Below is my column on Fox.com on the expanding boycott of the Washington Post by Democratic politicians, pundits, and members of the press. The reason? Because owner Jeff Bezos wants to stay politically neutral and leave the matter to the public. In an age of advocacy journalism, the return to neutrality is intolerable. The reaction is itself revealing. In a heated meeting this week at the Post, writers were apoplectic with attacks on Bezos and alarm over the very notion of remaining neutral in an election. One declared to the group: “One thing that can’t happen in this country is for Trump to get another four years.” The immediate and reflexive call of the left for boycotts and canceling campaigns is all too familiar to many of us. The question is whether the targeting of Bezos could backfire in creating a major ally for the restoration of American journalism.
Here is the slightly altered column:
It is not every day that you go from being Obi-Wan Kenobi to Sheev Palpatine in twenty-four hours. However, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos now has the distinction of having Luke (Mark Hamill) lead a boycott of his “democracy dies in darkness” newspaper as the daily of the darkside.
Figures like former Rep. Liz Cheney announced she was canceling her subscription as a boycott movement led a reported 200,000 people to give up their Post subscriptions. Some like George Conway even seemed to target Bezos’ company Amazon. It is a familiar pattern for many of us (on a smaller scale) who used to be associated with the left and faced cancel campaigns for questioning the orthodoxy in the media or academia.
Then something fascinating happened. Bezos stood his ground.
The left has made an art form of flash-mob politics, crushing opposition with the threat of economic or professional ruin. Most cave to the pressure, including business leaders like Meta’s Mark Zuckerburg. That record came to a screeching halt when the unstoppable force of the left met the immovable object of Elon Musk. The left continues to oppose his government contracts and pressure his advertisers over his refusal to restore the prior censorship system at X, formerly Twitter.
Now, the left may be creating another defiant billionaire. This week, Bezos penned an op-ed that doubled down on his decision not to endorse a presidential candidate now or in the future. Some of us have argued for newpapers to stop all political endorsements for decades.
The encouraging aspect of Bezos’s column was that he not only recognized the corrosive effect of endorsements on maintaining neutrality as a media organization, but he also recognized that the Post is facing plummeting revenues and readership due to its perceived bias and activism.
I used to write regularly for the Post, and I wrote in my new book about the decline of the newspaper as part of the “advocacy journalism” movement. As Bezos wrote, “Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working.”
Bezos previously brought in a publisher to save the Post from itself.
Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis promptly delivered a truth bomb in the middle of the newsroom by telling the staff, “Let’s not sugarcoat it…We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right? I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”
The response was that the entire staff seemed to go into vapors, and many called for Lewis to be canned. Bezos stood with Lewis.
Now, resignations and recriminations are coming from reporters and columnists alike. In a public statement, Post columnists blasted the decision and said that while maybe endorsements should be ended, not now because everyone has to oppose Trump to save democracy and journalism. The statement produced some chuckles, given the signatories, including Phillip Bump and Jen Rubin, who have been repeatedly accused of pushing false stories and reckless rhetoric. (Rubin later denounced Bezos for his “Bulls**t explanation” and said that he was merely “bending a knee” to Trump.).
Bezos could do for the media what Musk did for free speech. He could create a bulwark against advocacy journalism in one of the premier newspapers in the world. Students in “J Schools” today are being told to abandon neutrality and objectivity since, as former New York Times writer (and now Howard University journalism professor) Nikole Hannah-Jones has explained, “all journalism is activism.”
After a series of interviews with over 75 media leaders, Leonard Downie Jr., former Washington Post executive editor, and Andrew Heyward, former CBS News president, reaffirmed this shift. As Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle, stated: “Objectivity has got to go.”
Few can stand up to this movement other than a Bezos or a Musk. However, the left has long created their own monsters by demanding absolute fealty or unleashing absolute cancel campaigns. Simply because Bezos wants his newspaper to restore neutrality, the left is calling for a boycott of not just the Post but all of his companies. That is precisely what they did with Musk.
A Bezos/Musk alliance would be truly a thing to behold. They could give the push for the restoration of free speech and the free press a real chance to create a beachhead to regain the ground that we have lost in the last two decades.
The left will accept nothing short of total capitulation and Bezos does not appear willing to pay that price. Instead, he could not just save the Post but American journalism from itself.
If so, all I can say is: Welcome to the fight, Mr. Bezos.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
I must criticize the thinking of Nicole Hannah-Jones and the other like-minded “professionals” who do not understand the difference between journalism and editorializing.
