I Became a Cop. You Became a Journalist. We Were Both Wrong.

I Tried to Serve the People. You Did Too. We Both Got Played.

I f***** up again. Deadline blown. Writer’s block. Stats down. Inspiration non-existent. I start wondering if I’m even up to the task. It’s the same pit in my stomach I had in field training, sitting in the patrol car at 3 a.m., wondering if I was built for this at all or if the streets would just swallow me whole.

I know what you’re thinking because I hear the same voice every time I look in the mirror: Who the hell am I to stand in the shoes of a working journalist? I’m a retired cop with a Substack. You bled for your degree, your internships, your beat. You chased quotes while your friends took safer jobs. You still wake up at ungodly hours to rewrite a lede because a fact changed while you slept. That skepticism about me is earned.

But here’s the twist: I spent 20 years telling myself the same story you did. I am here to serve the people. I can change the system from the inside. I thought the badge made me a watchdog. You thought the byline made you one of the Fourth Estate. Somewhere along the line, both of us woke up and realized we had been drafted as goon soldiers for the same system beholden to the same same billionaire class we thought we were holding to account.

This is not me coming for you. This is me coming clean with you. Because I know what it feels like when the story you tell yourself about your work stops matching what your body knows is true. You start humming that little survival song: It don’t hurt now. You tell yourself the edits are no big deal, the killed cartoon is no big deal, the story you buried to keep access is no big deal. I used to tell myself the same thing every time I looked away from a petty injustice because “there were bigger fish to fry.”

So let’s look back at how both of us got here

You and I did not make up this story about being the good guys. Grown-ups handed it to us. Civics books said the press was the Fourth Estate, a check on presidents and plutocrats. Police recruiters said the badge was a shield for the weak. We both signed up thinking we were joining the same side as the watchdogs who bark when power steps out of line.

On paper the myth is beautiful. The press watches the government. The government, in theory, watches the rich. The people watch everybody. When the system works, “who watches the watchers” is a real question with real answers.

Except that is not what happened.

Quietly, while we were learning our craft, someone bought the floor under our feet. In 1983, fifty companies controlled most of American media. By the time you were fighting for your first byline, that number had shrunk to a handful. Five or six conglomerates, owned or steered by billionaires, holding most of the front pages, the cameras, the mics. They didn’t need to call your editor and say: “Kill that story.” They just had to set the incentives and wait.

Budgets get cut. The investigative desk shrinks. Advertising gets skittish, so you’re told to watch your tone. Access becomes a currency, and suddenly your job isn’t just to tell the truth. It’s to not upset the person who will give you your next scoop. Somewhere in there, the watchdog collar got slipped on, and you learned what happened to the last person who bit too hard.

You saw it. You lived it.

You watched what they did to Gary Webb and how the establishment papers circled him instead of the truth he uncovered.

You felt the chill when Phil Donahue got pulled three weeks before the Iraq invasion because he was too skeptical for wartime television.

You saw Amber Lyon’s Bahrain documentary vanish overseas because the wrong autocrat was paying the right advertising bill.

You watched Karen Attiah get pushed out and Ann Telnaes get censored because their courage didn’t match their owner’s comfort level.

That’s how you go from watchdog to guard dog without ever changing your job title. One day you’re the Fourth Estate; the next day you’re standing shoulder to shoulder with the guards at the billionaire’s gate, telling yourself it doesn’t hurt.

And here’s where it finally slapped me across the face.

That unsigned Michael Green hit piece wouldn’t leave me alone. On the surface, it was just another neat little Friday column, you know, the kind you skim over while waiting for dinner to finish. But the more I read it, the more it felt like a hostage note.

Clean sentences. Soft critiques. Careful dodges around the $140,000 line. And underneath all of it, a faint tapping.

Like someone locked in a trunk, using their heel to Morse-code a plea: Please hear what I can’t say.

I recognized it because I’ve written my own hostage notes.

I know what it feels like to chase two masters: the truth, and the people who sign the check.

I know what it feels like to polish a report just enough that the powerful won’t be offended—even as something in your chest whispers that you just betrayed the people you swore to protect.

