Jeff Bezos Takes on the Media

Cue the outrage. Cue the anguished expressions from journalists, or pseudo-journalists, if you prefer, that their newspapers have chosen not to endorse a candidate for the presidency. 

By now you know that the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and USA Today have refused to endorse presidential candidates. Or better, the owners of those papers have exercised owner prerogatives and rejected the notion that they should tell their readers how to vote.

Or else, you can consider that they have chosen not to endorse their obvious choice, Kamala Harris. Clearly, a vote of no confidence in her.

Then again, if you have been reading the biased coverage of the political campaign and do not know where the newspapers stand on the issues, then you probably do not know how to read.

So, a few of its pseudo-journalists quit the Washington Post. As did, a certain number of subscribers. By all accounts owner Jeff Bezos can afford the loss.

But, Bezos, having allowed his newspaper to become a propaganda arm, has suddenly decided that he wanted to return the newspaper, if not to solvency, at least, to objective reporting.

One suspects that the outraged staff members who resigned in protest were working for the paper in order to foist their jejune opinions on an unsuspecting readership, not to report the facts objectively and dispassionately. If they were produced by the biased university system, they do not believe in facts anyway.

But then, there is this. The events underscore the simple fact that the mainstream media has a credibility problem. Most citizens do not believe that these outlets can be trusted to report the news, without fear or favor.

Heather Mac Donald explained it well in the City Journal:

Endorsements are a trivial part of the media’s loss of credibility. The erosion of public trust derives from daily news coverage in which reporters uninhibitedly pass off their own political views as “fact,” editorializing with as much abandon as any editorial writer. It was under Bezos’s tenure that the Washington Post dedicated itself to its anti-Trump Democracy Dies in Darkness crusade. It was under Soon-Shiong that the Los Angeles Times ran one white-privilege mea culpa after another during the George Floyd race riots.

The problem is less the editorials and more the news. Newspapers and even television news programs happily editorialize in their presentation of so-called facts. It is never just that Trump said this or that, but that Trump lied. The drumbeat is constant. 

For example, when the New York Times reported that Joe Biden had said that Trump supporters were “garbage,” the paper inserted the word “appeared,” as in “appeared to say.”

Strangely, these media outlets have not figured out that they are selling their credibility for the dubious sense that they are not just reporting, but making history.

This is not disconnected from the fact that the most important influence on the way news is reported lies with social media. One has difficulty thinking that social media is any more credible.

As we now know government officials lean on social media outlets, the better to have them censor anything that would make Trump look good or Harris look bad. Didn’t Twitter put its large thumb on the scales in 2020 when it suppressed the New York Post story about Hunter’s laptop? 

Some have suggested that Bezos was inspired by the fact that some of his companies are subjected to federal regulation. Thus, he was defending his business.

On the other hand, you can ask why he bought the paper in the first place. At the least, he must have felt that it would give him prestige. Not necessarily power, but prestige. It would enhance his public reputation.

Now, he seems to have discovered that the editors of the Post have turned the paper into a propaganda rag, and that this fact does not grant him any respect or prestige. It makes him less reputable.

So, Bezos intervened in the endorsement process, almost as though he is warning his journalists to get their act together. He also added that he wanted the paper to have more conservative columnists, which would surely move the paper in a more respectable direction.

Journalism is in crisis. It has largely been taken over by ideologues who are more interested in promoting their own jejune beliefs than reporting the facts.

Bezos wrote this in the Post:

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.

You would almost think that he was competing with Elon Musk, the man who brought Twitter into the world of objective journalism.

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