Jeff Bezos breaks Washington Post non-interference pledge in order to help Trump
Truth dies in the darkness of billionaire ownership. Democracy dies in the hands of billionaires.
BACKGROUND
See,
1)Benjamin Mullin and Katie Robertson,”Washington Post Says It Will Stop Endorsing Presidential Candidates; Will Lewis, the chief executive, said the paper was “returning to our roots” of not making endorsements for the office,” New York Times, October 25, 2024 (Updated 3:36 p.m. ET).
2) “Manuel Roig-Franzia and Laura Wagner. “The Washington Post says it will not endorse a candidate for president; Publisher William Lewis explained the decision as a return to the newspaper’s roots, Washington Post, October 25, 2024 (Updated October 25, 2024 at 4:20 p.m. EDT|,
3)Robert Reich, “Cowardice and intimidation at The Washington Post and L.A. Times:Their billionaire owners are Trump enablers,”:RobertReich.substack.com, October 25, 2024.
Jeff Bezos, owner of The Washington Post (where "Truth dies in darkness") has just broken his pledge not to interfere in the newsroom, in order tomhelpTrump and his billionaire supporters.
Mullin and Robertson report:
A debate inside The Washington Post continued for days among its top leaders: Should it make an endorsement in the presidential race, continuing a decades-long tradition?
In the end, Jeff Bezos, the paper’s billionaire owner, decided that the answer was no.
They also note that Bezos has been trying to expand the paper’s audience among conservatives.
(Bezos) has appointed Mr. Lewis — a chief executive who previously worked at the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal — and has informed Mr. Lewis that he wants more conservative writers on the opinion section, the person said.
The reaction to Bezos’s decision has been strong.
The New York Times reporters note that sharp criticisms and departures have already begun:
Marty Baron, the recent editor of The Post who led the paper through a period of editorial and business success, called the decision “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty,” in a post on X. He added that former President Donald J. Trump would see it as an invitation to continue to try to intimidate Mr. Bezos. “Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”
Leaders of the The Washington Post Guild said they were “deeply concerned” by the decision not to endorse a candidate “a mere 11 days ahead of an immensely consequential election.”
Mullin and Robertson note further that a similar scenario has played out at the Los Angeles Times:
The Post’s move follows unfurling tumult at The Los Angeles Times, where the head of the editorial board and two of its writers have resigned this week to protest the decision by The Times’s owner, the billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, to block a planned presidential endorsement.
When did we become a country ruled not by “the people” but by the billionaires?
When did we become a country with so many billionaires?
When did the wealthiest succeed in buying the government, and opening the road to the creation of so many billionaires?
The task of current generations of Americans is to wrest power from the iron grip of the super-rich and restore it to the hands of the people.
This will be a long and hard fight, and one with an uncertain outcome. It will not be easy to restore control of our country to democratic institutions which are democratic in substance, and not just in form as was the case in Rome under Julius Caesar and his successors.
The billionaires will defend themselves with all of their wealth, with the press and other public media their money has enabled them to buy, with the control they have over the distribution of information through X, Google, FaceBook ,and other social media they control, and through artificial intelligence and other means of technology which they with their money will also control.
Bezos and Elon Musk have shown us that we are living in a new Gilded Age, with much greater inequalities of wealth and power than in the last one.
In the finest traditions of stealth journalism, the Post announced its decision on Friday afternoon.
The coincidence of the timing of the announcement is incredibly revealing. Truth dies in the darkness of Jeff Bezos’s mind. He has just destroyed his reputation and his legacy as a benevolent savior of good journalism.
The Post boasts some of the best journalists in America.. After Bezos’s decision, it would not be surprising to see an exodus begin.
Indeed, Roig-Franzia and Wagner report that the exodus has already begun:
The decision, announced 11 days before an election that most polls show as too close to call, drew immediate and heated condemnation from a wide swath of subscribers, political figures and media commentators. Robert Kagan, a longtime Post columnist and editor-at-large in the opinion department, resigned in protest, and a group of 11 Washington Post columnists co-signed an article condemning the decision. Angry readers and sources flooded the email inboxes of numerous staffers with complaints.
James Rowles is a former Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School and professor of international law at other universities.
He is the author of The Rape of American Democracy: Republican Actions and Democratic Failures, 2016-2021 (September, 2024, now available on Amazon and soon to be available from IngramSpark).
His most recent book, Don’t Be Stupid. Pay Attention, Damn It! Advice for Undecided Voters and Voters Leaning Toward Trump, will be available on Amazon and IngramSpark in late October, 2024.
***
Support the Author
We encourage you to join the community that supports the Trenchant Observations newsletter.
You may sign up for a free subscription. But to receive all of the content as soon as it is published and to support the newsletter, please upgrade to a Paid or Founding Member subscription. To do so, click on the “Subscribe now” button below.
Alternatively, you may make a contribution to the author’s Go Fund Me appeal by clicking on the last button below.