This I was not expecting. This is yet another step into Bizarro World and away from normalcy. Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, published an opinion piece on Monday night. Let it speak for itself. Right now my initial reaction is disgust and disbelief that Bezos is identifying as a journalist, having never worked as one a single day in his life. But hey, I could identify as a five-star Michelon chef if I could buy the right restaurant in Paris. Or, maybe not. Probably the French would see through such subterfuge and in a different era we could have said the same thing of the United States. Gone are the days of Watergate and the Pentagon Papers. Look for those things and other laudable achievements in the history of the Washington Post under different management. Meanwhile, in 2024, Here’s what the paper looks like today. Katherine Graham is rolling in her grave.
Let me give an analogy. Voting machines must meet two requirements. They must count the vote accurately, and people must believe they count the vote accurately. The second requirement is distinct from and just as important as the first.
Likewise with newspapers. We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion. It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility (and, therefore, decline in impact), but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.
Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, “I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.” None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one. Eugene Meyer, publisher of The Washington Post from 1933 to 1946, thought the same, and he was right. By itself, declining to endorse presidential candidates is not enough to move us very far up the trust scale, but it’s a meaningful step in the right direction. I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it. That was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy.
I would also like to be clear that no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here. Neither campaign nor candidate was consulted or informed at any level or in any way about this decision. It was made entirely internally. Dave Limp, the chief executive of one of my companies, Blue Origin, met with former president Donald Trump on the day of our announcement. I sighed when I found out, because I knew it would provide ammunition to those who would like to frame this as anything other than a principled decision. But the fact is, I didn’t know about the meeting beforehand. Even Limp didn’t know about it in advance; the meeting was scheduled quickly that morning. There is no connection between it and our decision on presidential endorsements, and any suggestion otherwise is false.
When it comes to the appearance of conflict, I am not an ideal owner of The Post. Every day, somewhere, some Amazon executive or Blue Origin executive or someone from the other philanthropies and companies I own or invest in is meeting with government officials. I once wrote that The Post is a “complexifier” for me. It is, but it turns out I’m also a complexifier for The Post.
You can see my wealth and business interests as a bulwark against intimidation, or you can see them as a web of conflicting interests. Only my own principles can tip the balance from one to the other. I assure you that my views here are, in fact, principled, and I believe my track record as owner of The Post since 2013 backs this up. You are of course free to make your own determination, but I challenge you to find one instance in those 11 years where I have prevailed upon anyone at The Post in favor of my own interests. It hasn’t happened.
Lack of credibility isn’t unique to The Post. Our brethren newspapers have the same issue. And it’s a problem not only for media, but also for the nation. Many people are turning to off-the-cuff podcasts, inaccurate social media posts and other unverified news sources, which can quickly spread misinformation and deepen divisions. The Washington Post and the New York Times win prizes, but increasingly we talk only to a certain elite. More and more, we talk to ourselves. (It wasn’t always this way — in the 1990s we achieved 80 percent household penetration in the D.C. metro area.)
While I do not and will not push my personal interest, I will also not allow this paper to stay on autopilot and fade into irrelevance — overtaken by unresearched podcasts and social media barbs — not without a fight. It’s too important. The stakes are too high. Now more than ever the world needs a credible, trusted, independent voice, and where better for that voice to originate than the capital city of the most important country in the world? To win this fight, we will have to exercise new muscles. Some changes will be a return to the past, and some will be new inventions. Criticism will be part and parcel of anything new, of course. This is the way of the world. None of this will be easy, but it will be worth it. I am so grateful to be part of this endeavor. Many of the finest journalists you’ll find anywhere work at The Washington Post, and they work painstakingly every day to get to the truth. They deserve to be believed.
There isn’t a cub reporter or intern in the newsroom who would be allowed to publish such self serving tommyrot but the owner can. It is true that “many of the finest journalists you’ll read anywhere work at the Washington Post.” That part I’ll go along with. But Bezos saying “our” profession is something I have trouble coming to terms with. If he means whoring, then yes, he is more than qualified to identify as a member of that profession, the world’s oldest. But not journalism. He is not a member of that profession and I’m waiting to hear the op eds roll in the morning telling him just that.
This puts me in mind of an old Humphrey Bogart movie which is well worth the watch, Deadline USA, where Bogart says to a young college man looking to get his first job, “It may not be the world’s oldest profession but it’s the world’s best.” Journalists are a certain breed of people. I was in radio news for a while in the seventies and there’s a certain satisfaction to listening to the UPI and AP newswires clicking in the background and writing copy. There’s a rush of adrenaline when you run out to cover a breaking story, like the time there was a bomb scare at the old Stapleton International Airport. It’s a temperamental thing, whether in the days of Mark Twain or when I did it, or today.
Jeff Bezos is not a newspaperman. He is a rich man who owns a newspaper. For him to refer to “our profession” is a disgrace. You could buy a movie studio but that doesn’t make you a filmmaker or an actor or a screenwriter or any of that. It makes you the owner of a movie studio. You can buy the lot, the buildings, anything tangible that is for sale, but you cannot buy a place in the industry. That must be earned.