Journalism is about recording the who,what, when, where, and why of an incident which had occurred. Editorializing is about your advocacy on any subject of your choice. If people like Jones want to advocate for whatever they want, then at least be honest enough to label it properly.
In closing, I acknowledge that this was a statement of opinion, even though the definitions included herein are completely factual. And I do believe there should be a more honest separation between the two.
Just how long does Jeff Bezos expect to keep up the pretense of neutrality via endorsements, while the WP itself continues to be a vessel of Marxist presstitution?
Here’s a flashback to a different era, when actual journalism was sometimes practiced by journalists, instead of what we have today: presstitution practiced by presstitutes.
Someone recently commented the reason these newspapers are refusing to endorse Camel Harris is because they see the real polls? In any event do these weenies really think they’re going to pressure a guy who owns a $500 million dollar yacht with a $50 million dollar support vessel?
Turley is in the same boat as Bezos. They are both idiots. Bezos created this problem because he’s being ignorant about reality. The post and other print news are not declining just because of bias. They are declining or have credibility issues because people are getting their news from unverified sources like podcasts, blogs, Facebook “sources”, etc.
The post is not the only organization facing ‘credibility’ issues. Fox News is in the same boat.
Boycotting is a form of free speech and if 280,000 subscribers left the post that is Jeff Bezos’s problem, not the editorial board. Bezos is not a journalist. Not even an experienced one. Not endorsing a candidate does nothing to change Jeff’s boneheaded decision. Turley’s column is nothing more than a meek attempt to offer support for a bad decision.
You’re still drunk. Try to rewrite something cogent later on, maybe right before happy hour.
“. . . idiots.”
And: “deplorables, garbage, fascists, white supremacists, cultists, . . .”
When you can’t pound the facts, pound the individual.
Your response did not address the problem, namely: activist journalism and the cancelling of alternate thought.
All journalism is activist, and biased. The type of journalism Turley longs for no longer exists because it’s all about making money for most. That’s why billionaires and hedge funds own most of the major media organizations. Turley’s employer Fox News spearheaded the trend he is criticizing. Outfits like NewsMax and OAN are just as bad, but Turley never mentions them by name or even includes them in his criticism. That’s because he’s doing exactly what he is complaining about. Turley’s columns parrot what right-leaning news organizations do, and engage in advocacy journalism. The type of journalism Turley wants is rare and when it is cited it’s immediately labeled as left-leaning or propaganda because its reporting does not align with right-leaning news organizations that are also part of the problem Turley whines about.
Lack of Trust comes from those who are heavily invested in advocacy journalism like Fox News viewers and those who use Facebook or “x” as their “more reliable sources”. It also comes from people like Trump who denigrate and claim media is fake because fact-checking his BS is not supposed to happen. Anyone who does is “the enemy”.
@George
No, it isn’t, and it doesn’t have to be. One thing I can say for certain, no matter what happens – the era of this kind of bias and ignorance is coming to a close, and likely hard. The modern left’s biggest mistake was to quite rapidly, really – in record time – make us all poor, no matter how we were doing before, and some of us were doing quite well, and nobody but the elite or the oblivious want a return to the dark ages of Feudalism. Thanks for your post, but it’s over, George. Just let it go. Try to be happy in a world that is actually fair, and fair is the opposite of ‘equity’, even though that is hard and basic human decency does not take your money into consideration. People like you will struggle the most, if not in wealth, then in voice. We are so, so beyond caring about your elitist nonsense in 2024.
If you ever decide you are also an imperfect human that can love and learn from others, we’ll be here. Come back then. For now, none of your efforts help or are worth a damn.
Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie,
Kissed the girls and made them cry,
When the girls came out to play,
Georgie Porgie ran away.
Fact of reality: “We are losing large amounts of money.”
Another fact of reality: “Your audience has halved in recent years.”
In the face of those facts of reality: “The response was that the entire staff seemed to go into vapors.”
Remind me, again, who embraces reality and who routinely evades it.
I have always been more than mystified why news paper editorial boards think that their recommendation for the top of the ticket would sway anyone given the extensive news coverage. For the local council or judge races that get scant coverage, one could argue that the paper is fulfilling a service. Regardless, the fundamental issue at hand is objective journalism which currently appears to be woefully in short supply.
Agreeing with Prof. Turley. welcome to the fight for a reasonably objective press Mr. Bezos. It is a fight well worth the angst and turmoil. I would not expect, however, the NY Times to change anytime soon but competition does have the ability to change management’s minds.
I hope the Musk, Bezos, public backlash is only in the first inning. It will take a long time to end the bias.
Would be cool to see Turley writing for the Post again.
