Readers of the Washington Post flocked to read Jeff Bezos' essay this week defending his decision to stop his editorial board from endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris. They wanted to see his explanation of the inexplicable, to understand why he shot the fluorescent lighting out in the editorial board room of the paper whose banner reads “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Predictably, Bezos' defense failed more miserably than the Union Army at Fort Sumter in 1861.
The Post won’t stop hemorrhaging editors and subscribers with the see-through bandages of illogic and flawed analogy offered by Bezos. Here are four of his essay’s more obvious fallacies.
“The Media Isn’t Trusted”
The setup was clear from the opening reliance on overwrought generality: There is greater distrust today of the media than ever before, and, Bezos implores,a respected newspaper’s endorsements are part of the problem. “Endorsements,” Bezos wrote, “create a perception of . . . non-independence.”
Please.
Let’s import a dose of reality. Bezos is essentially arguing that because the media is distrusted, the paper is not going to endorse the candidate running against the man who has done more than any person in American history to create distrust in the media. From that circular reasoning, the billionaire argues in effect, “The way we’re going to reestablish a public perception of journalistic independence is by having the owner of the paper step in and quash the independent judgment of the sage and seasoned journalists on the editorial board.
Does the second-richest man in the world miss the richness of the irony? Probably not. But he seems to think that we will.
He’s wrong, and there’s proof. The Post’s readers who dropped their subscriptions put their money where their mouths are. They transferred their dollars — to the tune of millions of dollars — from the Post to outlets like The Guardian and The Atlantic whose owners let their journalists do their jobs without interference. So much for discerning readers indiscriminately distrusting the entire media ecosystem.
The life or death of our constitutional republic is on the ballot. The generals who served Trump agree that he is “fascist to the core.” Trump and his allies proved it again at his replay of 1939’s fascist rally at Madison Square Garden.
So the way to move the Post up on the trust scale is by not endorsing the candidate who has attacked Trump’s authoritarianism, the Democratic Party nominee who vows to preserve the Constitution?
Let’s suppose that before the 1932 elections in Weimar Germany, the publisher of Der Spiegel had said, “We are going to move our newspaper up the trust scale by not endorsing the parties that support a democratic Germany and oppose Hitler’s National Socialists.” That would not have had informed readers shouting from rooftops that Der Spiegel had regained their trust. Nor do a publisher’s specious appeals to us based on bothsiderism in an existential election.
Endorsements do nothing to tip the scales in presidential elections.
“No undecided voters in Pennsylvania,” Bezos wrote, “are going to say, ‘I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.’ None.”
Perhaps not. But there’s a disgraceful cynicism working in this “fallacy of the excluded middle.” It’s not that a newspaper editorial board’s stamp of approval alone convinces citizens; it’s the reasoning in an endorsement that gets them there. Endorsements are part of a stream of persuasion based on faith in reason.
If a publisher does not believe in an editorial page's power to persuade – in connection with multiple other sources – why have editorial pages? Why own a newspaper?
The only problem is timing
Bezos admits that the Post erred — though not by him bigfooting and blocking an endorsement, but rather by doing it so late. But when was a good time? In June? In January? In 2022? It was clear at every such moment that newspaper endorsements don’t tip presidential elections. It was also clear that Trump would be (or was already) the Republican nominee for president. At any of those times, an announcement by the Post that it would not be endorsing — preceding that of the Los Angeles Times — would have brought howls of outrage.
The truth is that the closer the election comes, the more someone like Bezos has to face up to the possibility that Trump could win and target a rich publisher and his companies for retaliation. As historian Timothy Snyder has been saying loud and clear, this is nothing but “obedience in advance,” giving up our power to an authoritarian that he needs to take control.
As Bezos wrote about blaming others for the diminishing trust in the media, “complaining is not a strategy.” Neither is blaming the timing.
Not an issue of quid pro quo
Bezos claimed that he made no deal with Trump: “Neither campaign nor candidate was consulted or informed in any way about this decision.”
How innocent does he think we are of the way the world works? No consultations were needed. Bezos sees Elon Musk embrace and be embraced by Trump. Musk is the owner of SpaceX, rival of Bezos’ Blue Origin. Last year, it spent $2 million lobbying for government contracts. Trump has said that he will make Musk the overseer of “government efficiency.”
Bezos didn’t get where he is by being dumb. In sophisticated business transactions, corrupt bargains seldom need words. Bezos sees the threat to his prized rocket enterprise, and asks himself “What can I do about it?” The lightbulb goes off on how to send an unspoken signal to Trump.
On this statement from Bezos, we can agree: “Now more than ever the world needs a credible, trusted, independent voice.” The way to get there, however, is not through transparently phony defenses of transparent cowardice. Truth is the only basis for trust. Jeff Bezos’ defense has failed it and the luminous newspaper he owns.
