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.
He's calling it a "profession," so it should have a system of ethical principles that must be followed, even if the polls don't go your way.
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.
He's making it sound as though it's the second requirement that's more important.
Likewise with newspapers. We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate.
So, there's telling the truth — being professionally ethical — and there's getting people to believe you are telling the truth — not necessarily done by telling the truth. If you were not ethical, you could ditch telling the truth, say what you want people to believe, and con them into thinking it's the truth. That's propaganda.
It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement.
He doesn't want to talk about the first requirement. He just wants people to believe the newspaper is following principles of professional journalism. Or does he just want people to like The Washington Post and keep subscribing to it and reading it?
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.
Reality — what a concept! It was the theme of the day on this blog 2 days ago. But back to Jeff. The reality he's talking about isn't the real events out there in the world that journalists are supposedly reporting. It's the reality of whether people believe those reports, and he's saying the reports of the nonexistence of that belief are clear.
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.
Control what we can control... that sounds ominous! He's talking about controlling our belief that his organization is telling the truth.
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.
Bezos is arguing that the newspaper doesn't really have a strong interest in the actual explicit endorsement. It's not effective to just tell people how to vote... or so he says. A well-written endorsement might marshal the arguments in favor of the candidate and influence some readers.
What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence.
With an endorsement, the bias is clear, he's saying. But I would say that the bias in the news reporting, which is not so clear, is more effective and thus more of a problem. The endorsement is on the editorial page, where explicit opinion is published. What's unethical about opinion on the opinion page?
Ending [presidential endorsements] is a principled decision...
What principle bars opinion on the opinion page? If you really cared about principle, you'd worry about the non-explicit bias that permeates the news reporting.
... and it’s the right one. Eugene Meyer, publisher of The Washington Post from 1933 to 1946, thought the same, and he was right.
Who cares what Eugene Meyer thought?
By itself, declining to endorse presidential candidates is not enough to move us very far up the trust scale, but it’s a meaningful step in the right direction.
It's a showy step, but it's not the meaningful step. I feel as though it's designed to appease those of us who have a problem with the professionalism of the news reporting, but it doesn't demonstrate any plan to do anything about that. It's a weak and irrelevant appeasement.
I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it. That was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy.
But what you are doing now is intentional. Why was this the moment chosen to take action? You're saying you wish you'd noticed before? Or you meant to do it before, but you just didn't get around to it?
I would also like to be clear that no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here. Neither campaign nor candidate was consulted or informed at any level or in any way about this decision. It was made entirely internally. Dave Limp, the chief executive of one of my companies, Blue Origin, met with former president Donald Trump on the day of our announcement. I sighed when I found out, because I knew it would provide ammunition to those who would like to frame this as anything other than a principled decision.
Jeff sighed!
Come on, there's no way anyone can believe it was a 100% "principled decision." Assertions like this stir suspicion. It's a business decision of some kind. Bezos comes to journalism from the world of business, not philosophy. He was just telling us we need to face what he called "reality." If you want us to believe you're all about truth-telling, tell more truth, and don't claim to have hit the 100% mark. And don't blame other people for not believing everything you say as if we're just looking for "ammunition" to attack poor you. Do better, throughout the newspaper, and impress us with your diligence over the full range of the news, and in every word, sentence, and paragraph. And then I will empathize with your sighs.
But the fact is, I didn’t know about the meeting beforehand.
If we don't already believe you, we're not susceptible to the insistence of what "the fact is."
Even Limp didn’t know about it in advance; the meeting was scheduled quickly that morning.
That's a limp excuse.
There is no connection between it and our decision on presidential endorsements, and any suggestion otherwise is false.
This made me think of Nixon's "I am not a crook."
When it comes to the appearance of conflict, I am not an ideal owner of The Post. Every day, somewhere, some Amazon executive or Blue Origin executive or someone from the other philanthropies and companies I own or invest in is meeting with government officials. I once wrote that The Post is a “complexifier” for me. It is, but it turns out I’m also a complexifier for The Post.
Sigh.
You can see my wealth and business interests as a bulwark against intimidation, or you can see them as a web of conflicting interests.
Net worth: $200+ billion.
Only my own principles can tip the balance from one to the other. I assure you that my views here are, in fact, principled...
I like this argument. Elon Musk makes it too. He's so rich he has no motivation to do something for the money. He's up in the stratosphere where only the highest values survive. How's the "reality" up there?
... and I believe my track record as owner of The Post since 2013 backs this up. You are of course free to make your own determination, but I challenge you to find one instance in those 11 years where I have prevailed upon anyone at The Post in favor of my own interests. It hasn’t happened.
I will make my own determination, but I will make it going forward, as you prove that The Washington Post has embraced the highest professionalism in news reporting.
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...
Like this one?
... 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.
Yeah, all this competition is complexifying.
(It wasn’t always this way — in the 1990s we achieved 80 percent household penetration in the D.C. metro area.)
And after the 1990s came the deluge, the wonderful deluge of social media, and you've lost control.
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.
Cool. Good luck. Get better.
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.
I'll be monitoring. Do more. Not just this one thing. I'm not accepting appeasement. You have a lot to do.
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.
They deserve it when they deserve it. Nothing more.
Posts
152 comments:
Return the Pulitzer you got for flacking the Russia Collusion Hoax. Until then, no deal.
It's like a wife who's always angry at you. She's actually angry at herself for how she's treated you.
