutes; he sued the New York Times over unflattering coverage; his FCC chair threatened to withdraw ABC’s broadcast license over comments made on air by a comedian.

Swayed both by the preferences of their ownership and by the threat of retaliation from Trump, some major outlets have seemed to soften their coverage. Fearful of lawsuits from displeased subjects, they hedge their bets. Unwilling to buck Washington’s Maga conventional wisdom or to displease their owners, they reshape their opinion sections. There are still many journalists of great talent and integrity at these publications, but the results have been palpable. The quality of the outlets has precipitously declined: they are putting out worse work as the costs of putting out good work become greater.

Between billionaires and the Trump administration, there is another incentive that has too often been compromised: the journalistic mandate to serve readers, and to tell the truth.

Would it be too selfish of me – or perhaps just a bit gauche – to admit how many times, as an American opinion journalist, I have looked at the fate of my colleagues at other outlets and thought: “Thank God I’m at the Guardian”? The Guardian has never – and would never – ask me to pull a punch in my opinion column, or to flatter someone whose power or protection the paper needs. The Guardian does not shape its coverage, in its opinion section or in its news reporting, based on what is politically expedient or what will get them into the least trouble. The Guardian is able – and, crucially, it is willing – to challenge the powerful. Other outlets ask their writers to compromise; the Guardian has never asked this of me.

This is in no small part because the Guardian has no billionaire owner. It does not need to flatter his ego, or wield its opinion section to advance the interests of his businesses. It is supported, instead, by its readers – whose financial support bankrolls our investigations, keeps the lights on in our newsrooms, and pays my rent. It is you, not a billionaire, that we answer to, and you, not a billionaire, whose interests we are tasked with serving.

At the risk of sounding corny, I’ll say that I am sometimes overwhelmed by my own eagerness for this challenge. To be a progressive voice in these pages, week after week, telling you the truth as I see it, has been the greatest honor of my career. As the media continues to flounder, unsure of profit models and unsteady in their navigation of the Trump era, there are fewer and fewer places where I would be able to do this kind of work. I’m grateful for this one.

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