(Todd A. Smith)
Although billionaire businessperson Jeff Bezos’ decision to stop the Washington Post’s editorial team from endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 bid for the White House has obvious much more dire consequences, his meddling is like another billionaire who seems incapable of letting the experts do their jobs effectively.
The world of journalism has much in common with the world of professional sports.
The publisher or owner of a newspaper is akin to the owner of professional sports team.
The editor and the editorial board of a newspaper is like the coach, general manager, and other front office executives for a team.
And the journalists are like the professional athletes.
When people do not know their roles or overstep their boundaries, chaos usually ensues.
That is a microcosm of what is happening with the Washington Post, just like it is a microcosm of what is happening with the Dallas Cowboys football team.
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is also the team’s general manager, which means he has final say on personnel.
Usually, the owner hires a separate general manager who is an expert on athletic talent.
When an owner without a certain expertise tries to meddle in the affairs of a team’s front office it usually leads to terrible results for the team.
The publishing industry usually follows the same business model.
Newspapers are owned by publishing companies, publishers or billionaire business tycoons.
However, the editors and editorial board make the decisions on what reporters to hire and what stories they will cover.
Bezos said he stopped the editorial board of the Washington Post from publishing their endorsement of Vice President Harris because he did not want the paper to seem biased.
He said that many people do not trust the media.
While that is true, that argument deserves some nuanced explaining.
Contrary to popular belief, there is a difference between a journalist and a media personality.
Everyone in the media is not a journalist or a reporter.
But every reporter or journalist is a member of the media.
The media has what is called commentators, pundits and talking heads.
Those people are the ones that opine in the media.
However, some of them do no reporting to back up their opinions.
As a result, they are very biased because they are just giving their unverified opinions.
However, journalism is built on reporting and the truth.
While a media personality can lie just to get more clicks on their website, more social media followers or better ratings on television and radio, journalists will lose their career if they lie purposefully.
While human errors happen, a journalist will lose everything they work for if they blatantly lie or report so-called fake news.
Journalists simply report the facts, which are who, what, why, where, when and sometimes how.
If they do their jobs correctly, journalists should be the most trusted people on the planet.
Why then do some journalists give their opinions instead of just sticking to the facts?
I am glad you asked.
Those people are called columnists.
They write columns and editorials.
Those are former reporters who have gotten so great at reporting the facts, they have been promoted to a position that allows them to editorialize or give their opinion.
However, they must have facts to back up their opinions for it to be a well-written column.
If it is not fact-based, columnists or editorialists are no better than someone’s drunk uncle talking trash on social media without a clue of what he is talking about.
Therefore, when the editors at the Washington Post attempted to endorse Harris, they did so because they had facts to back up their claims about the dangers of a potential second term for former President Donald Trump.
To have those facts and not share them with their readers would be a dereliction of duty and would have gone against everything journalism stands for.
The Washington Post is revered in journalism circles for breaking the Watergate scandal and publishing the Pentagon Papers.
They famously claim that democracy dies in the dark.
The editors were simply trying to shed some light on our dark times and the demented Republican nominee for the White House.
Bezos’ decision only brought more darkness to a world that is way too dark thanks to the former guy.
The writers saw Harris as that light.
On the contrary, the New York Post sees Trump as the better candidate.
Therefore, they endorsed him to become the 47th President of the United States.
Did Rupert Murdoch and his sons care that endorsing Trump would make their newspaper look biased.
Did they fret over the fact that people have lost faith in the media?
No.
They used their voice to do what they thought was best for America as is their right.
And although there might be some New York Post employees that disagreed with their board’s decision to endorse Trump, they probably did not get in the way of an editorial tradition that goes back decades.
If Bezos will censure his staff’s decision to support Harris, would he censure his staff from reporting something negative about Trump despite whether it is factual or not?
Will Bezos only allow positive stories of Trump?
If he did that, then that would be the epitome of media bias, not his board telling its readers the truth about Trump’s dictatorial and unconstitutional plans for a second administration.
Not speaking against Trump would give people more reason not to trust the media.
And that is why over 200,000 Washington Post readers canceled their subscription after Bezos’ decision.
It looks like people trust the media more than it trust billionaires like Bezos.
And that is great thing when it pertains to saving our precious democracy.
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