Bezos published an op-ed defending his choice to stop the practice of endorsing candidates.

He acknowledged that the public simply doesn't believe journalists any longer, and journalists have to acknowledge that reality. Reality, he says, always wins every argument he's in.

But, he does not state the paper needs to reform itself, or hire editors to patrol for bias. And certainly he doesn't suggest the Post stop running propaganda ops for the Deep State. And most of all, he definitely does not suggest that the Post must apologize for its history of relentless and remorseless lying, about Russiagate (the lies about which got it a Pulitizer, which they continue bragging about, for some reason, about covid, about Hunter Biden's laptop, about Joe Biden's putative cognitive health.

No -- he just says let's stop endorsing candidates, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/28/jeff-bezos-washington-post-trust/" '="">and then the public will believe us again.

Because it's the endorsements, not the corporate culture of relentless lying and propaganda, that the public objects to.

In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress. But in this year's Gallup poll, we have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working.

Let me give 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.

Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, "I'm going with Newspaper A's endorsement." None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence.

I can only say this so many times but what creates the perception of bias is, in fact, the bias.

Ending them is a principled decision, and it's the right one.

...

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. (It wasn't always this way -- in the 1990s we achieved 80 percent household penetration in the D.C. metro area.)

While I do not and will not push my personal interest, I will also not allow this paper to stay on autopilot and fade into irrelevance -- overtaken by unresearched podcasts and social media barbs -- not without a fight. It's too important. The stakes are too high. Now more than ever the world needs a credible, trusted, independent voice, and where better for that voice to originate than the capital city of the most important country in the world? To win this fight, we will have to exercise new muscles. 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. I am so grateful to be part of this endeavor. Many of the finest journalists you'll find anywhere work at The Washington Post, and they work painstakingly every day to get to the truth. They deserve to be believed.

Oh, f*** yourself.

The amateur webzine Slate used to reveal its editors' and writers' votes every four years. Their belief-- that informing the public of our biases and our preferences helps the reader judge our reportage, while hiding those biases and preferences makes it harder for the reader to judge our reportage.

They were right. Bezos is wrong.

He's spraying down a fetid whorehouse with Industrial Strength Febreeze and calling it good.

Unrelated, but related: