Did Chances Of A Trump Win Spook Bezos?

Did Jeff Bezos decide against endorsing Harris because it would hurt his business interests? Only God and Bezos know, and neither of them are talking, notes Prem Panicker.

Legendary editor Martin Baron tells a story.

It was late September 2016. The presidential election pitting Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton was rounding into the straight.

A year prior, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos had urged the paper's top editors to 'dominate 2016'.

In pursuit of this goal, Bezos had opened his purse; the Post poached high-profile journalists from peers and rivals including the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, National Review, Bloomberg, The Boston Globe, and The Atlantic, doubling its political reporting strength.

The Post lived up to its owner's vision. Its coverage of the 2016 campaign was streets ahead of its rivals.

David Fahrenthold was an illustrative example: Latching on to a Trump statement that he had 'donated billions' to charity, the Post reporter meticulously contacted 450 charitable organisations to check if they had received a donation from Trump.

It was a masterclass in dogged, persistent reporting. Fahrenthold was awarded the Pulitzer Prize (external link) for his series.

While the beefed-up team was producing reportage that went way beyond the horse-race tropes that are a feature of modern-day election coverage, the Post's editorial team led by Fred Hiatt was preparing a series of editorials outlining the dangers of a possible Trump presidency.

Hiatt asked then publisher Fred Ryan when the Post would schedule an official endorsement. Ryan, who regarded Clinton as flawed, shocked Hiatt by questioned the need for the Post to make an endorsement.

A few days later, during a teleconference with Bezos, Hiatt outlined the planned editorial series and, inter alia, said, 'If or when we make an endorsement...'

Bezos waited for Hiatt to finish his briefing. And then he asked his only question: 'You said, "If or when we make an endorsement". Why wouldn't we make an endorsement?'

With that one question, Bezos settled the issue. On 13 October 2016, The Washington Post's Editorial Board endorsed Hillary Clinton (external link). The strapline read 'The Democratic nominee is a choice Americans can be proud of'.

'I can take care of myself'

The Martin Baron memoir Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos And The Washington Post is in its essence a story of resistance, told by the man who led that insurgency with the unconditional backing of an owner who had much to lose.

It tells of how one newspaper, against all odds, resisted Donald Trump's efforts, first as candidate, then as president, then as candidate again, to subvert facts, to demonise the media, and to use the full extent of his executive powers to hit Bezos where it hurt. Baron details the extreme steps Trump took as president to hurt Bezos's business interests.

In one telling passage, Baron recalls how, on 9 December 2016, Bezos visited the Post's GHQ for business discussions. Before getting down to business, the Post's owner addressed the staff, who by then were rattled by the realisation that despite their stellar reporting, Trump had won.

The staff couldn't understand why their work hadn't resonated with the public; they now worried that with Trump in the White House, the Post -- and particularly its owner -- would face severe backlash.

Would this, they worried, trigger a change in editorial policy? Would Bezos, whose flagship company Amazon was already a frequent target of Trump's attacks, buckle under the pressure?

'Don't worry about me,' Bezos told the staff that day, while urging them to continue the good work they were doing. 'I can take care of myself.'

The Post takes a U-turn

What changed? When did Bezos realise he could no longer take care of himself, and of his paper?

On 25 October William Lewis, the current publisher and chief executive officer of the Post, announced in an Opinion page piece(external link) that the paper would not endorse a candidate in this election cycle, and all future ones.

It was an unusual note -- unusual for its attempt to reinvent history, or at the least, to paper over a part of it. 'That (decision to not endorse) is in our tradition,' Lewis wrote, 'and accords with our action in five of the last six elections.'

That is factually incorrect. The Post endorsed Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996; it endorsed Al Gore in 2000, John Kerry in 2004, Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, Hillary Clinton -- as mentioned above -- in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020.

In its endorsement of Biden (external link), the Post in the lead paragraph called Trump 'the worst president of modern times'.

Clearly Lewis, in writing what he did, was engaging in what former Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway called 'alternative facts'. And he was doing that -- he was forced to do that -- because he had to write against his own beliefs, to do his master's bidding.

It is now common knowledge that the Post's editorial board had drafted an endorsement of Democratic party candidate Kamala Harris; that Opinion page editor David Shipley and Lewis himself backed the endorsement, and that they were over-ruled by Bezos who, as the New York Times reported, had not even read the draft before he spiked it.

Lewis knew what the outcome of the announcement would be. 'We recognise,' he wrote, 'that this will be read in a range of ways, including as tacit endorsement of one candidate, or as a condemnation of another, or as an abdication of responsibility.'

Indeed. Ruth Marcus, associate editor and columnist who has been a Post staffer since 1984, in an Opinion page piece (external link) called Lewis's decision 'tragically flawed.'

