Amazon’s business model depends on assuming its customers are stupid. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns a little D.C. paper, took that show on the road with a showy announcement that the paper would win back the trust of Americans by not endorsing a candidate in the 2024 election.
Current Washington Post articles include multiple pieces claiming Trump’s MSG rally was racist.
So no, nothing has actually changed.
A Bezos op-ed in the paper claims that, “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.”
What’s Bezos doing apart from not having the paper officially endorse a candidate?
The op-ed is long on defensive rambling about his business interests and short on details, and concludes with a long word salad.
“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.”
ChatGPT could have written this gibberish. And perhaps did.
The reality is that Bezos bought the Post to prop up his federal influence. He’s making a show of pivoting while doing nothing meaningful. The Post’s base consists of people who rabidly hate Trump. And while Bezos doesn’t care all that much if the paper makes money from subscribers, having it turn into a paper that’s only read by a few thousand D.C. insiders would also do much to kill its influence. And his.
Is he going to make any substantive changes?
Bezos tried to bring in fresh blood and was routed by the media establishment including in his own paper. He may be genuinely frustrated at the situation, but the paper is a means to an end. Doing anything about it would require fundamentally changing its culture. Instead, the Post may provide a column to an actual conservative (but probably not), and bring in another new editor to shake things up while churning out the usual Orange Man Bad clickbait.
People gleefully cheering a change of pace are living in a fantasy world.