“ We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.” Funny coming from a guy who believes in CAGW and fervently supports the Green New Deal scam.
"other unverified news sources"
Strange, so Jeff is trying to say [is trying to imply] that the Post IS a verified news source? Really? Since when? I guess this could be rated "half true" as it is verified bias and leans heavy (D)/liberal.
Jeff doesn't get it, does he?
the news profession is now the least trusted of all..
What is the job, of the news profession? it's to tell people what is happening..
IF, the news profession is now the least trusted of all professions, that means that people don't trust the news profession to tell them what is happening.. Which is their ENTIRE Job.
Of course, this ASSUMES that the WaPoo's "profession" is 'news'..
If you realize that their "profession" is 'swaying people', it's EVEN Worse that people don't trust them.
The ONLY THING more useless than a newspaper you don't trust, is propaganda that you don't trust
Phil Graham, Eugene Meyers son in law, post publisher and effectively post owner was fully onboard with the JFK campaign in 59 and 60. Not as a journalist but as a campaign advisor and strategist.
Second in the hierarchy only to Bobby Kennedy.
Some independence that
John Henry
I just flipped over to MSNBC and the former WaPo Executive Editor was explaining that WaPo started presidential endorsements in 1976, “because there was a president who was abusing power and was corrupt.” This guy can’t even hear himself speaking!
I gave up on this. The parsing that Ann needs to do is of the editorials where the journalists gave themselves permission to abandon journalistic principles because Donald Trump was too much of a threat to humanity. No apologies or retractions since then, only pure propaganda. They punch holes in the paywall because propaganda isn’t effective unless people see it. (This blog is happy to oblige)…
Bezos is a comic book villain with the big breasted sidekick to prove it. His argument is weak sauce but the notion this decision is economic is laughable. What’s the point of funding propaganda if it isn’t effective? is his problem…
"unverified news sources" says Bezos. Interesting turn of phrase. Verified by who?
"Complexifier" sounds like a Batman villain.
What the news always claims to know that you don't is what is important.
Yes please. Then hand out a few boxes of Ticonderoga No. 2s in the newsroom, tell them they have disgraced and you expect to see some seppuku …
What are Bezos' personal political views?
In the 90s he was pretty liberal (a/k/a classical liberal, minarchist, libertarian) I've not seen much to indicate that he has changed. His views have been kind of muted so I've not seen much indication he has not changed either.
I always viewed his purchase of WaPo as mostly protection. "we'll support the state if the state leaves Amazon alone." and it's worked.
But maybe he's had enough.
John Henry
It is a very small step in the right direction. (Heh--no pun intended!).
I question the timing--he must be reading the tea leaves about the election.
It seems unnecessarily long winded and apologetic. You're Jeff F'in Bezos. You could turn the WaPO into the NY Post, or just shut the whole thing down, without any personal financial hit.
As Althouse points out, these "news" outlets would have a lot more credibility if they just they called themselves by what they are--political influencers.
Most absurd is the notion things will be fixed with some tweaking, a course correction. What’s needed is a purge. Don’t wait for them to quit in protest…
No Gilbar. The job of the media is to protect the owners interests.
If publishing the news truthfully does this, fine. If publishing lies doe this, also fine.
If Bezos had any integrity, he’d pay Ann $10k and run this post on the front page of the Post. But that’s not happening as Bezos has no integrity and can’t deal with any competition that is intellectually honest and deals with reality. The Post deals in propaganda and is just a tool for the Dems. That’s real facism.
Jen Rubin Expresses Admiration for Fellow WaPo Columnist Who Actually Resigned
Good golly you people are dense! Jeff Bezos is believed to be the second-wealthiest person in the world. How much of that is basically “paper assets”? If Harris is elected and pushes through taxing unrealized capital gains, how many years before he becomes a pauper? Ten? Less?
Bezos paid $250mm for WaPo. About 0.125‰ of his net wealth.
As a business, it is not even couch change to him.
Musk paid 180 times as much for twitter
That tells us what we need to know about the future of newspapers
If WaPo prints a story critical of Democrats, it will be believable because it’s against their bias. Same deal if Fox airs a story critical of Republicans. But if Fox airs a story critical of Democrats, it had better have good, on-the-record sources. Same thing when WaPo goes after Republicans. It’s when media go after their political opponents with anonymous sources that they burn their own credibility. If Trump’s political career has done no other good, it has torn the mask of faux objectivity off of the media.
Truth social didn't exist 4 years ago.
It is worth about 40 times WaPo ($10bn vs $250mm)
I
He needs to focus on getting propaganda and bias out of the news articles. I guess the problem with that is the opinion articles would lose their cover of “legitimacy”.
In 1960 Wright Patman, a US congressman from Texas, asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether "All the news that's fit to print" amounted to false and misleading advertising.
"Surely this questionable claim has a tendency to make the public believe, and probably does make the public believe, that the New York Times is superior to other newspapers," Patman wrote.
The Trade Commission declined to investigate, saying: "We do not believe there are any apparent objective standards by which to measure whether 'news' is or is not 'fit to print'."
BBC
He's somehow believes his corporate toady speak and superficial empty gesture is going to somehow be a Band-Aid that it's going to cure a sucking chest wound and massive internal hemorrhaging.
The problem isn't the opinions on the opinion page the problem is the opinions on the news pages. And it's not a cancer that is occurring in isolated parts of the business it is an all-pervasive disease that affects every single system kind of like metabolic disorder. The cure is a massive and fundamental lifestyle change not a silver bullet.
