Democracy, Now

Big Tech has spent years resisting accountability. As the federal government adopts its own evasion tactics—locking out the press, and now investigating news networks—it’s worth remembering journalism’s essential democratic function.

Toward the end of The Social Reckoning, Aaron Sorkin’s new film dramatizing the run-up to, and aftermath of, the Wall Street Journal’s “Facebook Files” in 2021, Jeff Horwitz, a Journal reporter played by Jeremy Allen White, meets with a brash company press officer, played by Billy Magnussen. Horwitz arrives with a notebook full of questions. He is hoping to hold the company to account for the harms it has perpetrated against individuals and democracy at large. “Jeff,” the PR flack tells him, “we’re twice as big as the biggest country on earth. We’re not frightened of Congress. We’re post-government around here.”