By Todd Lassa
Journalism in general and daily newspapers in particular faced existential peril long before Donald J. Trump won last November 5th’s presidential election. Big-town newspapers like the Chicago Tribune and The Baltimore Sun are in the process of being stripped for parts by hedge fund managers. Gannett has been selling off many of its less-profitable papers, creating more “news deserts” across the country as it cuts staff from the newspapers it has kept.
This made Amazon founder Jeff Bezos something of a journalism anti-hero when he purchased The Washington Post from the Graham family in 2018. Democracy might not die in darkness, after all.
When Donald Graham, son of “legendary” WaPo Publisher Katherine Graham approached Bezos about buying the paper, according to a September 20, 2018 article in Forbes, Bezos said he had no interest in it because he knew nothing about newspapers. Donald Graham replied that the WaPo didn’t need an owner who understood journalism; it needed an owner who understood the Internet.
We do not know whether Jeff Bezos has learned anything about the newspaper business in the last six years. We do know that he understands the incoming president, Donald J. Trump, has strong opinions about Big Tech and how social media outlets on the Internet treat him and his staunchest supporters. And that Trump does not like how he has been covered by the WaPo.
Inspired by Tesla/SpaceX/Starlink/Neuralink CEO and X/Twitter owner Elon Musk’s tight embrace of MAGA and Trumpism nearly a year ago, leaders of some of the biggest tech companies in the world flocked to Mar-a-Lago to meet with the president-elect between November 6 and Thanksgiving, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Open AI CEO Sam Altman. Google CEO Sundar Pichai and co-founder Sergey Brin, too, although according to U.S. News & World Report Google declined to confirm the meeting.
Ann Telnaes’ cartoon in question for The Washington Post depicts her then-boss Bezos with Zuckerberg, Altman, Los Angeles Times (which like the WaPo declined to endorse a presidential candidate last November) Publisher Patrick Soon-Shiong and Mickey Mouse -- representing Disney’s ABC News, which settled a defamation lawsuit for $15 million, filed by Trump in December that it easily could have had dismissed -- genuflecting before Trump.
The president-elect’s inauguration committee has made out far better than Trump himself from ABC News’ Mickey Mouse settlement. It has collected $170 million for the January 20 festivities, a good portion of it from the tech industry.
Zuckerberg contributed $1 million, the legal limit for each individual contribution. No doubt he’s saved at least that much by sacking Facebook’s fact-checking staff. Bezos easily saved his million-dollar contribution from a few of the recently announced layoffs of among 100 sacked WaPo staff.
In this, our latest Debate on The Hustings, guest pundit Chris Bidlack (left column) and Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay (right column) discuss the implications of Telnaes’ departure from Bezos’ Washington Post.