I agree with Howard!
Part of the issue is [and it is NOT just the Post, it is epidemic] is that "journalists" (Lord how I HATE that term, give me a REAL reporter any day) literally don't know anything about anything. They are all young, with zero experience, zero knowledge, and zero desire to do better. They not only know nothing about the subjects they are tasked to write about but don't care to know. They willingly swallow everything they are fed if it comes from the "right" team and do zero actual investigation to see if any of the things they are told are actually true or not.
As an industry they have abandoned the goal of spreading vital "news". Of attempting to verify, clarify, and expose the truth. Of pursuing the "story" no matter where it might lead. Covering the who, what, where, when, and why. No longer does the MSM look to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. As is demonstrated on an ongoing bases, read/view any MSM provider on a story or topic you really know about (like your own industry or hobby) and see how they manage to screw it up and in many cases actually get it backwards. Happens ALL the time. With that as the foundation, why do you think any story you read on things you don't know about is any better or more accurate?
They are nothing more than mean high school girls on the cheer squad cause of their parents and not their skills, who think they are the queen bees. They have destroyed a critical industry (news) and any remaining trust anyone had in their product. Also PLEASE don't tell them to go learn to code. The country already has too many bad programmers, we don't need these morons trying to do that too. Walmart needs shelf stockers, garbage needs to be collected, and coffee needs to be brewed, and all of those professions would allow today's "journalists" to cause less damage and be more useful than they are today.
So Jeff is trying to save the Post, LOL, might as well try to get blood from a stone.
The job of the media is to protect the owners interests.
i'm not saying you're wrong.. You're Obviously right, that the job of the dog food is to protect the dog food company..
BUT! speaking as a dog.. the dog foods job is for me to like it
and so it goes...
The Girondins speak reason to the Jacobins, and await their enlightenment. What next?
Will the tumbrils cease with their endless cargo? Check back in a week. Or maybe two.
So called "journalists' are rare. The left has cancelled and censored any of them that spilt the truth. Lara Logan, Sheryl Attkisson, Catherine Herridge to name a few. They keep the Progressive echo chamber "journalists" who are NOT non biased. If they don't lean left....they don't get the jobs...unless it is on Fox. Scott Jennings on CNN is an exception, and HE decimates the panel every single time he is on.
I rather like the suggestion that Bezos hires Our Genial Hostess. She writes well, generally listens....and has a ferocious work ethic. A daily deadline? Heck, half a dozen columns a day. That being said there are other commenters who would also be good hires. Bezos, if by chance you run across this, you've made enough money in interest while directing your attention to this space to hire a couple of Conservative Columnists.
I'd like to submit my CV also.
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.
Today’s “truth” is that Donald Trump is a Nazi. Rather than worry about endorsements, perhaps Jeff could start his reality-based effort there.
You’ve gotten to the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.
Less believed than Congress. That is quite some accomplishment.
What do your ex-wives have to say about that?
You have given us little reason to trust your last real scoop snowden handed to you eleven years ago
Without resorting to politics, in my half-hearted attempt to continue with the ol' personal pre-election moratorium on political comments - I read something long ago about what drives rich people to do ridiculous things. I cannot remember much about it, but it seems to me that the gist was that they can already buy everything they want, so they look for other ways to test their - well, ultimately, their power.
Think of the Sherlock episode in which the arch-villain - Magnussen? Also a news media magnate, if memory serves - shows up at 221B Baker Street, has a short conversation with Sherlock and John, and then whips it out and pees in the fireplace. It doesn't do anything for him except reveal one more bit of what he can do without anyone's stopping him.
Wealth, in other words, is no guarantee that a person won't seek sheer unadulterated power - power is its own currency. And this has been a theme occasionally hit on by, shall we say, opponents of one candidate and some of his allies, but not acknowledged by those people about their own candidate and her allies. It's currency when one side has it, but Great Responsibility when the other side does.
Stick a pin in the puffery, get “real”, burn it down and start all over again.
"[Bebos]'s calling it [journalism, gag] a "profession," so it should have a system of ethical principles . . ." Prostitution's a profession too; so we're told.
I read somewhere that the Washington Post lost $77 Million last year. I know that is not significant in actual dollars to Bezos who is worth over $200 Billion but it makes me wonder what he's getting out of owning this rag. It's not like the mega-yacht where he and Lauren like to hang out two or three days a year, it's not fun, is it? For him, to own this thing? And now all these puffed-up journalism majors --who've never been responsible for meeting a payroll or building anything meaningful in their lives, much less something as incredible as Amazon, they are trashing him and trying to make him look bad. After he rescued their asses when he bought the thing.
Bezos explains himself.
I love a good fisking in the morning.
I repeat: Journalism is a for-profit business. It is run by CFOs, not by glorified English majors. The English majors like to tell themselves that they are an integral part of a Democracy, but at the end of the day they are employees with a job to do (garner eyeballs) and how they do that job doesn't really matter much to the CFO, provided they don't get the company sued or threaten the top line in the short or long-term.
"Journalistic standards and ethics" - don't make me laugh.
"...but it makes me wonder what he's getting out of owning this rag...."
My guess is he's getting a loud voice (a big stick) in the city that could decide to go after his monopolistic ways.
I found the op-ed a hopeful sign. Althouse is, of course, correct that it’s not enough. The breakdown of the Legacy Media isn’t going to happen in a single swipe. It has been and will continue to be incremental. A Trump presidency will speed things up. The demise of the Legacy Media is inevitable. The internet is killing it.
I, for one, used to look for the 5 Ws in journalistic media. Who, what, when, where, why. I stopped because they could not be found in current media. Instead I get What I Am Supposed To Think And Do. I hated my abusive big brother growing up, why on earth does journalism think being another abusive big brother should be their role?
I would say that prostitution definitely has a system of ethical principles.
I take it she hasn't resigned yet.
Shorter Bezos: We should do more to convince people we are telling the truth, except actually telling the truth.
Let’s see how the post covers election fraud in a few weeks.
Their coverage had been and continues to be obscenely pro-Harris. The mere absence of a formal endorsement does not make them neutral. In fact, it is hypocritical and misleading in light of their coverage.
Their coverage had been and continues to be obscenely pro-Harris. The mere absence of a formal endorsement does not make them neutral. In fact, it is hypocritical and misleading in light of their coverage.
I'm glad I never had to submit a paper to Althouse.
I bet you did a spellcheck on dat one!
Until the media starts telling the truth that an ever growing and obtrusive federal government is the actual threat to democracy and freedom I will refrain from feeding their retarded business model.
Two excellent posts in a row! Brava!
- Krumhorn
Oh REALLY Mister Bezos? Boy are we glad you're hear to tell us these things! Not sure would have ever known had you pointed it out...
From the paper that has beenv
1)found guilty of publishing Amber Heard's defamatory false rape story
2)Paid cash settlement for defaming Nick Sandmann and company
3) Currently being sued for defamation and tortious interference because of false and defamatory publications by professional hack Taylor Lorenz.
Wonderful dissection, Ms. Althouse. I read it the same way. I can cut Bezos some slack but not a lot. I think he actually does understand that one must actually be objective in order to be seen as objective- you really can't have one without the other- or not for very long. I again offer up my theory that Bezos and the guy who own the L.A. Times are doing this now because both actually do want to reshape their papers into something more politically balanced but need high-priced staff and managerial personnel to voluntarily leave so that they can be replaced with people not so wedded to political outcomes.
This reminds me of my realization that what the Federal Reserve cares about is inflation expectations, and the perfect result for them is tethered expectations at sub-2% and actual inflation of 4%+. We've had decades of people generally trusting the national media while they were in fact working as propaganda outlets for the state.
For the people controlling the election system, the perfect system is one that the people trust, but they control the result. If you believe that we've had that pattern for decades in media and the financial system, how hard a leap is it to believing that about elections?
Howard, that massive and fundamental lifestyle change might indeed be coming. Will Lewis is the current editor at the WaPo, and he dislikes the fringier parts of the newsroom quite as much as Bezos does. I'm absolutely confident that they would continue the old line for as many years as it took, but the mammoth financial losses, increasingly obsolete neoliberal newsroom, and the GIANT potential audience seen on the JRE (37 million views for Trump and counting on YouTube alone) has to be making Bezos wonder about a strategy change.
I’m always surprised to see and hear woke folk talk about objectivity in journalism. I thought one of the underlying foundation stones of post-modernism was that there is no objective truth. It’s the one thing from that philosophy I agree with. Stick a camera in front of a young lady and watch her face change with a smile. The camera, which is brutally honest, can’t record a face honestly unless you hide it and then it’s limited by the ruse.
Journalists should strive to record the world as accurately as possible while admitting its impossibility. They should admit their bias on the editorial page so readers can filter the coverage they’re reading on the other pages. I for one was very happy to see that 500 newspapers and magazines endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016 to just 28 endorsing Trump. I use this stat frequently to underscore my argument that American media is deeply liberal, not that it’s deeply biased.
So I am sorry to see endorsements disappear. The bias will be less obvious to the casual reader.
Thomas Jefferson wrote: "....the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors."
Plus ça change, and all that.
WaPo is commonly thought to be a CIA mouthpiece. Robert Kagan, a fomer senior editor, recently wrote an op-ed in which he openly called for Trump’s assassination. His wife is Victoria Nuland, the State Dept. thug who carried out the 2014 CIA coup in Ukraine and dictated the personnel of the Ukrainian government.
It is not just accuracy, it is also what the paper chooses not to publish.
Hiring a few more random, kinda-sorta-but-not-really conservative commentators (what, like Jennifer Rubin?) isn't going to get the job done. What's needed is a complete overhaul of the reporting and editing teams who do the investigating, reporting, writing, editing, topic selection, and placement of the supposedly straight news. And that's not going to happen until every journalism school in the country, starting with Columbia's is burned to the ground.
And the same goes double for the legal profession, from which Althouse somehow managed to escape just in the nick of time to salvage her cruel neutrality. Academia is the cancer that is destroying every institution in America. Every.
Prove I'm wrong.
@Christopher B (7:49) or ever.
Nobody ever mentions the real reason why the MSM and our universities are so bad: the poor quality of those working in them. Years ago, writing for the NYT or becoming a professor was a high-status job to which plenty of top college students aspired. More recently, very, very few talented people want to become a journalist or a college professor. If you are a white male, you will never be hired. If you are a woman and/or a person of color, there are many other higher paid and more prestigious career choices.
Excellent analysis. The best part is this section about the non-endorsement:
"It's a showy step, but it's not the meaningful step. I feel as though it's designed to appease those of us who have a problem with the professionalism of the news reporting, but it doesn't demonstrate any plan to do anything about that. It's a weak and irrelevant appeasement."
