Jamie O, Political Crack, So Called Liberal Media

Democracy Dies In Fecklessness, Part 2

This is a two-part post is mainly aimed at people who are liberal or liberal-ish and are not seemingly aware of the glaring lurch to the right by two of the flagships of the fading medium of print journalism, The New York Times and The Washington Post. Today, part two, The Washington Post. See Part 1, on The New York Times, here.

The title of this post is a play on The Washington Post’s slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” For the most part, in often stark contrast to the New York Times which is quite clear that defending democracy is not their job, The Washington Post has offered great reporting during this horrible era. Trump’s brag about sexual assault, where he declared his love for grabbing women by their crotch? That news was broke by The Washington Post. They also won a Pulitzer for their coverage of the January 6 insurrection. You may have also heard of two dudes named Woodward and Bernstein. Nixon really didn’t like those guys.

But now we are seeing a rather disturbing change at The Post. Jeff Bezos has brought in a new publisher Will Lewis. You probably have little idea who that might be (or maybe not, given the readers here seem more with it than the average bear). Lewis is a Rupert Murdoch henchman, and he has brought along two fellow Rupert guys, Matt Murray and Rob Winnett, to be the new editors. The previous executive editor, Sally Buzbee, got the heave-ho.

This is all rather like a main plot of a season of the HBO show Sucession, interesting and compelling if it is a prestige show, notsomuch in real life where you need a strong media to counter America’s growing fascism problem. Murray and Winnett were previously affiliated with the British right-wing newspaper Telegraph, often called the Torygraph.

Lewis comes to The Post full of ideas. Let us be clear, The Washington Post has been in a lot of trouble financially, although their deep-pocketed owner could probably find the money to keep it going in Amazon’s petty cash drawer. Late last year they dropped 240 positions, including many in the Post’s research department which left the newspaper’s staff demoralized. The Post’s superstar reporters sent a letter to Lewis and Buzbee urging them to reconsider, as it would make it virtually impossible to keep up their previously high standards of reporting without a research department.

One could make the argument that over the last few years, The Post got itself into this mess by being a lesser version of the New York Times and its “which side is worst, Trump or Biden, who knows!” act. Perhaps Bezos could see this change as an opportunity to do what media critic Dan Froomkin is suggesting:

Lewis, of course, is going to do nothing of the sort. He reviewed this bizarre, vague plan to reshape The Post into three newsrooms. The regular newsroom, a second newsroom focused on opinion (which by definition is not a newsroom!), and a “third newsroom” to do social media and an ill-defined “service journalism.”

Look, given the shitshows that are TwitterX, Tik Tok, and Youtube, where a sad percentage of Americans get their news, this idea of a third newsroom focused on those mediums is intriguing. But not in the hands of Tories.

This is just the surface. Dig a little deeper, and it gets much worse. Lewis tried to pressure The Post to not publish stories about his legal woes in British courts. Remember the tabloid phone hacking scandal? Lewis is in the middle of it.

Lewis’s response to the story I linked to in the previous sentence was to go after its author, the very-much respected NPR media reporter, David Folkenflik, in an email to Post reporters. Which did not go over well, as one might imagine.

Lewis held a meeting with Post staff, and it also did not go over well. He came off as arrogant and dismissive of concerns, lecturing the staff that people don’t read their stuff. He also claimed that diversity would be part of the plan, a curious take from someone who is part of a four-person team at the top of The Post organizational chart who happen to be all white men. No one was buying what he was selling.

Perhaps most alarmingly, Lewis outlined a few examples of story priorities at the new Post, and he mentioned Hunter Biden’s laptop as one. Not a great sign!

Along with a liklihood of The Post lurching even further to the right, there is plenty of speculation that this reorganization plan’s rough start will only get worse. Respected media writers as diverse as The Guardian’s Maureen Sullivan and Politico’s Jack Shafer are urging Bezos to dump Lewis. The Washington Post is in deep danger of falling from Pulitizer to putz.

One more thing, which perhaps puts a cherry on top of this sundae of ridiculousless, Lewis would like you to know that it’s Sir William to you, pal. Perpetual Bad Hair Day Boris Johnson knighted him on his way out the door at the end of his rather silly tenure as Britain’s prime minister.

Are we sure this isn’t an episode of Succession?

The last word goes to The Marvelettes.