The Eastman memo: A fascist plan to subvert an election

The Washington Post writes about a way to overthrow the US government that a legal adviser to the ex-president wrote to steal the 2020 election for him:

it’s a good bet that most people have never even heard of the Eastman memo.

That says something troubling about how blasé the mainstream press has become about the attempted coup in the aftermath of the 2020 election — and how easily a coup could succeed next time.

The memo, unearthed in Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s new book, is a stunner. Written by Trump legal adviser John Eastman — a serious Establishment Type with Federalist Society cred and a law school deanship under his belt — it offered Mike Pence, then in his final days as vice president, a detailed plan to declare the 2020 election invalid and give the presidency to Trump.

In other words, how to run a coup in six easy steps.

Pretty huge stuff, right? You’d think so, but the mainstream press has largely looked the other way. Immediately after the memo was revealed, according to a study by left-leaning Media Matters for America, there was no on-air news coverage — literally zero on the three major broadcast networks: ABC, NBC and CBS. Not on the evening newscasts watched by more than 20 million Americans, far greater than the audience for cable news. Not on the morning shows the next day. And when Sunday rolled around, NBC’s “Meet the Press” was the only broadcast network show that bothered to mention it. (Some late-night hosts did manage to play it for laughs.)

“The Horrifying Legal Blueprint for Trump’s War on Democracy” read the headline on Jonathan Chait’s piece in New York magazine’s Intelligencer section. And in the New York Times, columnist Jamelle Bouie took it on with “Trump Had a Mob. He Also Had a Plan.” The Post’s Greg Sargent hammered away at it.

Some national newspapers paid attention, but not much. USA Today with a story; the New York Times with a few paragraphs dropped deep into a sweeping news analysis.

For the most part, the memo slipped past the public — just another piece of flotsam from the wreckage of American society, drifting by unnoticed.

Questions: 

1. Has the MSM failed to report responsibly on the Eastman memo, or is it merely an aberrant curiosity of little importance and the MSM did a fine job by mostly ignoring it?

2. Is corporate ownership and/or capitalism of news media mostly compatible with competent, professional journalism, or mostly incompatible? Does it matter that corporations are people and unlimited dark money can flow to politicians to buy them?