Bezos has also directed WP editors to include more conservative voices on the opinion pages. That's a good idea; the WP used to have a fairly balanced op-ed page, but now it's overwhelmingly staffed by extremely partisan, hardcore Leftists. But Ann points out what the biggest problem is (by far) at the WP - the relentless partisanship on the hard news pages.
30+ years ago I traveled to D.C. for work assignments on a regular basis, and every day I was there I paid a quarter for the WP print edition. It was always center-left, but the writing was high quality and it wasn't offputting to moderate and conservative readers. But for many years now the WP news pages have abandoned any pretense of fairness: relentlessly anti-Trump, anti-Republican, anti-conservative. The WP is now boring because I've read those same arguments dozens of times. By just reading the headlines I know the exact narrative that the news article is trying to push. And perusing the reader comments reveals an obvious fact: the WP is written by left-wing writers for an extremely partisan left-wing readership.
--- I'll be monitoring. Do more. Not just this one thing. I'm not accepting appeasement. You have a lot to do.
Better late than never.
A motive that identifies as the truth in the modern model.
He gets it they are not creditable. Yet I did not see a commitment to truth and factual news. Just a simple problem statement. - Hey the folks are not buying our propaganda BS anymore. - Sounds like he is focused on better ways to fool as many of us as they use to - before social media.
Mr Forward @0637
""Complexifier" sounds like a Batman villain."
I wonder what the Halloween costume would look like?
Three instances of the word ‘garner’ in that brief Gallup report… are you sure you trust it, Althouse?
Damn this was good.
I was astounded at the assertion that DC could be the best place for an independent truth teller, free of conflicting agendas, narrow personal ambitions, bureaucratic rivalries, squalid budget greed, and endless insatiable lust for power.
My God, the lies these people tell.
WaPo is hoping to avoid a visit to Planned Paperhood where journolists meet their fates.
"If Bezos had any integrity, he’d pay Ann $10k and run this post on the front page of the Post."
Bezos should just send me $10 million, no strings attached, because he can.
You can’t have unbiased journalism unless you can figure out a way to hire journalists from universities where unbiased journalism is taught.
Good luck.
Bezos genius grant.
Fun game. What would you do with $10m?
Yep ... they elide over the whole "The news media isn't trustworthy" part of the problem. Yes, Americans don't trust the media, but they never examine WHY.
The reason is that the media are a bunch of Democrat liars, including every last employee of the Washington Post. And they're going to stay that way until Jeff Bezos fires every last employee of the Washington Post and hires real journalists instead.
Bezos still dares to complain about mis-information and disinformation from alternative news sources which goes to show he is still not self -aware enough to understand WHY we no longer trust "journalists".
The so-called mainstream media has become one of the biggest sources of disinformation and misinformation out there. And the impact of their lies is worse than non-traditional sources because a lot of people still trust them to be telling the truth, when in reality they are nothing but propaganda rags. They abused their position of power, lost the trust of the people they served and will never have the power they once had to form public opinion. Thank God!
No, he doesn't. Top Story of the Washington Post today is a bunch of unnamed Democrats saying there was a Nazi rally in New York last night.
The first step is to stop hiring "trained" journalists from journalism programs.
Here's the Omaha version of the failed Legacy Media. The Omaha World-Herald used to be a reliable source for news. Omaha Public Power District passed a revision to its net zero carbon policy and included a definition of "environmental justice" in the policy. It included race and tribal affiliation but excluded LGBTQ people. I told them to table the revision and include LGBTQ people. They ignored me and it passed 7-1. In my next 3 minutes I told the Board that the OWH reporter who was in the room could have written a story the next day with the headline, "OPPD Disses LGBTQ People." Afterwards I talked to her. She didn't think it was news. She refused to write the story because she didn't want to embarrass OPPD because she agrees with OPPD's net zero policy.
The funny thing was that in my first comments I went on about an WaPo story about OPPD. WaPo was mad at OPPD because it didn't close the coal plant when it said it would.
Let me further add, although it probably goes without saying, i'd much rather read Althouse than wapo or the new york times. I may not always agree with her conclusions , but I trust her. I don't trust the others at all .
Here's the problem. TODAY on the front page of the Washington Post is this:
“A closing argument should reach all the voters that you think you either need to persuade or motivate, and that’s what we’re going to do,” the adviser said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to preview the speech. "
There is ZERO REASON to allow political operatives to anonymously be quoted in the Washington Post unless that person is trying to HIDE SOMETHING.
This is why NOBODY trusts the media and never will. They REFUSE to change.
I like this argument. Elon Musk makes it too. He's so rich he has no motivation to do something for the money.
This statement is absolute nonsense. Although Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos don't need any more money, they sure want more money, if only to continue to compete in the "world's richest person" pissing contest.
Trump tried to interfere in in the AT&T, Time Warner merger. Bezos knows that Trump has no qualms about using the office to punish his enemies and help his friends (and now that the Supreme Court has weighed in, what should be illegal, and impeachable, is now merely unethical) .
Sounds like the WaPo's Finance Director and Accounting Department had a long talk with the boss.
The job of the journalist is to gain power by holding his finger over the ON button of the printing press.
Do what he wants, or he'll press that button. They are that evil.