Yeah, that rag called the New York Post.
” the New York Post”…
…features FAR better journalism than the WaPussy paper.
Elon Musk blazed the trail to civilizational survival, and Bezos is following suit. May Zuckerberg and the rest of his class of captains of industry follow as well.
Yes, a return to perhaps real journalism/reporting, back to the Middle, with MUSK/BEZOS and perhaps others leading the way. CNN is trying to change, we shall see. The Left went to FAR, extremes. They are in disbelief and panic. Bezos to staff change or LEAVE. Other newspapers who did not endorse are seeing staff leave such LA Times. Yes, TIMES are CHANGING, for the better I hope, we shall see, if Trump is elected, we will see more of the Left lose their minds, including Left wing Radicals DEMS, such as Sanders, Raskin, AOC and others along with the Left wing newsrooms, Joe, Mica etc. The US must return to the Middle and this is the start. You are seeing signs of change in Silicon Valley leadership as well to Business and the Middle.
Perhaps all the left wing nut jobs will work for the Atlantic/NY Times/MSNBC? Good Luck
What’s telling for Jeff is how quickly his Democratic pals have turned on him. Same as they do with anyone that doesn’t tow their line. They don’t even try to hide ir anymore, Tulsi, Robert, now Jeff. Trump endured and with God’s wind in the sails will win!
The French Revolution started off killing one’s opponents; then it started killing off its own.
Musk was motivated by free speech as a concept. Bezos appears motivated by his bottom line- people are abandoning his paper. If his is a true desire to return to somewhat objective journalism, then he will fire the most egregious staff persons. We’ll see
There is zero proof that 200,000 de-subscribed. Where did that number come from – Bezos himself? Why would he or his executive minions even state that publically? How could 200, 000 subscribers perform that feat in a matter of hours, the day after Bezos ststement? Wanna bet its dem operatives (aka professional liars) behind it. Turley just made the case in his article – Cancel culture. Liberals are pathological liars.
Just goes to prove its lies, lies everywhere.
If Bezos were worried about the bottom line he wouldn’t be in the newspaper business.
Traveler, I bet the newspaper helped Bezos make much money outside the newspaper. WaPo promoted closing stores. Where do people shop if the stores are closed? Amazon.
This might be premature, however, is it possible that Bezos might go “Muskian”??
Will the left boycott cheap chinese goods? What a conundrum.
“One man with courage makes a majority.”
The next step, is Bezos is wise, is to fire any journalists who insists that WAPO must endorse the candidate that journalist prefers or who refuses to take and objective standpoint in his work. Otherwise, neither the right nor the left will trust his paper.
Lewis already told the staff (which Prof. Turley failed to report, for some reason) that they are entitled to their own opinions, but that abstaining from endorsements was the present and future policy of the newspaper, and that any employee who couldn’t live with that should GTF out.
Typical liberal mentality — they must inform the readers of what to think and whom to vote for; and the owner of the business (for whom they are losing large amounts of money) should have nothing to say about it.
Live by the sword, die by the sword. Or better put, those lemmings (libs) should find a local cliff.
Modern Journalism is what we have nowadays.
Old maxim (modified): If you lie down in the dirt, you wake up dirty. Applied to journalism, we witness a new breed of journalists altogether. Gone are the days of carefully researching an article, checking and re-checking sources, and isolating the story from personal bias. These days we have.
1. Echo journalism – Just repeat what another source prints.
2. Attack journalism – Get your opponent using any tools.
3. Talking points journalism – Equipped with talking points, just regurgitate them.
4. Hypothetical journalism – Well, it could be true; so print it.
5. Narrative journalism – All articles must conform to a preset story – no deviations allowed.
6. Biased journalism – You don’t like the true story, so secrete your personal opinions inside your article.
7. Legitimate journalism (Gone are the days, my friend, … )
Donald, excellent. Many must be reminded that there is only one form of journalism: legitimate journalism.
Jonathan, one of the big reasons the newspapers are not endorsing is because many are part of the Google Class-Action lawsuit. Harris’ biggest campaign contributor is Google by a wide margin.
If Bezos is sincere in creating neutrality at WaPo (not clear yet). getting the leftists on the staff to resign is a brilliant way to start.
The Ivy League Universities should do the same with their tenured faculty.
He needs to start with “conservative blogger” Jennifer Rubin
Yeah, I’d live to see Rubin wielding a tin cup, begging for dollars on the street. I’d spit in her cup…
My best guess is that Bezos is only indulging in CYA, but I’d like to be wrong about that. We shall see…