Jeff Bezos, billionaire founder of Amazon and owner of The Washington Post, took a major shot at his own paper Monday evening.
In a scorched earth op-ed for the Post, he explained the “hard truth” of why “Americans don’t trust the news media anymore” and laid a good deal of blame at the feet of his own paper. He starts off with 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.”
This is a not-so-thinly veiled shot at the reporters and editors on his payroll who threw an epic tantrum after The Post declined to endorse Kamala Harris for President earlier in October. Many resigned in self-righteous protest, and The Post lost 200,000 similarly indignant subscribers virtually overnight, according to NPR. It’s clear that the rank-and-file, and even some high up on the editorial side, truly believe the propaganda they’ve been spewing these past several years. They view themselves as the only bulwark against Orange Hitler’s rise, and fail to see how they themselves are the biggest problem the media faces when it comes to credibility. In the op-ed, Bezos defends The Post’s decision not to endorse, calling it a “meaningful step” on the road to rebuilding the media’s legitimacy outside the Beltway. (Click here to watch ‘Cleaning Up Kamala’)
Opinion by Jeff Bezos: Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. The credibility gap can be bridged by independence. https://t.co/ukc569Z24p
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 29, 2024
These big whig mea culpas are nothing new, but Bezos’ stands out from the pack. These fake PR statements became all too common in the post-Floyd era, with owners, publishers and CEOs trying to balance the interests of their company, the wrath of the woke mob on and off their payroll and everyone else who just wants a basic product or service. Their open letters amounted to mush-mouthed pablum — a whole lot of buzzwords to say nothing at all. Yet Bezos actually seems to seek real reform.
There’s no phony equivocation about “understanding pain” or “balancing stakeholders” or “reflecting” — all of the nonsense that takes up the bulk of these types of letters. He does not mince any words in telling all his whinging former staffers and subscribers where to shove it. “I will … not allow this paper to stay on autopilot and fade into irrelevance … It’s too important. The stakes are too high. Now more than ever the world needs a credible, trusted, independent voice,” he writes.
“[W]e will have to exercise new muscles,” he concludes. “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.”
It seems that Bezos understands journalism better than many of his employees. Let’s hope they follow his lead.
This article was originally published at dailycaller.com