Yes a telling phrase. A news source needs to be reliable (like he wrote about voting machines) to keep their audience, not "verified" by other slanted news sources. Discussing why so many young people gravitate to video on demand -- podcasts, X accounts, TikTok -- Dana Perino made an insightful observation while commenting on the JRE-Trump podcast. For the young interested voter the attraction is seeing an adult conversation, which interests them because they don't engage in them first-hand like we all did growing up pre-mobile phone. They are fascinated by real people having real discussions.
I'm thinking maybe Bezos doesn't feel he can come out in a published letter and admit his newspaper has been lying and deliberately pushing propaganda when his intention is to restore trust. So, he's talking about his intentions. But lying and pushing propaganda is exactly what they have been doing at the Washington Post. I don't know what Bezos is saying in private about that ugly fact to his employees at the paper.
IMHO, if his intention is to restore trust, Bezos is making a mistake not to talk publicly about the truth telling side of his stated equation, not to come right out and publicly admit the WaPo has devolved from a biased institution to a total propaganda rag.
Maybe he's in denial. Maybe he's just a typical Prog and ultimately has no respect for truth, his readers or humanity in general. Maybe he can't publish truth because he's compromised and captured by the deep state.
Christopher B is exactly right in the first comment. That would be a great start. He should also run a thorough series of specific mea culpas and retractions about the worst offenses the WaPo has committed against the people of this country in the last ten years. They should go down the list of hoaxes about Trump perpetrated against the voting public and tell the truth about what was really said and what actually happened.
He should also publish the stories about the censorship program uncovered and reported upon by Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger and Bari Weiss, responsible and professional reporters who are not publishing unverified stories.
As a new consumer, I don't trust the Washington Post. Bezos didn't give me a reason to trust him either.
The hard truth, Mr. Bezos, Americans CAN'T trust the news media.
The Washington Post allowed a top FBI deep stater to leak classified law enforcement information selectively in order to topple a US President. A silent coup executed by the Deep State. And they never reported it that way.
And they wonder why they aren't trusted.
“Bezos should just send me $10 million, no strings attached, because he can.”
Show your work to Elon, you’d have a better chance of getting paid.
That was Nixon. He was toppled by a Deep State FBI top official who leaked very selectively classified information to Woodward & Bernstein.
It was a coup, executed by the Deep State. And they kept that secret for 40 years.
"Return the Pulitzer you got for flacking the Russia Collusion Hoax. Until then, no deal."
+1
He needs to fire the ENTIRE newsroom of Trigglypuffs. He simply won't do that.
"Reality is an undefeated champion." I loved that line. I hope it sticks in his craw until he does as you suggest. Althouse too noted the best way to do part 1 of 2 was to get opinion (bias) out of the reporting, out of the alleged "news" which should be fact-based. "Just the facts," as Joe Friday used to say.
Kept hearing, from the shrieking left, how awful it is that the WaPo refuses to endorse (as if it’s the act of endorsing that somehow matters). Truth is, they’re pissed because they’re losing and the newspaper isn’t putting its thumb on the scale for their (democrat) candidate. I looked back (hard to find in today’s curated search results), but the WAPO never endorsed the Republican candidate (at least since 1980 on - I couldn’t find further back). They refused to endorse 1 time (Regan Mondale iirc), but every other time - all DEMS.
That’s why they’re pissed. And it says something this year.
If you want to know why Bezos would publish this bit of BS now, as per NPR, by yesterday 200,000 people cancelled their subscriptions - about 8% of the overall readership.
Major new outlets are bleeding subscribers, and profits. Bezos is hoping for some way to protect his whimsical investment, and unless he demands for changes, he'll be forced to continue losing money, which I doubt he'll do for long.
Toward a more trustworthy WaPo, a compendium of suggestions for Jeff Bezos, newspaper tycoon.
(One) I agree with Althouse's use of quotation marks around the word profession. I have come to the conclusion that J-schools are antithetical to art of journalism because the ascent of journalism as a degree program tracks closely with the decline of public confidence in news organizations like The Washington Post. By the same token, education as profession has inflicted a fearful decline in the academic competence of the average American while at the same time at least quintupling the public costs of graduating illiterate teenagers as compared to Japan’s and South Korea’s public education outlays per student, many of whom outperform today's university graduates in mathematics and science. Nice work, Dr. Jill and every other EdD., may you rot in hell.
So you've got a Masters in journalism from Columbia. Whoop-de-fucking-do. Explain why that fact should enhance my trust in your reportage (pronounced suitably Frenchified). You say you've been awarded a Pulitzer? You mean a citation from the same organization that still refuses to rescind the prize give to Walter Duranty? So, may I assume you too will obfuscate a genocide if it suits your politics?
Given the "high ethical standards" of the J-school grads that have ruined your newspapers reputation, Mr. Bezos, perhaps you should look elsewhere for recruits.
(Two) Devote the front page of a Sunday WaPo to a "declaration of principles". Granted, Orson Welles' fictional New York Inquirer evolved into the antithesis of the ethical news organ Charles Foster Kane set out to make it, but that's drama. Reality ought to be something else. Let's see your principles forthrightly published with tees crossed and ays dotted. We know you want to be trusted, but we don't know how you intend to achieve that perhaps unworthy goal. Gives us principles we can see as good unto themselves. Adhere to them. Reward your workers who advance them, fire those depart from them. Trust will follow in due course.
P.S.
The new comment page is so goddamned clumsy, I suspect it's an act of sabotage directed at Althouse and other blog who refuse to follow the Google Party line.
Yeah, I still have difficulty proofreading myself. But a text input form that doesn't execute escape codes or HTML tags consistently is either the product of carelessness or hostility.
