Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Washington Post, slammed the media’s left-wing bias in an op-ed published Monday night at the Post.
“In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress,” Bezos wrote. “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 said that newspaper must not only be accurate, but they must also be believed to be accurate, a measure that he says the media has failed miserably at because of bias.
The op-ed comes after the newspaper, one of the largest newspapers in the U.S., announced late last week that it was not endorsing a candidate for president this year — the first time the paper has not made an endorsement in decades.
The backlash the newspaper has faced has been intense with more than 200,000 people canceling their subscriptions, approximately 8% of the company’s subscriber base.
“Reality is an undefeated champion,” he said. “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.”
He continued:
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. 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.
He said that he will “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?” he added. “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. 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.”
Bezos said that presidential endorsements mean absolutely nothing, have no impact in how voters today make their decisions, and only serve to create the perception that publications are biased. He said that he wishes that he made the move much sooner.
He acknowledged that he was not the ideal owner of the newspaper because of his work leading other companies that have contracts with the government. He said that none of that work played a factor in his decision to end endorsements at the newspaper.
