How To Deliver the Hard Truth to the News Media
A spicy translation of Jeff Bezos' landmark op-ed and its implications for the future of MSM and independent media like Substack - the reckoning has arrived for the Sacklers of information
Comrades: Is Bezos based?
On October 28, the billionaire owner of The Washington Post penned an op-ed titled “The hard truth: Americans don’t trust the news media” to explain why his paper did not make a presidential endorsement. Less than two weeks later, the news media’s dwindling audience is facing another “shock” Trump victory. For anyone anyone who tuned out their propaganda, it was not a shock. I will provide a spicy translation of Bezos’ op-ed and deliver three hard truths of my own on what it means for the future of media at the bottom. We are the media now. They are the noise, we are the signal. Democracy dies in the darkness, but mockery thrives in the light!
The Downfall of Kamala is also the downfall of fake news:
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.
Jeff is one of the world’s wealthiest businessmen because he understands the first principles of analyzing data and feedback loops. He should have applied these to WaPo as soon as he bought it in 2013. The voting machine analogy is fascinating, given how little people trust our entire election process thanks to Democrat manipulations. California and Arizona are still counting ballots. Stalin would be proud - it’s not who votes that counts, it’s who counts the votes.
Move along, nothing to see here…
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.
Reality is undefeated, yet he is missing the central point - you can’t fulfill the second requirement without the first. MSM has not been accurate for a while, which is the main reason why no one believes them to be so. They have lied about almost every major story over the past decade: Russian collusion, Hunter Biden laptop, Joe Biden’s senility, COVID origins, COVID and COVID vaccine risk, “mostly peaceful” protests, lockdown/mask/jab mandates, etc. Build a golden bridge with those who are newly questioning all the lies they’ve been fed - balance sugar with spice.
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.
Endorsements do make NPCs feel goodthink with confirmation bias. That is why 250,000+ have canceled their WaPo subscriptions, which is 10% of the total readership. This was not inadequate planning. A killer capitalist like Bezos does not do anything unplanned. His employees at Amazon must write multi-page memos before any meeting they hold. He likely saw the writing on the wall, making a calculated move to protect his and his paper’s standing under a second Trump administration. Ego also matters in his phallic space race with Elon.
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 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. 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.
Bezos should know that the more you deny or apologize, the more the BlueAnons will froth at the mouth in rage. There is no escaping the “complexifier” that the federal government is a major source of both revenue and regulations for Blue Origin and Amazon. Double standards apply as well. No one bats an eyelash that Laurene Powell Jobs owns The Atlantic and is a megadonor for her bestie Kamala, or that Soros bought up hundreds of radio stations. Bezos’ ex-wife MacKenzie is burning his billions on destructive leftist social justice causes, perhaps out of spite.
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.)
Teed up perfectly for one of my favorite memes. He has shown his own bias by taking a dig at framing independent media as inaccurate, unverified misinformation. Take a look in the echo chamber mirror.
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.
How much more money is Bezos willing to lose on this faded institution? Once a brand’s reputation is this soiled, it is almost impossible to salvage. No one deserves to be believed - they have to earn it. He and his propagandists have yet to learn this over his decade-long ownership. At least he built up his physical muscles. Let’s see what diversity of viewpoint he brings to the Post, but I’m not holding my breath. In the meantime, he can hang on his megayacht with Lauren Sanchez.
How will the media landscape evolve? Here are my 3 spicy hot takes.
First, a deluge of regime propagandists will get fired or quit. Like rats fleeing a sinking ship, many will flock to Substack as a life raft. Their egos and entitlement will fade when they see the harsh reality no one is interested in subscribing to their MSM regurgitations. That category is already saturated by a demoralized hive of Trump Derangement Substackers like Heather Cox Richardson, Dan Rather, The Bulwark, Robert Reich, etc. They are the Sacklers of information, exacerbating their readers’ mental illnesses. Zeteo is MSNBC on crack, The Bulwark is FOX on meth, and HCR is CNN on cat litter. In frustration, they will call for censorship of “disinformation” and “conspiracy theories”. I hope Substack remains steadfast in protecting free speech from this onslaught of the “REEEsistance”.
