How journalists can spot the signs of autocracy — and help ward it off

The threats to democracy are everywhere now. A new guidebook tries to show reporters the right way to cover them.

When journalists started approaching Protect Democracy a few years ago for practical advice on how to cover threats to democracy in the United States, the nonprofit’s leadership took the questions seriously.

By “threats to democracy,” they mean aggressive challenges, happening now, to the free and fair way we govern our nation. Those include everything from the spread of baseless claims about rampant election fraud to state legislatures’ efforts to make it more difficult to vote and easier for partisans to overturn legitimate voting results. They include efforts to install state officials far less upstanding than Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who refused to comply when then-President Donald Trump insisted he “find” nonexistent votes after losing the 2020 election. And, lest we forget, a violent mob invading the Capitol in an attempt to intimidate members of Congress while threatening to hang the vice president.

The result is a 28-page publication called “The Authoritarian Playbook: A Media Guide,” an effort to give reporters and editors some tools in recognizing what’s happening and in covering it effectively.

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