While there are indicators for dictatorship, some autocrats are able to skillfully mask tyranny under the mantle of democracy. With a keen eye, however, journalists can spot autocracy. This article by Margaret Sullivan, is published by The Washington Post. Here is an excerpt:

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.

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 Sheri Berman of Barnard College, who wrote “Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe.” And they thought hard about how best to cover the threats they see on our own horizon.

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.

Read the full article here.