Second, true independent writers will flourish even more. The marketplace of ideas is finally evolving into a meritocracy. This period of subsidies, censorship, gatekeeping, corporate ownership and advertising, and algorithm manipulation will be viewed like the steroid era of baseball. The tide has gone out and everyone sees the naked emperors flailing. Substack has a bright future to take more market share. If 250,000 former WaPo subscribers transfer that $100/year to Substack, it would result in an additional $25 million gross and $2.5 million net revenue to team orange. Meanwhile, the quality and quantity of Substacks will continue to expand. A rising tide lifts all boats here. Our pie will keep growing and I stand as an ally to all true independents, many of whom I interviewed on the Struggle Session podcast. The only competition we face as a platform and as individual creators is not each other, but time. There are only so many hours in a day for subscribers to read and support so many talented voices.
Finally, the information diets of Americans will fracture further. NPC PMC consoomers with poor information diets will deteriorate into broken-brained BlueAnon Boomerwaffens. The only demographic that shifted left was white college educated women over 65. They will have mental meltdowns en masse because of their refusal to consider any perspectives outside of their bubble. Like 2016, Trump’s election this time around should prompt soul searching. But this is not a sane world. Rage peddlers will profit selling digital opium to millions of unwell people, just like the Sacklers did with physical opium. They will continue to smear and block anyone who disagrees with them. The asymmetry will remain - the instinctuals understand the narratives of the institutionalized, but the institutionalized wall themselves off into their asylum. They are like children covering their ears in a tantrum shouting LA LA LA I CANT HEAR YOU. Therapists’ schedules and wallets will be overflowing. TDS is the ultimate luxury belief and they need it to provide meaning in the empty voids of their souls. Orange Man will live in their heads rent free for the rest of their sad lives.
Mary Trump’s comment section is unhinged - ironically she is getting rich from her uncle like many of her fellow TDS dealers:
Notes on winners and losers of 2024 Election reflections:
No cap on god trolled deranged Boomerwaffens outside the MSG rally. The saddest exchange is linked at 2:27 - “What is your biggest obstacle in life?” “TRUMP!” “Do you wake up and think about him?” “Yes, constantly, every day.”
They are scared shitless because free speech is the only cure for The Bluebonic Plague. Specifically, tearing down the edifice of lies that camoflauge ideological uniformity as cultural diversity.
If you stick your head out the window you can just smell the panic seeping out of their anxiety riddled brains! It's rather enjoyable watching them look like a bride jilted at the alter.
Don't worry these fools might as well be driving around in buggys a hundred years ago in denial about the Tin Lizzies. They don't realize quite yet that they are about to go the way of the dodo.
They are used to being able to push without any push-back. Those days are over....and not a minute too soon. They have nobody to blame but themselves.
"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. area"
Maybe someone should get this in Bezos inbox. This guy called it over 100 years ago:
"...the corruption of the priesthood occurred at the precise moment in which it changed from a minority organised to impart knowledge into a minority organised to withhold it.
The great danger of decadence in journalism is almost exactly the same. Journalism possesses in itself the potentiality of becoming one of the most frightful monstrosities and delusions that have ever cursed mankind.
This horrible transformation will occur at the exact instant at which journalists realise that they can become an aristocrat...."
-G.K. Chesterton
They're never going to change because they're at court inside the palace gates. They'll never tell The Truth because they despise us. People rarely tell the truth to people they think are unworthy of it.
"Zeteo is MSNBC on crack, The Bulwark is FOX on meth, and HCR is CNN on cat litter. In frustration, they will call for censorship of “disinformation” and “conspiracy theories”. “
The "new media" is making FACT and LOGIC great again.
Excellent commentary!