They think journalism should be a closed-guild system that they control, nothing more.
Today, Jeff Bezos announced in a memo to Washington Post staffers — employees of a newspaper that he owns free and clear — that henceforth the editorial page would “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.”
The reaction from progressive journalists was apocalyptic.
Jeff Stein, the Post’s chief economics reporter, is on Twitter this morning wailing about the “massive encroachment” of . . . (checks notes) a newspaper owner’s changes to the operations of a newspaper that he owns.
Keith Olbermann says that Bezos has declared “the paper utterly fascist.”
Stuart Benson, a reporter for the Hill Times, is shrieking that an “American Billionaire relieves editor of his duties in order to impose his own ideological views on the Washington Post.”
Post opinion columnist Philip Bump’s reaction was more direct: “What the actual f***.”
There’s only one explanation for all the caterwauling.
Progressive journalists must believe that, despite the fact that Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post, paid $250 million of his own money for it in 2013, has lost tens of millions of dollars operating the place over the years, and pays every last employee’s salary, he doesn’t get to actually decide what happens in the company he owns.
The employees get to decide that, apparently. It’s the closed-guild system of journalism. Nothing more.
Bezos’s decision may lead to a better, more readable Post editorial page. (Or it may not! After the yearslong Amazon ban on Ryan Anderson’s book, When Harry Became Sally: Answers for Our Transgender Moment, forgive me if I don’t immediately trust Jeff Bezos’s conceptions of “personal liberties.”)
But Bezos isn’t forcing anyone to read his newspaper. He’s not forcing anyone to subscribe to the Washington Post, or advertise in the Washington Post, or work for the Washington Post.
And while he’s setting a policy for his own company, he is not preventing anyone from writing opinions he disagrees with, or that depart from the new editorial direction of the Washington Post, in the pages of the New York Times or on NBCNews.com or in a Substack newsletter. He’s not stopping anyone from tweeting or calling into C-SPAN or placing a political message on a billboard. This all might be a good — or bad — idea, and it might be a better or worse financial model for the paper, but he gets to make the decision!
All he’s saying is that, in the company he in fact owns, the employees are going to do things his way. If they don’t want to, they are free to leave.
Question for progressive journalists: In a free country, what on earth is wrong with that?