That’s when it clicked for me: the worst censorship isn’t the owner.

It’s the little owner you grow inside your own head.

The one who whispers:

Don’t pitch that.

Don’t risk that.

Don’t use that verb.

Don’t say what you saw.

Say what will let you look in the mirror for five more minutes without throwing up.

So when I saw that unsigned editorial swatting at Michael Green, I didn’t just see Bezos’s paper protecting billionaire narratives.

I saw someone inside the building sending out a coded SOS.

A person who knows the rulers are broken.

A person who knows the poverty line is a museum artifact.

A person who knows condescension dressed up as data is still a lie.

And here’s the real truth: if I could read that signal from outside the building, you must be drowning in it inside.

Which brings us here.

If you recognized yourself in that Friday night hostage note, you’re already halfway free. That ache in your chest? That’s not disloyalty to your employer. That’s loyalty to the calling you thought you were answering.

I am not asking you to burn your career down.

You’ve got kids. You’ve got loans. You’ve got a byline you fought for.

I get it.

I’m asking something quieter.

More dangerous.

Stop lying to yourself that it doesn’t hurt.

Because the moment you admit that it does and that the collar chafes, that the truth is heavier than the paycheck then that’s the moment they lose their grip on you.

Every time one of you breaks rank, even just a little, it cracks the spell for the rest.

Webb. Donahue. Lyon. Attiah. Telnaes.

The ghosts in every newsroom.

You don’t have to be the next martyr.

You can be the next quiet refusal.

The next buried draft that leaks.

The next person who insists on naming the thing everyone else is tip-toeing around.

I was wrong about you.

You were wrong about your power.

We were both wrong about who we were working for.

But we still have one thing the billionaires don’t:

the ability to feel the hurt, name it, and write anyway.

And if we do that right here, in the open then maybe the next unsigned hit piece won’t be a hostage note. Maybe it’ll be the first crack in the wall.

What’s Really at Stake

Here’s what I need to say now, not to the press badge, but to you reading this on a cracked phone screen or a tired laptop.

If you have ever sat at your kitchen table with the bills spread out and thought, “How am I ‘middle class’ and one flat tire away from disaster?” this is your fight. When a billionaire’s paper swats at Michael Green instead of engaging his math, they are not just pushing back on a think piece. They are protecting the story that says your fear is irrational and their rulers are real. Same with erasing Heather Cox Richardson, pushing out Karen Attiah, burying the cartoons that show Bezos kneeling. Every one of those moves is about keeping you from trusting your own eyes.

Because if you believed your own life over their charts, a lot of things would have to change. You would stop calling yourself “bad with money” and start calling the Valley of Death what it is: a rigged zone where every raise knocks out your supports faster than your paycheck climbs. You would stop thinking of the “poor” as someone else and realize the trap runs straight through your living room. You would stop swallowing the line that “the media” is neutral and start asking who owns the mic every time someone tells you to calm down.

This is what’s really at stake. Not just headlines. Not just which pundit gets a primetime slot. It is your sense of reality. If they can convince you that Michael Green is “flashy” commentator, that Attiah is “unprofessional,” that Telnaes is “too much,” they can convince you that your own panic when the rent hits is overblown too. A country full of people who no longer trust their own pain is a country that will accept almost any cruelty as long as it arrives with a chart and a calm voice.

And here is the part that makes me write past midnight when I would rather numb out like everyone else: they are counting on your exhaustion. They are counting on you being so tired from fighting the Valley of Death that you do not have the time or energy to check their math. They are betting you will scroll past the Friday hit pieces, shrug at the latest firing, and tell yourself, “That’s just how the world works.” Every time you do, the cage gets a little thicker.

So if you have ever read one of these little Friday columns and felt something in your chest that you could not quite name, that is your body telling you the same thing mine did: this isn’t just about them. It is about you. Your kids. Your parents. Your future. That is why independent spaces like this one matter, not because I am special, but because we need somewhere in this country where the rulers get questioned instead of worshiped.

