Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post: What do you think about Trump and his campaign against the White House? How much does Trump support? How does he stand after the election?
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There’s an INSKEEP On the same day as the endorsement announcement, I noticed a revelation about Musk in the pages of The Washington Post.
BARON: I wouldn’t. I am opposed to that. The Post continues to do some extraordinary work in its news department. There are also great columnists there as well. But in the news department, they continue to do investigative work. It is important that investigative work is done. I hope that the public continues to support that.
Post reporters have revealed repeated instances of wrongdoing and allegations of illegality by Trump and his associates. The editorial page views Trump as a threat to the American democratic experiment. Several Post journalists say their relatives are among those canceling subscriptions.
Insturment: I should note another detail here. Blue Origin, the space company founded by Jeff Bezos, had a meeting with Trump after the decision was made. If Trump is re-elected, would he have much sway over Bezos’ various business ventures?
NASA has a billion dollar contract with Blue Origin. During the Trump administration, Amazon sued the government after alleging it had blocked a $10 billion cloud-computing-services contract with the Pentagon over the then-president’s ire about coverage in the Post, which Bezos owns personally.
INSKEEP speaks. You, in your memoir of your time at The Washington Post, wrote very positively of Jeff Bezos’ support in difficult times. What do you think about his actions so far?
“In the past, if this decision had been made a few years ago, I’m sure it would’ve been fine,” Baron said. It’s a good decision. It was made within a short time after the election, and there was no serious discussion about it with the editorial board. It was made for more than one reason and not because of high principle.
Yet Bezos resolutely supported the staff’s coverage during the Trump presidency (and has not interfered with reporting on his own business interests or personal life).
Did the post owner Jeff Bezos make this call? The publisher issued a denial that appeared to imply that Bezos did not. But The Washington Post’s reporters, who operate separately, are reporting based on four sources that, in fact, Bezos did make the call. Marty Baron joins us now. He’s a former editor of the Post who worked for Bezos. Good morning, sir.
Will Lewis explained that the decision to not endorse in the presidential race was a return to the Post’s roots as an “independent paper.”
Hoffman says he intends to remain at the paper, saying he “refuses to give up on The Post, where I have spent 42 years.” The effort to support press freedom around the world is one of the new projects he writes about.
Bezos’ decision to leave the Washington Post was untenable and unconscionable, wrote Shipley in a meeting with NPR staffers
On Monday, Shipley held a contentious meeting Monday with scores of opinion section staffers, who posed tough questions to the editorial page chief, including appeals for Bezos to address them.
“We are in fact bending the knee to Donald Trump, because we’re afraid of what he will do, and that’s why we met with Trump a few hours after the decision became public.”
Bezos brought in Lewis as publisher and chief executive at the start of the year in part, according to people with knowledge of the process, because he had worked closely with powerful conservative figures and had appealed successfully to conservative audiences.
Lewis had been editor of the Telegraph in the U.K., which is considered closely allied with the right wing of the Conservative party. He became publisher and Chief Executive of the Wall Street Journal after serving as an executive in London for Murdoch. After departing, he briefly became a consultant for the Conservative British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
“I believe we face a very real threat of autocracy in the candidacy of Donald Trump,” Hoffman added in his letter to Editorial Page Editor David Shipley, which was obtained by NPR. “ I find it untenable and unconscionable that we have lost our voice.”
“For decades, the Washington Post’s editorials have been a beacon of light, signaling hope to dissidents, political prisoners and the voiceless,” David Hoffman wrote in a letter Monday explaining his decision to leave the editorial board. “When victims of repression were harassed, exiled, imprisoned and murdered, we made sure the whole world knew the truth.
The decision by Bezos was first reported by NPR. In the days since, two columnists have resigned from the paper and two writers have stepped down from the editorial board.
One of those writers, Molly Roberts, warned of the possible consequences of the eleventh-hour decision to stay quiet rather than publish the editorial endorsing Harris. “Donald Trump is not yet a dictator,” she wrote in a statement she posted on social media. The closer he comes, the quieter we are.
The Post had articles written by their staffers that were angry about Bezos’ decision. The most popular piece was from the humor columnist, who commented, “It has fallen to me, the humor columnist, to endorse Harris for president.” 174,000 people read it online.
A significant protest may register in the low thousands at the New York Times. The paper gained 4,000 subscribers, which Lewis said was noteworthy.
He said that it shoots you in the foot if you care about the kind of journalism the Post produces. There aren’t many organizations that do what the Post does. The range and depth of reporting by the Post’s journalists is among the best in the world.”
Source: Over 200,000 subscribers flee ‘Washington Post’ after Bezos blocks Harris endorsement
Why we are here, and how we feel about it: Brauchli says the numbers of mass cancellations have grown exponentially since the midterm election
The mass cancellations point “to the polarization of the times we’re living in, and the energy people feel about these issues,” Brauchli says. The reason to act was given by this.
That rationale isn’t appreciated by most people inside the paper, given the timing of the race between Harris and Trump.
Marcus Brauchli, former Post Executive Editor, told NPR the number was a huge one. People don’t know why the decision was made. We basically know the decision was made but we don’t know what led to it.”