from the driving-another-institution-straight-into-the-ground dept
Last month U.S. oligarch Jeff Bezos gutted what was left of the paper’s op-ed section, declaring that they’d only publish pieces that supported “personal liberties and free markets” (read: kinder to right wing, corporatist ideals). As Mike noted at the time, it was an obvious trampling of editorial discretion by billionaire owner Jeff Bezos that will further undermine already sagging trust in U.S. journalism.
Not coincidentally just as the country stares down the barrel of radical authoritarianism.
This week we got a better look at what these new restrictions look like in practice. Post columnist and Associate Editor Ruth Marcus, who has worked at the Post for four decades, resigned on Monday. According to Marcus, she resigned after Post chief executive and publisher Will Lewis killed a piece criticizing Bezos’ recent managerial decisions:
“Jeff’s announcement that the opinion section will henceforth not publish views that deviate from the pillars of individual liberties and free markets threatens to break the trust of readers that columnists are writing what they believe, not what the owner has deemed acceptable,” Marcus wrote in a resignation letter obtained by NPR.”
If Marcus, a four decade veteran, couldn’t get some light criticism of Bezos approved, you hate to wonder what would happen to authors trying to write about issues like billionaire tax reform, consumer protection, or labor rights, subjects already disproportionately left less covered in billionaire owned U.S. media outlets.
Bezos so far hasn’t trampled as heavily on the hard news half of Washington Post coverage. But there’s concern that could be coming. And in many ways it already exists, covertly dictated by the types of staffers who can get employed at major papers in the first place (quite often ivy league white kids nursing trust funds who will inevitably fail upward into completely unearned positions of mismanagement).
Marcus’ resignation comes on the heels of the resignation of Post opinion editor David Shipley shortly after Bezos’ began retooling the paper’s op-ed section. To be clear: most paper op-ed sections had already shifted away from platforms for unique, intelligent ideas, to being contrarian troll factories to goose engagement and launder the lazy thinking of shitty, affluent opportunists.
But the Washington Post’s shift toward being ever-more amenable to corporatist and right wing ideals comes as other major outlets, from CBS to the Los Angeles Times, have more broadly responded to surging U.S. authoritarianism by softening their criticism of Republicans and shifting their editorial positions further rightward.
This gets muddied in U.S. media coverage of itself, but consolidated U.S. media ownership isn’t doing this suddenly in a vacuum. They like what Trump is promising them: a lower corporate tax rate, a concentrated war on labor, mindless deregulation, the evisceration of all corporate oversight, and the rubber stamping (provided you kiss Trump’s ass and support their attack on civil rights) of their latest giant mergers.
In exchange, Republicans are pleased that major media institutions can be so easily bullied into softening or outright distorting journalistic coverage of their generally unpopular ideas; part of a broader 50+ year campaign to dismantle informed consensus and quality journalism to their direct benefit.
Corporate media ownership like what Trump is up to so much, that even managers like Jeff Bezos — who had resisted impulses historically to meddle in the editorial choices of the paper — have gone full mask off in their bid to further soften the corporatist, center-right “objectivity” the consolidated media industry already clung to as the standard baseline for established truth.
Bezos, and the Rupert-Murdoch linked staffers he’s brought in to retool the paper’s identity, will sell this transition as a way to “restore trust in news” and boost readership engagement.
But Bezos’ self-serving behaviors have caused little more than mass cancellations so far, and the pre-emptive appeasement of authoritarian zealots never works out the way companies hope. The doubling down on feckless, republican-friendly, center-right, barely-informed, corporate apologia — a market already rife with competitors — will only drive audiences to more credible, less truth-averse independent alternatives like the one you’re reading right now. So thanks, Jeffrey.
Filed Under: authoritarianism, jeff bezos, journalism, media, op/ed, view from nowhere
Companies: washington post