In a minute, I am going to ask you to help me keep doing that work, with more time and more teeth. Before I do, I want you to sit with one quiet question: if the only voices left standing are the ones on the billionaire payroll, who is going to tell you that you are not crazy?

Listen, here’s the thing I’ve learned the hard way: the truth doesn’t need an army, it just needs a door left open. That’s what I’m trying to build here. A place where the watchdogs who lost their way can find their teeth again, and the readers who’ve been gaslit into doubting their own lives can finally exhale.

So if you’re a journalist reading this from a quiet corner of a newsroom you barely recognize anymore, I’m asking you…no, welcoming you to step inside. Bring your weary conscience. Bring the story your editor told you to soften. Bring the draft you buried because you knew it would cost you more than you could afford. Bring the part of you that still aches when the truth bends. There is room for you here. Not for spectacle, not for outrage-for-hire, but for the kind of honesty that made you pick up a pen in the first place.

And to everyone else….everyone who knows what it feels like to work hard and still feel behind, everyone who read Michael Green and saw their own bank account blinking red, you are the reason this place exists at all. You are the reason I stay up when I want to quit. Because I know you’re drowning in a world that keeps telling you you’re fine. I promise you: I see you. And you deserve a newsroom that sees you too.

If you choose to upgrade to paid, you’re not just supporting me. You’re building the refuge the press should have been all along, a place where truth doesn’t have to beg for permission, and where no billionaire can slide a story into the furnace at 5:00 p.m. on a Friday just to keep you quiet. Your subscription gives me the hours, the stamina, and the independence to do this work with both hands, not just stolen minutes and sleepless nights.

Xpose the Lies.

Xplore the Truth.

Xplain the Real.

That’s the door.

If you’re ready to walk through it—whether you carry a press pass, a worn-out debit card, or just the quiet certainty that something is deeply wrong—I’ll meet you inside.

---

Sources:

Here’s a clean numerical list of key sources behind the references in this piece:

1. Gary Webb backlash over Dark Alliance
   https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB113/storm.htm

2. General background on the media backlash that ended Webb’s mainstream career
   https://www.sevenstories.com/books/2974-censored-1999

3. Phil Donahue fired from MSNBC for airing anti-Iraq War voices
   https://www.democracynow.org/2024/8/19/phil_donahue

4. Overview of Donahue’s firing and MSNBC’s internal memo
   https://www.cjr.org/public_editor/msnbc-public-editor-phil-donahue-and-the-art-of-remembering.php

5. Amber Lyon’s Bahrain documentary and CNN International’s decision not to air it
   https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/04/cnn-international-documentary-bahrain-arab-spring-repression

6. Additional reporting on CNN, Bahrain, and the suppressed documentary
   https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2012/09/producer-claims-bahrain-kept-her-documentary-cnn/323975/

7. Background on the iRevolution: Online Warriors of the Arab Spring documentary
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRevolution%3A_Online_Warriors_of_the_Arab_Spring

8. Coverage of Karen Attiah’s firing from The Washington Post
   https://apnews.com/article/washington-post-karen-attiah-black-media-fired-abec1b31fe02038de8a207a87f05b7df

9. Additional report on Attiah’s firing and the Charlie Kirk context
   https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/sep/15/karen-attiah-fired-washington-post-charlie-kirk

10. Ann Telnaes’s resignation from The Washington Post over a censored Bezos/Trump cartoon
    

11. News coverage of Telnaes’s resignation and the killed Bezos/Trump cartoon
    https://www.lemonde.fr/en/united-states/article/2025/01/04/cartoonist-quits-washington-post-over-rejected-sketch-mocking-bezos-trump_6736704_133.html

12. Pulitzer coverage that mentions the unpublished Telnaes cartoon and Bezos/Trump context
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2025/05/05/washington-post-pulitzer-trump-shooting-telnaes/

13. Michael W. Green’s essay “My Life Is a Lie: How a Broken Benchmark Quietly Broke America” (discussed and excerpted)
    

14. Your own takedown of the Post’s unsigned Michael Green rebuttal
    https://www.xplisset.com/p/dear-washington-post-you-came-for