Dear Jeff Bezos: The ‘Hard Truth’ Is That Cowardice Like Yours Is Why People Don’t Trust The Media

Hey Jeff,

Since I know you’ll never actually read this, I figured the best way to set this up as an open letter. One that you should read, but never will.

It appears that your stupendously cowardly decision to block the Washington Post from publishing its planned endorsement of Kamala Harris just days before the election is not working out quite the way you hoped. While it’s pretty common for people to claim they’re canceling a subscription whenever a newspaper does something bad, this time it appears they are actually doing so. In droves. Oops!

Reports note that over 200,000 subscriptions have been cancelled, or around 8% of your subscribers, since the news came out on Friday (coming via the publisher rather than you directly). And it sounds like more cancellations are coming in:

More than 200,000 people had canceled their digital subscriptions by midday Monday, according to two people at the paper with knowledge of internal matters. Not all cancellations take effect immediately. Still, the figure represents about 8% of the paper’s paid circulation of roughly 2.5 million subscribers, which includes print as well. The number of cancellations continued to grow Monday afternoon.

Last night, I saw you took to the pages of the newspaper whose credibility you just destroyed to give a sanitized explanation for this decision.

All I can say is, Jeff, fire whichever lackey wrote this. They’re terrible.

Let’s be clear: there are plenty of good reasons not to do endorsements. At Techdirt, we don’t do endorsements. There’s no requirement to do endorsements. And, honestly, in many cases, endorsements for things like President are kinda silly. I get that part.

But this isn’t actually about the decision not to publish an endorsement. The real issue is you stepping in as owner to block the endorsement at the perfect time to show that you capitulated in advance to an authoritarian bully who has attacked your business interests in the past and has indicated he has a plan to exact revenge on all who wronged him.

The principled response to such threats is to continue doing good journalism and not back down. The cowardly shit is to suddenly come up with an excuse for not publishing an endorsement that had already been planned.

Your explanation gets everything backwards.

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.

It’s true. The mainstream media is not trusted. You want to know why? Because time and time again the media shows that it is unfit to cover the world we live in. It pulls punches. It equivocates. It sanewashes authoritarian madness. All of that burns trust.

As does a billionaire owner stepping in to block an already written opinion piece.

That is why people are canceling. You just destroyed their trust.

This is particularly stupid at this moment because trust is at an all-time low, as you note. But the ones who already trust the Washington Post to tell them what’s up in this moment of uncertainty are subscribers to your newspaper. And they’re now leaving in droves.

Because you destroyed their trust.

It’s one thing to win people’s trust. You’ve destroyed trust that people already had in the Washington Post.

One reason why credibility is so low is because it’s believed that the wealthy elite billionaires “control” the news and push their personal beliefs. Jeff, you know what helps reinforce that belief? You, the billionaire, elite owner of the Washington Post, stepping in to overrule your editorial team on a political endorsement in a manner that suggests that you wish to put your thumb on the scale in order to maintain more control.

Then your piece gets worse.

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.

This is exactly correct in isolation. Of course newspapers must increase their credibility.

You know how a newspaper does that? By not having its billionaire owner step in and tell its editorial team not to publish an endorsement days before an election in a manner that makes it look like you’re willing to interfere in their editorial choices to curry favor with politicians.

You literally did the exact opposite of what you claim you’re trying to do.

And for what? Do you think that MAGA folks are suddenly going to come rushing to subscribe to the Washington Post now? Do you think this built up your credibility with a crew of folks who have made it clear they only wish to surround themselves with propaganda and bullshit? Is that who you want credibility with? If so, hire a propagandist and fire your journalists.

Those people are never going to “trust” you, because they are looking for confirmation bias. And if the truth goes against what they want, they’ll refuse to trust you.

Do you think this will make Donald Trump leave you alone? Have you never read a single history book that Amazon sells? Trump will see your capitulation as a sign of weakness. He sees it as a sign that he can squeeze you for more and more, and that you’ll give. Because rather than stand up for truth, you caved. Like a coward.

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.

Even if this is true, you should have made this decision clear a year or two ago and given your reasons then, instead of stepping in a week before the election, destroying all credibility, interfering with the editorial independence of your newspaper and looking like a simp for Trump. And, even worse, announcing it without an explanation until this hastily penned joke of an attempt at justification.

If you want to build up more credibility and trust in news, that’s great. But you did the opposite.

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.

And you think the best way to correct that is for a billionaire owner to step in and overrule the editorial team?

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?

And you will do that by pushing my personal interest and blocking the editorial team, allowing them to be overtaken in credibility by podcasts and social media barbs?

Also, “not without a fight?”

Dude, you just forfeited the fucking fight. The stakes are high, and you just told your newspaper, “Sit this one out, folks.”

You took yourself out of the fight.

Yes, the world needs a credible, trusted, independent voice. You just proved that the Washington Post cannot be that voice, because it has a billionaire owner willing to step in, destroy that credibility and trust, and make it clear to the world that its editorial team has no independence.

The Washington Post has some amazing journalists, and you just undermined them.

For what?

Absolutely nothing.