I am ready for real reporters, newspaper people and the like to blow their stack. Talk about adding insult to injury. And guess what, Jeff? The 200,000 subscribers that left the Washington Post are probably patting themselves on the back right now, after reading this drivel.
I never thought I’d live to see the Washington Post go down in flames like this, let alone days before a presidential election, but there she is, like the ballot boxes in Vancouver, smoke is coming out of her.
Bezos has far bigger financial interests than the WaPo. I believe he bought it as a lobbying tool should he one day need the kind of influence the Post had earned in its storied history. The drivel he’s put out is nothing but self-serving sucking up. I addressed the issue of the Post and endorsements myself earlier this evening. It is accurate but misleading as hell to talk about the Post in the decades before Katherine Graham didn’t just become the owner but grabbed the reins. From a group of quislings who BEGGED her not to get the paper involved in something as big as the Pentagon Papers story.
But it was only THEN that the WaPo started to become more than a family owned, semi-regional newspaper. Suddenly it started getting a national profile and with Ben Bradlee leading the charge it became a major player in the news. By the mid 1970s the Washington Post had become the WASHINGTON POST with its incredible reach and influence. That’s what Bezos bought, that Washington DC Institution with political connections out the ying-yang. Just in case he needed to tap into said influence one day to further his much larger business interests.
Can the damage he’s done be repaired? I think of a line from The Insider (movie) where producer Lowell Weicker tells 60 Minutes’ signature star Mike Wallace (who wanted him to help with a new story instead of following through on his resignation) that what had been broken with the initial capitulation on the Jeffrey Weigand story about big tobacco can’t be unbroken. That no longer could he tell a source ‘we’ll protect you – maybe…’
What Bezos ignores and/or glosses over is that most people aren’t like those of us who write for this or other sites, or the most avid readers. People have lives. Work. Families. Stuff to do. They simply don’t have time to dig into hours (or more) of research and fact/cross checking the news they consume. Certain journalists and outlets sometimes earn a level of trust. The Washington Post has over the decades since Kay Graham turned it into the paper we think of when we hear/read ‘Washington Post’ a level of credibility when it comes to the Editorial Board and senior management. Or it did.
These are professionals who unlike 90% plus of Americans job is to dig in and be especially well informed about politics. Who is advocating what. What’s in policy proposals and legislation. The impacts of such things. And to offer reasoned analysis. For Bezos to claim what he’s claiming is to say ‘Our experts aren’t any more expert than any regular American so it doesn’t matter what they think.’
Is it any wonder those senior people are so pissed? And that lesser but still experienced writers at the WaPo are as well?
Sadly, Amazon has long ago become such a force people are stuck with it. Bezos no doubt has wet-dreams of one day being in control of ALL commerce – everyone has to buy everything via Amazon. Maybe he thinks Trump would, for a nice cut of the action of course help him towards that goal. As for Blue Origin with Boeings problems Bezos probably figures to pick up major government business as NASA will want at least one viable competitor to Musk. That’s a whole separate issue for another time.
For a smart man Bezos is sure being awfully dumb. He’s forgotten the old saying about when you find yourself in a hole the FIRST thing to do is stop digging. Apparently he’s not content to keep digging with a mere shovel, but instead bought himself a fooking backhoe!
the real investigative journalists need to band together to create something new and powerful. leave the husk of the old to wither.
Easier said than done. Start ups take money.
I suppose AI wrote the ridiculous piece for Bozo Bezo
why exactly does the world need a trusted, independent and credible voice now particularly? could it be because of all the fascists crawling out from under their rocks to threaten the liberal democracy bezos depends on for his fortune? what an ass. and he’s spent years making campaign contributions to people who seek office for the express purpose of ending that democracy. he doesn’t get that the world he grew up in is necessary to sustain the success he has had.
Just a few words to all the idiots who are so afraid of that man and who have the power to rid us of him and his threat to democracy: f@ck you all!
bezos has proven himself to be a dick-less little coward who is obviously in it for currying favor so he can obtain those obscene tax breaks rather than pay his pair share. I’ve read that so far 200k+ have ended their subscriptions. I call that merely a start.
The problem with that move, cancellation, is that in many ways it’s cutting off your nose to spite your face. A problem with cash flow will end up in layoffs, that sort of thing, and it isn’t going to touch ownership.
And, Ursula, Bezos has poured a large amount of money into another news area he knows nothing about and will fail at. On election night, amazon.com will stream a free “news” program on a fancy set to be used only once with old newsguy Brian Williams, who knows nothing about streaming and will be used only once. Amazon does not have a newsroom and will just be aggregating updates from elsewhere. Axios and a few good pundits have signed on to help, but the entire stream will be only a few hours starting at 5 p.m. eastern. That might have been OK when elections were called early and people went bed. But, when the stream is done, it’s done…no handoff to others for continuing coverage. Bezos is an idiot for doing it, will lose money, his WP stunt should ensure no viewers and his streaming experiment will crash and burn…I’m hoping!!
“I assure you that my views here are, in fact, principled, and I believe my track record as owner of The Post since 2013 backs this up”
This is utter bunk. One need only look at the “editorial cartoons” to see how far the Post has fallen. How far journalism has fallen😢