The reputation of the Washington Post continues to get buried 6 feet under after another columnist quits following censorship.
All thoughts praising glorious leader, Donald Trump, will be praised. All thoughts criticizing glorious leader, Donald Trump, will get censored, taken down, and the people behind it will be punished to the fullest extent of the law. This has long been something of an ethos for the far right and the Trump regime. While jailing those seen as being critical of the fascist administration has long been a call by the Trump administration, there are those in American society preemptively carrying this ethos out among their rank and file.
One of the most prominent examples is Jeff Bezos who is currently working on running the Washington Post into the ground. Despite being plagued by huge amounts of cancellations from the readership, it seems that the huge loss in business is by no means a deterrent to Bezos who has made it a mission to purge the company of all independent thought and act as a propaganda outlet servicing to kiss the Trump ring.
Back in October, signs that things were getting ugly at the outlet started to emerge when Bezos blocked the endorsement of Kamala Harris – an endorsement that was decided on by his staff. The intervention of the ownership on the staff was shocking and brought the idea of ownership controlling the journalistic content of its readership was brought front and centre in a very real way. After taking such a huge credibility hit and a huge wave of cancellations, Bezos stepped out of the shadows of his office and published an open letter, defending his actions of silencing his journalists. In it, he claimed that he had the best journalists in the business, but also claimed that he couldn’t leave his staff on auto-pilot and, therefore, was required to intervene. The letter did nothing to restore the faith of those witnessing a complete collapse in the papers credibility as multiple journalists quit including some who have won multiple prestigious awards.
One high profile resignation that followed was a well known journalist working for the paper. She quit after her political cartoon got censored because it criticized the move by Bezos to do everything to kiss up to Trump.
Nevertheless, Bezos decided to continue to tighten his grip on the speech of his staff by ordering his columnists to say only things he personally agrees with. This has apparently led to a top columnist quitting after his column got censored. From NPR:
A top political columnist for The Washington Post resigned Monday, accusing Post Chief Executive and Publisher Will Lewis of killing her column that criticized owner Jeff Bezos’ drive to overhaul the opinion pages to focus on his libertarian priorities.
Post columnist and Associate Editor Ruth Marcus, who has worked at the paper for four decades, says she can no longer stay there.
“Jeff’s announcement that the opinion section will henceforth not publish views that deviate from the pillars of individual liberties and free markets threatens to break the trust of readers that columnists are writing what they believe, not what the owner has deemed acceptable,” Marcus wrote in a resignation letter obtained by NPR.
More than 75,000 digital subscribers canceled in the 48 hours after Bezos revealed his intentions late last month, which included an edict that the paper would not print opposing views; then Opinions Editor David Shipley stepped down after vainly trying to dissuade Bezos from his course.
Marcus confirmed to NPR she had resigned and the authenticity of the letter but declined further comment.
“Will’s decision to not … run the column that I wrote respectfully dissenting from Jeff’s edict — something that I have not experienced in almost two decades of column-writing — underscores that the traditional freedom of columnists to select the topics they wish to address and say what they think has been dangerously eroded,” she wrote.
“We’re grateful for Ruth’s significant contributions to The Washington Post over the past 40 years,” a spokesperson for the paper said in a statement shared with NPR. “We respect her decision to leave and wish her the best.” The Post did not address her allegations against Lewis.
Karl Bode of Techdirt offered some good thoughts on the subject:
If Marcus, a four decade veteran, couldn’t get some light criticism of Bezos approved, you hate to wonder what would happen to authors trying to write about issues like billionaire tax reform, consumer protection, or labor rights, subjects already disproportionately left less covered in billionaire owned U.S. media outlets.
Bezos so far hasn’t trampled as heavily on the hard news half of Washington Post coverage. But there’s concern that could be coming. And in many ways it already exists, covertly dictated by the types of staffers who can get employed at major papers in the first place (quite often ivy league white kids nursing trust funds who will inevitably fail upward into completely unearned positions of mismanagement).
Marcus’ resignation comes on the heels of the resignation of Post opinion editor David Shipley shortly after Bezos’ began retooling the paper’s op-ed section. To be clear: most paper op-ed sections had already shifted away from platforms for unique, intelligent ideas, to being contrarian troll factories to goose engagement and launder the lazy thinking of shitty, affluent opportunists.
But the Washington Post’s shift toward being ever-more amenable to corporatist and right wing ideals comes as other major outlets, from CBS to the Los Angeles Times, have more broadly responded to surging U.S. authoritarianism by softening their criticism of Republicans and shifting their editorial positions further rightward.
This gets muddied in U.S. media coverage of itself, but consolidated U.S. media ownership isn’t doing this suddenly in a vacuum. They like what Trump is promising them: a lower corporate tax rate, a concentrated war on labor, mindless deregulation, the evisceration of all corporate oversight, and the rubber stamping (provided you kiss Trump’s ass and support their attack on civil rights) of their latest giant mergers.
In exchange, Republicans are pleased that major media institutions can be so easily bullied into softening or outright distorting journalistic coverage of their generally unpopular ideas; part of a broader 50+ year campaign to dismantle informed consensus and quality journalism to their direct benefit.
There has long been concern that ownership of numerous outlets are trying to steer the perspective of journalistic output to be more favourable to certain interests. While these have long been the suspicions, this kind of thing has been put on very naked display by the Washington Post. If you don’t subscribe to the notion that Trump is the best thing to happen to America, then you have every reason to fear for the longevity of your job at a major news organization. Truth should be at the heart of journalism, not trying to kiss the ring of the king. Yet, here we are witnessing this very thing with the Washington Post.
It’s difficult to underscore just how dangerous this all is. After all, if the markets continue tanking, are journalists going to be told to either not report on it at all or report on it, but say that it’s all part of Trump’s super genius plan for the US economy (it’s not)? What’s more, what will this mean for journalists who still have permission to have integrity and is willing to call a spade a spade? This is why people such as myself are pointing out that free speech and freedom of expression is currently under an enormous amount of pressure these days.
