Bezos Needs to Address the WaPo's Broken Back
Brian Stelter
There has been so much written already about the decision by The Washington Post not to endorse a presidential candidate. I think Brian Stelter's special weekend version of his Reliable Sources newsletter captures the whole shitshow (to date) well, including many of the key takes in response.
My own quick take is very straightforward: I think it's fine if a newspaper doesn't want to endorse a presidential candidate. I think it's largely an outdated and self-grandiose thing that doesn't matter anymore in our era of worldwide content inundation. But you simply cannot make that decision days away from an election. Because that itself is a far more potent political message to send than any endorsement. It's similar to Mark Zuckerberg saying he's done being political in a message to a key Republican critic. It's backing into doing something decidedly not neutral, while saying you're doing it to be neutral.
At the very least, Zuckerberg and now Jeff Bezos are idiots in not being able to see how such moves would look. They're not idiots overall, of course, but perhaps they're just completely blind and/or tone-deaf when it comes to such things. But that's why you need people around you who are willing to give you the hard truths, straight.
The reporting says that publisher Will Lewis tried to make the case for keeping the endorsement – which, notably, was already written, making this look even worse. And his own statement on the matter is simply a version of the old favorite Bezos' go-to concept of "disagree and commit". Lewis seemingly disagreed with the call but was doing the dirty work like a good lieutenant anyway once he "committed" to it. And he undoubtedly knew that he had to be the one to lay down on the tracks with this, lest it look like the owner was influencing coverage...
To that end, this is just beyond disappointing when it comes to Bezos with The Washington Post because he's not only given a lot of lip service to doing the right things with regard to leaving the paper alone, he's seemingly followed through on much of that promise to date. But this throws all of that goodwill out the window. This is something you'd expect from the Patrick Soon-Shiong-owned Los Angeles Times. And their own handling of this situation is total clown town. But the Bezos-owned Washington Post is supposed to be better than this.
To at least attempt to put out this fire, Bezos should obviously put out a statement himself. Not hide behind publicists or "no comment" this away. He's good at giving his own thoughts and rationale for moves, as decades of Amazon annual letters can attest. Will Lewis – a controversial hire before all of this at the Post – has zero credibility here, it needs to come from Bezos.
The only reason he might not do that – beyond the hubristic "I don't owe anyone any explanation" – is because the truth is actually worse than the assumptions. What if he not only did this simply to get ahead of a Donald Trump win in the election – and the timing of certain meetings within the Bezos orbit don't look great, if nothing else – but what if he's actually angling to help such an outcome? But I'm still willing to give some benefit of the doubt here – perhaps naively – and could see how it played out more like:
Again, if you squint, you can almost see the above. But it's also a very generous read of a very smart person acting extremely naively. I'll admit that it's probably just as likely that Bezos was either "making a down payment" on the Trump future, or it is "anticipatory obedience" for that future – both of which are excellent and interesting ways to frame what is going on far beyond Bezos in corporate America and elsewhere – such as in VC!
Going back to the notion of "disagree and commit", while that was the original concept, Bezos actually tweaked it for Amazon. It's technically now "Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit". Everyone is waiting, Jeff.
Update October 28, 2024: Jeff Bezos has now weighed in on the matter via an op-ed in The Washington Post. Overall, if we take him at his word (no reason we shouldn't, despite the bad judgement here) it reads like the situation was very similar to the benefit-of-the-doubt one I laid out above. But, to be honest, that's not good enough as a response.