Credit: Project Democracy
When journalists started approaching Protect Democracy a few years ago for practical advice on how to cover threats to democracy, they consulted the work of leading scholars who study the history of autocracy and democracy — people like Yale professor Timothy Snyder, who wrote “On Tyranny,” and Journal of Democracy contributor Sheri Berman of Barnard College, who wrote “Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe,” The Post’s Margaret Sullivan writes:
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. …..“Democratic backsliding happens step by step, not all at once,” Jennifer Dresden, a political scientist and the report’s lead author, told me. Or, as the report puts it, “By using ‘salami tactics,’ slicing away at democracy a sliver at a time, modern authoritarians still cement themselves in power, but they do so incrementally and gradually. RTWT
