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OPINION

THE HARD TRUTH: AMERICANS DON’T TRUST THE NEWS MEDIA


A NOTE FROM OUR OWNER.

5 min
20018

By Jeff Bezos
October 28, 2024 at 7:26 p.m. EDT

Jeff Bezos is the owner of The Washington Post.

In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the
media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress. But
in this year’s Gallup poll, we have managed to fall below Congress. Our
profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly
not working.



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. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second
requirement. Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see
this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose.
Reality is an undefeated champion. It would be easy to blame others for our long
and continuing fall in credibility (and, therefore, decline in impact), but a
victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work
harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.

Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No
undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, “I’m going with Newspaper A’s
endorsement.” None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a
perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a
principled decision, and it’s the right one. Eugene Meyer, publisher of The
Washington Post from 1933 to 1946, thought the same, and he was right. By
itself, declining to endorse presidential candidates is not enough to move us
very far up the trust scale, but it’s a meaningful step in the right direction.
I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the
election and the emotions around it. That was inadequate planning, and not some
intentional strategy.

I would also like to be clear that no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here.
Neither campaign nor candidate was consulted or informed at any level or in any
way about this decision. It was made entirely internally. Dave Limp, the chief
executive of one of my companies, Blue Origin, met with former president Donald
Trump on the day of our announcement. I sighed when I found out, because I knew
it would provide ammunition to those who would like to frame this as anything
other than a principled decision. But the fact is, I didn’t know about the
meeting beforehand. Even Limp didn’t know about it in advance; the meeting was
scheduled quickly that morning. There is no connection between it and our
decision on presidential endorsements, and any suggestion otherwise is false.

When it comes to the appearance of conflict, I am not an ideal owner of The
Post. Every day, somewhere, some Amazon executive or Blue Origin executive or
someone from the other philanthropies and companies I own or invest in is
meeting with government officials. I once wrote that The Post is a
“complexifier” for me. It is, but it turns out I’m also a complexifier for The
Post.

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You can see my wealth and business interests as a bulwark against intimidation,
or you can see them as a web of conflicting interests. Only my own principles
can tip the balance from one to the other. I assure you that my views here are,
in fact, principled, and I believe my track record as owner of The Post since
2013 backs this up. You are of course free to make your own determination, but I
challenge you to find one instance in those 11 years where I have prevailed upon
anyone at The Post in favor of my own interests. It hasn’t happened.

Lack of credibility isn’t unique to The Post. Our brethren newspapers have the
same issue. And it’s a problem not only for media, but also for the nation. Many
people are turning to off-the-cuff podcasts, inaccurate social media posts and
other unverified news sources, which can quickly spread misinformation and
deepen divisions. The Washington Post and the New York Times win prizes, but
increasingly we talk only to a certain elite. More and more, we talk to
ourselves. (It wasn’t always this way — in the 1990s we achieved 80 percent
household penetration in the D.C. metro area.)

While I do not and will not push my personal interest, I will also not allow
this paper to stay on autopilot and fade into irrelevance — overtaken by
unresearched podcasts and social media barbs — not without a fight. It’s too
important. The stakes are too high. Now more than ever the world needs a
credible, trusted, independent voice, and where better for that voice to
originate than the capital city of the most important country in the world? To
win this fight, we will have to exercise new muscles. Some changes will be a
return to the past, and some will be new inventions. Criticism will be part and
parcel of anything new, of course. This is the way of the world. None of this
will be easy, but it will be worth it. I am so grateful to be part of this
endeavor. Many of the finest journalists you’ll find anywhere work at The
Washington Post, and they work painstakingly every day to get to the truth. They
deserve to be believed.

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