"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."
Wow. He is unwilling to acknowledge that nobody believes what is printed in his paper because it is not "accurate".
Epic fail.
It’s Bezos prerogative, but spare us the holier-than-thou pretense that the decision was rooted in high principle.
One could make an argument that newspapers should be objective, non-partisan reporters of fact so the issue here isn’t that a newspaper chose not to endorse anyone. The issue is that each paper had a history of endorsing candidates, these policy reversals come so close to the election itself and only after each respective Editorial Board already drafted an endorsement for Harris — so owners stepped in and exerted editorial control
If each paper announced in January 2024 that they wouldn’t be endorsing political candidates anymore, no one would care.
“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?” He doesn’t understand that for many of us a “voice” from the swamp doesn’t have any credibility anymore.
If she hasn't resigned - she is a fraud and a coward.
Why does somebody previewing what is likely to be a largely formulaic speech need to be anonymous?
The big change is when they fire their HR people, affirmatively act to increase the diversity of their news reporting (i.e. hire some Republicans). How many pro-lifers does the WaPo have now? Zero. So if you want to go beyond being the narrative house of the Democrat party, fix your house, Mr. Bezos.
A good start would be no more anonymous sources.
"The mere absence of a formal endorsement does not make them neutral. In fact, it is hypocritical and misleading in light of their coverage."
Yep.
It's interesting that Bezos used the example of voting systems as another thing that both needs to be something and needs to be perceived as that same something. He could have used, I dunno, airplanes: "An airliner needs to be completely safe and also be BELIEVED to be completely safe." However, Jeff instead made an allusion to the fact that a lot of people don't believe our elections are secure, even if (he suggests) they really are secure. Should that be taken as a more specific message to the staff that they need to do a better job understanding and acknowledging the concerns of conservatives rather than try to make the Post a strictly of/by/for-the-left publication?
At least out them when they turn out to have lied to you.
"Who cares what Eugene Meyer thought?"
Snide, much? Meyer built up the paper and made it something Washingtonians of both parties could read. I suppose the paper's real growth came when it hitched its wagon to the Democrats and DC did the same, but if you want to talk about professional standards, turning to older exemplars of the profession seems a natural move. If you don't have models and exemplars, it's a lot harder to develop and maintain professional standards.
"Although Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos don't need any more money, they sure want more money, "
Said without evidence.
Great post responding to the Post, Professor!
"So, there's telling the truth" - Conservative ethics.
"and there's getting people to believe you are telling the truth — not necessarily done by telling the truth." - Progressive ethics.
Big Streisand effect: Bezos has gotten much more coverage from his decision not to make an endorsement than the endorsement would have gotten. Was that his intention? Maybe, but it does seem to be costing him subscribers.
The reality is that in today’s world most people only pay to read what they tend to agree with. That even applies to Althouse. Most of the commenters here read this blog because it is Trump friendly.
Great fisk of Bezos. "thats a limp excuse". ha.
Complexifer = what terrible English.
Yeah, just what I thought. No endorsement in order to fool people into thinking the WaPo is "Objective". BTW, Meyer was a liberal Democrat, a 100 percent New Dealer, and nobody thought it was "independent" or "objective". It supported FDR 100 percent. But it was willing to criticize Truman - from the Left.
Anyway, back then, it didn't matter that the Wapo was liberal, because McConrmick and Hearst had conservative papers in DC too. But now, we have a press that is 95 percent liberal/left and that marches in lockstep on every issue.
And its not just liberal/left. Go find a network/paper that doesn't support Israel's genocide in Gaza or the war in the Ukraine. The sunday talk shows LOVE how that jackass from SC on TV braying for war every week. If i want to find out how many Gazans or Lebonese were killed, I have to go to the BBC, or another countries press. YOu wont find it in the USA press. You will know when some Israeli hostage dies though. It will be front page news.
Bezos was very upset then Microsoft got a Federal Contract under Trump and he was denied. I think that's in his calculations. Trump might get elected.
We read because we aren't censored, Left Bank, when we have an opinion that is opposite of Althouse's. She could be far more anti-Trump and we would still read and comment. I know you don't understand that.
Credibility is like virginity. You can only lose it once and it's gone forever.
Influence, Sally. He can influence legislation. It's how Blue Origin can be considered for NASA contracts and SpaceX can't.
"Most of the commenters here read this blog because it is Trump friendly."
I've been reading since, roughly, 2005, buddy. Lots of us have.
And you read it even though you're a Trump hater. But don't let reality get in the way of your little wet dream.
I can see you writing some editorials but I don't think you'd enjoy doing a column every week. Drudgery.
The older I get the more the filters slip out of alignment and stuff just pops out.
Freder. Do you enjoy being a c*nt?
Meyer was a Republican when he bought the paper. He was critical of FDR during the New Deal years, though he didn't go as far as some other newspaper publishers did. He had been a banker and didn't like Roosevelt's regulatory measures and spending. Meyer warmed to FDR during WWII. They were both anti-isolationists and wanted the country to play a bigger role in the world. Meyer was willing to work with Truman on the World Bank, and his wife moved further to the left after the war. It was Meyer's son-in-law, Philip Graham, who really took the paper leftwards. He bought Newsweek, which had been the liberal of Time from the beginning.
Bezos is the guy who shut down the servers of Parler.com, removing our free speech rights to spread news of 2020 election corruption and J6. And he blacklisted Parler, so no other servers anywhere would keep it going.