David Hoffman, who joined the Post in 1982, in a letter to David Shipley wrote (external link): 'I find it untenable and unconscionable that we have lost our voice in this perilous moment.'

In his letter, Hoffman -- who just a week earlier had won the Pulitzer Prize (external link) for distinguished editorial writing -- announced that he was stepping down from the editorial board.

Two other members of the 10-member editorial board -- Mili Mitra and Molly Roberts -- have also resigned.

And Martin Baron, a legend among editors and the Post's helmsman from December 2012 to February 2023, reacted to Lewis's note with one scathing post(external link) on the platform formerly known as Twitter: 'This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty'.

In an interaction (external link) with Stephanie Ruhle, host of the 11th Hour show on MSNBC, Baron elaborated on his earlier comment: 'One thing I know for sure: Refraining from a presidential endorsement within two weeks of one of the most highly consequential elections in American history does not inspire trust. It erodes it.'

And it is not just in-house journalists -- NPR reported that within 72 hours of the Lewis announcement, over 200,000 subscribers, representing 8 percent of the paper's paid circulation, had cancelled, and the exodus shows no signs of abating.

More than the internal rebellion of senior staffers and the excoriating comments of his former editor, it is this exodus that likely hits Bezos the hardest.

Back when he had bought the newspaper and was working with Baron and the editorial staff on plans for the future, Bezos had mooted the theory that it was time to reduce subscription prices and go for volume.

A small number of subscribers paying a lot wasn't as good as a large number of subscribers paying smaller sums, he told his staff, adding that the way to create critical mass was to concentrate on journalistic excellence.

It worked. As Baron reported in his book, the Post's coverage of the 2016 election cycle saw the subscription base go past one million by the Fall of 2017, more than double what it was at the start of the year.

That number stands up to comparison with The Wall Street Journal, one of the success stories of paywalled journalism, which at the same point in time had 1.27 million subscribers.

Bezos and the fine art of sophistry

Did Bezos decide against endorsing Harris because it would hurt his business interests? Only God and Bezos know, and neither of them are talking.

But there are straws in the wind that point to that conclusion. It is now known(external link) that executives of Bezos's aerospace company Blue Origin met with Donald Trump on the same day that Bezos blocked the editorial team from publishing an endorsement of Harris. CNN reports that a person close to Bezos said that the Amazon owner did not know about the Blue Origin meeting.

In an attempt to take back the moral high ground, three days after Lewis published his piece justifying non-endorsement and subscribers walked out the door in the hundreds of thousands, Bezos wrote a piece(external link) on the Post's Opinion page that is a masterclass in sophistry.

His opening gambit was that the latest surveys on trust and reputation, the media has hit rock bottom -- and that is an unexceptional statement. It is what follows that is jaw-dropping:

'Let me give an analogy. Voting machines must meet two requirements. They must count the vote accurately, and people must believe they count the vote accurately. The second requirement is distinct from and just as important as the first. Likewise with newspapers. We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate.'

What is the connection between accuracy and an endorsement? One is about fact, the other is about opinion.

Try the same analogy, with a slight twist: Businessmen who own newspapers must not only uphold editorial independence, they must be seen to uphold editorial independence.

How about that?

'Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election,' Bezos writes. 'What presidential endorsements actually do is to create a perception of bias.'

Here's the thing: Endorsements are not intended to tip the scales of an election -- it is not the business of a news organisation to put its thumb on the scales of democracy.

An endorsement is an editorial stance taken by a media house. Unlike an Opinion page piece written by a staffer that may, or may not, toe the house line an endorsement, like an editorial, is written by the editorial board and represents the considered view of that publication on a matter of national importance.

Consider the two latest editorials of the Post itself, on its edit page. In one, published on 28 October, the editorial board applauds(external link) the Kamala Harris decision to end the campaign at the Ellipse in Washington, DC -- the same venue from where, on 6 January 2020, Donald Trump incited a mob to attack the Capitol.

And in another, published on 29 October, the editorial board excoriates (external link) the Trump campaign and, in context of its final campaign event, says that the Republican candidate 'has already done severe damage to American politics by coarsening and corroding public discourse'.

Do such editorials 'tip the scales of an election'? If the answer is no, why then are such editorials -- which openly favour the action of one candidate and condemn that of another -- okay, but an official endorsement is not?

Bezos's first-person piece is riddled with argumentative fallacies; to parse it in its entirety is a waste of your time. What needs to be addressed, though, is the question of journalistic bias.

Bias is a natural part of the human condition. Our upbringing, our familial and societal environment, our schooling, the books we read, our experiences, collectively inform and shape our fundamental values -- and these values create within us biases for or against people, against groups, against actions, against opposing values.

To expect a journalist, who is as human as her reader, to be free from bias is naive and unrealistic.

