On our screens, two images tell a story for our time. First, there is a fleeting glimpse of publisher Jimmy Lai, 78, standing trial in Hong Kong. The democracy advocate and critic of the Communist regime, he’s been handed a 20-year prison term—a span so long, it is a death sentence. Lai is a man erased for the crime of promoting a free press. His world is a prison cell, his future a void. The second image is of Jeff Bezos on a yacht, radiant under a Mediterranean sky, a titan of industry whose newspaper, The Washington Post, once adopted, under his ownership, the solemn motto, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
One publisher is in a cell, the other on a yacht. To see the gulf between them is to spy the war on truth.
Appreciating the cruelty of Lai’s fate, one must remember the promise that was Hong Kong. It was meant to be a beacon of “One Country, Two Systems,” a vibrant city where commerce and speech coexisted when the United Kingdom relinquished its claims to the former colony in the late 1990s. As Beijing retreated from its commitments to Hong Kong’s freedom, its citizens fought back. The 2014 Yellow Umbrella Movement was the zenith of this spirit of liberty, a breathtaking display of civil disobedience where a generation demanded the democratic future they were promised. For a moment, it seemed possible.
But the People’s Republic of China, under the tightening grip of the Chinese Communist Party, saw a threat to be neutralized. The crackdown was not a swift blow but a slow, systematic strangulation. First came the National Security Law, designed to criminalize dissent. Vague offenses like “secession” and “collusion with foreign forces” became weapons to silence anyone who dared to speak out.
Then, under the cover of the global pandemic, Beijing perfected its surveillance state. Health codes and contact tracing implemented in the name of public safety became instruments of political power, making protest and organization all but impossible. The apparatus of control was all but perfected.
Jimmy Lai and his newspaper, Apple Daily, stood as the loud, last bastion of defiance. He was not just a publisher; he was a symbol. So, the state came for him. They didn’t just arrest him; they staged a spectacle. Hundreds of police raided his newsroom, seizing computers and files, broadcasting an unmistakable signal: The Fourth Estate is an enemy of the state. Lai’s assets were frozen, his company dismantled. He was subjected to a show trial, and his pre-ordained imprisonment is the capstone of China’s project to extinguish liberty in Hong Kong.
And what of the other publisher, the one who warned of darkness? Federal agents are not storming Jeff Bezos’s office. The Amazon founder is not being tried for sedition. But the institution he stewards is being hollowed out from within. Recent mass layoffs and the downsizing of its foreign bureaus represent a different silencing—a slow decay driven by market logic and bad decisions. When a newspaper that toppled a corrupt president justifies firing correspondents as a business decision, it signals a retreat from its core mission. It chooses to see less, to know less, and ultimately, to say less.
This is the tale of our two publishers. One, Jimmy Lai, was crushed by the overt tyranny of a state that fears the truth. The other, Jeff Bezos, presides over an institution whose purpose is being eroded by the tyranny of the balance sheet, made worse by decisions that appeared to bow to authority. The head-snapping decision in 2024 to scuttle a long-planned Kamala Harris endorsement days before the election made tens of thousands of hard-won subscribers cancel their paid subscriptions. An announcement that the Opinions section would run only pieces promoting free markets and free speech, while Bezos’s prerogative, only underscored the sense that the owner didn’t want to offend an administration that spends billions on cloud computing, space rockets, and other products that Amazon and Bezos’s personally owned companies, like Blue Origin, sell.
Bezos is no tyrant. He is a brilliant innovator who, by all accounts, saved the Post from financial ruin when he bought it from the Graham family. And to be clear, the paper still produces world-class journalism. But the trajectory is alarming, more so because it didn’t have to be this way, despite a tough landscape for journalism. Hiring a publisher still beclouded by a Fleet Street scandal, and whose parade of innovations he couldn’t explain, let alone make work, like a “third newsroom”, seemed a strange choice for a former CEO, now chairman, who picked his Amazon executives with painstaking care, even rotating some to be his “shadow.” The Brit has left, but America is left with a weakened bulwark of democracy. (Note: I worked for Newsweek when The Washington Post Company owned it.)
This is the Western-style threat to the press. It doesn’t come with jackboots and handcuffs. It comes with PowerPoint presentations and grim HR memos.
Lai’s story is a violent tragedy; the Post’s is a quiet one. But both lead to a similar place. One publisher will likely die in darkness for trying to keep a light on for millions. The other is celebrating in the sunshine, while dimming the beacon he once made brighter. It forces the question: Is democracy crushed by the fist, or does it bleed out from a thousand budget cuts? Either way, it’s up to us to save it.