This fisking of Bezos didn't quite work for me, playing as it does at the literal but not a serious level. True enough that an endorsement by WaPo is an irrelevance if the goal is to get people to believe that WaPo reports truthfully and without an agenda. His critique never quite says (but plainly suggests) that a lot of what WaPo publishes is political propaganda, just narratives spun without regard to truthiness and all in service of an obvious agenda. Only way to change that reality (there's today's word!) is to change the folks writing at WaPo, personnel being destiny on this one. Not surprisingly, his no-endorsement decision seems to have started a bit of an exodus at WaPo. Bezos the successful businessman knows that where the business is failing to deliver the desired product (here, reporting rooted in truth and seen to be doing that), a change in management is the essential first step, to be followed up by a house-cleaning as deep as necessary to get the job done. Stay tuned to see whether this small first step is the beginning or the end of his journey to his stated goal.
The original service of the news media was to gather information and then put it into a presentable format for customers.
Along the way this has obviously gone wrong.
These people just cannot look in the mirror.
Freder is too stupid to understand people like Musk and Bezos.
They build things. Freder is a freeloading turd.
If modern day democrats weren't fascists wearing Democrat skin suits we could have discussions about these things like adults.
Here's some reality:
1. The Washington Post refused to endorse the Democrat candidate for President. That's a win.
2. The decision has done significant short term financial and, within their peer group, reputational harm to the to the Washington Post. That's a win.
3. Most of us see the real reason behind the excuses. Bezos, an intelligent man, understands that Kamala Harris is not capable of serving successfully as President and, indeed, would likely be a complete disaster for the country. Essentially, he does not believe his own paper's reporting. That's a win.
So much winning. Your negativity in the face if all this good news is a bit hard to understand, but I gave up on that hopeless quest long ago.
It was. however, fun to read.
The Bezos piece, almost certainly written by his speechwriting staff, aspires to restore credibility to a publication that has a long history of publishing content that subordinates truth to agendas that advance leftist goals. Unless Bezos comprehensively cleans house at WP, this piece will soon be forgotten. That's my bet.
"Control what we can control"... that sounds ominous! He's talking about controlling our belief that his organization is telling the truth.
No, he's saying the exact opposite--he can't control our beliefs.
Why did Bezos wait 11 years?
“clearly” and “to be clear” raise the reader’s guard. Bezos is off to a bad start.
The problem that Bezos has is that the reporters and editors are the face of the paper and they cannot stop injecting their personal biases into their work. They actually believe that is an important of their job to actively help liberals get elected. Bezos will need to start letting people go to reign in the bias and I don't think that he wants to do that. He's hoping against hope that they'll just behave themselves and self regulate their biases. They won't.
Of course, Biden never tried to interfere with Elon's takeover of Twitter to punish his enemies and help his friends.
Bezos knows that Trump has no qualms about using the office to punish his enemies and help his friends...
“We’re gonna punish our enemies, and we’re gonna reward our friends …" Barack H. Obama
But, yeah. Trump.
I mean, Bezos just knows that's what he's going to do.
Moron.
Until I was 17, I thought I was a liberal -- because I had studied Latin and knew that the word for "freedom" was "Libertas", and I was in favor of freedom. Then I read "Conscience of a Conservative", and i realized that what I was was a "conservative".
So in 1964, Goldwater ran for President on his "Conscience of a Conservative" platform and got shellacked. But (AND HERE"S THE POINT ABOUT JOURNALISM), I was in college then, and I read the New York Times, as you were expected to do. All the NYT opinion pieces (columns, editorials, letters to the editor) highlighted excerpts from Goldwater's worst and most divisive statements (and there were plenty!), but if you took the time to read the NYT news stories all the way to the end, YES, you found out what Barry had actually said in context. The Times apparently thought that telling the truth about what Goldwater said was nevertheless "news".
Today, I don't think you can find the TRUTH in the news, that is, what Trump, or Vance, or Musk -- or Harris or Walz for that matter -- actually said. We get selected excerpts in whatever papers we read (if we read papers anymore), on our favorite blogs and websites, and TV shows.
And they don't do what the NYT did in the '60's and tell us the unvarnished truth.
"We get selected excerpts in whatever papers we read..."
If you're lucky. If not, you get selected excerpts from someone on the left, telling you what was said.
Dear Jeff: Nobody cares. Nobody gives a toss who you like for President, or equally, that you decide not to state your preference.
Nobody believes your rag is unbiased, either.
Do better.
Both Scott Adams and The Five said that Bezos's statement was excellent.
Bezos should hire Musk as a consultant for this task. Twitter now functions with 80% fewer employees. It's quite possible Wapo can too. If they stuck to reporting facts instead of advocating for causes they should not need nearly as many writers.
Nice set-up. Pledging "honest journalism" in anticipation of Trump being elected. Then they can hammer him with straight-faced 'truthiness'.
REALITY is making a tremendous comeback.
I blame podcasts from Rogan to Peterson to VDH. Those brainiacs are giving hours upon hours of super experts being interviewed and spilling the beans in every area.
OK. The pioneer in Reality internet is our own Ann Althouse and Prof Reynolds on PJ Media.
Both of them are Law School Professors that are elite teachers.
Bezos bought the Washington Post and truly made it into our nations, "High School Newspaper of Record" . Whos motto has always been. " Democracy Dies on the Pep Rally Floor"
"Kamala Harris, who is all too obviously implicitly endorsed by WaPo every day."
Totally true.
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