I've worked in various media houses under the stewardship of the current editor of Rediff, where this column appears.

At no point was I expected to be 'unbiased' -- rather, what was expected was that I would report, and write, from the bedrock of fact, irrespective of any personal bias I might have.

Journalist, author and film-maker Sebastian Junger addressed this question(external link) in a National Review piece earlier this year. '...we can state,' Junger wrote, 'that a journalist is a person who is willing to destroy his own opinions with facts. A journalist is a person who is willing to report the truth regardless of consequences to herself or others. A journalist is a person who is focused on reality rather than outcome.'

Bezos, who invokes the perception of bias in his piece, should know that. In fact, judging by precedent, he does know that -- after all, it was he as owner who green-lighted the decision to publish endorsements of Clinton and Biden in the previous two election cycles.

Given that, it is hard to see anything in his Post column beyond a lame attempt at ex post facto justification.

And to round it off, his subscribers are telling him that his argument is flawed. They flocked to the newspaper in droves when, at Bezos's urging, the Post stood for the values it held most dear. And they are now deserting the paper in droves because they believe that in refusing to endorse, the Post is betraying the very values it enshrined under its masthead.

Democracy Dies In Darkness

In the wake of Trump's election in 2016, the Washington Post newsroom and its editor were deluged with mail from readers, writing straight from the heart.

'In the short (and very long) few days since the inauguration, it has become painfully clear that our democracy is on the line, and your work -- your words, your integrity, your pursuit of truth and good storytelling -- is essential to holding it up,' a reader from Berkeley, California, wrote. 'We admire and deeply appreciate your effort and your ongoing commitment to keeping us informed. We hope in the doubtless long hours you are putting in, you remember that good journalism is an act of patriotism. Ignore the insecurities of the Critic in Chief, and remain brave. We need you.'

More letters came in, Baron recalls in his book, from readers encouraging him to communicate their appreciation to the entire staff.

Baron papered the glass wall of his office with these notes, facing outwards so anyone passing by could read.

The Post journalists paused, they read, and it mattered -- for staff anxious that their work had not resonated with the public, here was evidence that it had.

'I subscribed to the Washington Post today because facts matter,' one letter said.

A journalism professor wrote that his young students worried about how the press was being targeted and, with an eye on their own future, they worried about the future of journalism itself.

He wrote that when his students felt most depressed, he would pull up the WashPost Web site. 'I show them the best journalists in the nation. I show them how brave and resourceful the men and women of the Post are. We talk about your coverage. We analyse your newspaper's writing, and we discuss the Post's incredible legacy. And their fear goes away.'

Back then, far from being intimidated by Trump's attacks, which became even more vicious once he assumed the office of president, Bezos in Baron's account went all in. 'he invoked the elephant-headed, potbellied Hindu god Ganesha. Ganesha is revered as a remover of obstacles, but Ganesha also places obstacles in people's path so they develop the determination, resilience and ingenuity to overcome them.'

As far back as 2015, Bezos had asked the staff to imagine a phrase that would convey an idea, not a product.

He wanted to see every suggestion; he wanted, in Baron's words, to see the sausage being made.

He wanted the chosen words to underline 'our historic mission', not a new one. 'We don't have to be afraid of the 'democracy' word,' he said.

Baron reserves an entire chapter of his book to that moment, that search.

Over months of staff meetings and brainstorming, the staff and Bezos himself considered and discarded options ranging from 'A Right To Know', 'A Bias For Truth', and 'Towards a More Perfect Union'.

Finally, in mid-February 2017, the Washington Post masthead sported a new motto that captured the public imagination and provoked favourable comment even as far away as China, where the State organ People's Daily took note.

'Democracy Dies in Darkness', the motto read -- a motto hand-picked by Bezos himself.

Today, those words come with a coat of irony -- not least because of the motto's origin story.

Bezos had first heard WashPost legend Bob Woodward use the phrase -- a twist on a ruling in 2002 by federal appellate court judge Damon J Keith, who wrote that 'democracies die behind closed doors'.

Columnist Karen Attiah, who joined the Post in 2014 and who distinguished herself with her coverage of the Adnan Khashoggi murder, wrote of her disappointment in an Opinion page piece. In words underpinned with the tremolo of an epitaph, Attiah wrote(external link):

'An 'independent' news organisation, which Lewis extolled, does not mean silent... The way democracy dies in darkness is if journalism is left to die in cowardice.'

To say that on 25 October the newspaper and its owner closed the door on democracy would be hyperbolic -- as examples mentioned earlier show, the editorial board has not lost its voice entirely. But there is no gainsaying that the paper's billionaire owner, by intervening in the editorial process at a crucial juncture and deciding against endorsing a candidate in this election cycle, has one hand on the doorknob.

Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff.com