Jeff Bezos has issued a letter to his staff suggesting a tightening of his grip on speech. Some speculate this could spark a staffing exodus.
The stunning credibility meltdown of the Washington Post continues to hit new lows. In the backdrop of already rock bottom levels of trust in mainstream media, Washington Post multi-billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, has basically started taking the proverbial chainsaw to the credibility of his own rag.
This torching of the paper has been widely known to be happening as far back as last October where Bezos blocked the staffs endorsement of presidential candidate, Kamala Harris. A similar move over at the LA Times was already sparking resignations at the time. The moves confirmed longstanding fears of billionaire owners interfering in the coverage of the papers, raising questions on whether the paper is more concerned about the interests of the owner rather than publishing fact-based journalism.
In the wake of this massive scandal, Bezos responded by posting an open letter in the wake of the ensuing mass subscription cancellations basically admitting that, yes, these credibility destroying moves are something he is doing, but, he defended, he feels that it is in the interest of restoring trust in the media by basically cracking down on opinions he doesn’t agree with to prevent his ‘award winning’ journalism team from being ‘left on autopilot’. Suffice to say, his moral gymnastics and self contradictory thoughts did nothing to smooth anything over.
Either way, the fallout continued after a long-standing cartoonist quit after her cartoon got censored by the Bezos management. This seemingly because it accurately portrayed people like Bezos worshipping Trump with some of them offering Trump bags of money.
Today, we are learning that Bezos has issued a letter to his staff. Essentially, it basically said that he wants his staff to push opinions that he personally agrees with. From TechDirt:
But that was just the appetizer. The main course of billionaire meddling arrived in an email Bezos sent to all employees:
I’m writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages.
We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.
There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.
I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.
I offered David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter. I suggested to him that if the answer wasn’t “hell yes,” then it had to be “no.” After careful consideration, David decided to step away. This is a significant shift, it won’t be easy, and it will require 100% commitment — I respect his decision. We’ll be searching for a new Opinion Editor to own this new direction.
I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I’m excited for us together to fill that void.
Jeff
Here’s the thing: The Washington Post’s Opinion pages don’t derive their value from being yet another place to read opinions (we have plenty of those, thanks). They matter because of decades of hard-won institutional credibility and editorial infrastructure. When something appears in the Washington Post, it carries weight precisely because it’s gone through that process, because there’s at least a general sense of an institutional commitment to certain standards.
Now, has this system sometimes failed? Absolutely. The WaPo Opinion section has published its share of terrible takes over the years. (Boy, have they ever.) But Bezos’ announcement doesn’t even pretend to address quality control or editorial standards. Instead, it just declares which opinions are allowed: specifically, the ones Jeff likes. It’s less “building trust in journalism” and more “building an extremely expensive personal blog.”
And, in doing so, it simultaneously undermines the long-held institutional credibility that provided so much value to the Washington Post in the first place.
I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.
Paraphrasing: “And therefore, I am taking away that freedom from my staff, and the opinion writers they bring in to make sure that the Washington Post no longer has creativity, invention, or prosperity.”
I mean, seriously. Read that again. It’s like declaring yourself Champion of Democracy by abolishing elections (I dread how long until this analogy comes true).
As for David Shipley’s resignation (after being stripped of his own “personal liberties,” naturally), the message couldn’t be clearer: The next Opinion editor’s job description might as well read “Must be willing to serve as Jeff Bezos’ ideological ventriloquist dummy.”
Again, he is absolutely allowed to do this, as it is his property. But it’s a major shift in the way people think of the Washington Post and what they will expect from it. And, whether or not they trust it.
The move is sparking some to suggest that a staffing exodus could happen following the letter. From Raw Story:
According to Pulitzer Prize winner David Remnick, the Washington Post is facing the possibility of an exodus of hundreds of employees who have no faith in owner Jeff Bezos after his latest controversial move.
Moments after legendary Washington Post editor Marty Baron appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to criticize the billionaire Amazon owner’s ruling that the venerable paper’s editorial page will only parrot his “particular point of view,” Remnick, who got his big break at the Post, joined the pile-on.
“The thing that concerns me the most about what Bezos announced yesterday, and you mentioned the word fear, was that the fear that he must have that he obviously does have and other billionaires have it, other tech pros have it that it creeps onto the reportorial product,” MSNBC regular Mike Barnicle prompted Remnick. “That is a real fear that I have. Do you share?”
“Of course, I have that fear,” Remnick exclaimed. “I haven’t seen it, to be honest, in the newsroom of the Washington Post, but I do know that the fear and anxiety has leached onto the newsroom floor so that, according to people at the Washington Post, not a few people have applied to flee the Post for the New York Times, but hundreds of people at the Washington Post have applied for jobs elsewhere, particularly the Times, the Post and so on.”
The thing about this is that as people leave, who is going to be taking their place? For the most part, it’s people who parrot whatever opinion Bezos either has or has explicitly blessed as acceptable enough to print. This only further shreds the credibility of the paper and further enshrines the idea that thoughts expressed on large news organizations, news or opinion, are opinions that have received the blessing of the billionaire class – specifically the ownership of the organization and the organizations that sends advertising dollars to the organization, in the first place. These suspicions have been held by people for years (probably decades), but the Washington Post has been a particularly naked example of this.
It’s up in the air if the Washington Post can recover from such a scandal. It’s hard to look at content published and not think that this is just what Bezos wants you to think. What’s more stunning is the fact that Bezos is only continuing to double down on this speech crackdown to, in part, appease the Trump dictatorship that is infesting America today. I guess it’s true what they say, though, democracy dies in oligarchy takeover.
