Jeff Bezos Cosplays as Humble Newspaperman

Democracy dies in dorkness.

We the Media

After kiboshing his staff's endorsement of Kamala Harris for president, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos has finally spoken out — and laughably, the billionaire is wrapping himself in the mantle of a humble newspaperman to justify meddling in the newspaper's operations.

In an editorial for WaPo, the Amazon founder suggested that eschewing the paper's tradition of presidential endorsements would somehow lend the outlet more credibility with the journalism-critical set.

In doing so, he used a lot of "we" statements that made it seem very much that he thinks of himself as a member of the media rather than an uber-rich guy who bought a newspaper.

"We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate," Bezos wrote. "It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement."

While there's no denying that a lot of people distrust the media at large, Bezos' rhetoric betrays a lot of assumptions that don't hold up.

For one thing, Bezos seems to be laboring under the impression that he and his staff are a unified front. That's obviously at odds with the actual state of play, given that WaPo's rank and file have done everything from penning editorials of their own to resigning en masse to distance themselves from the non-endorsement decision.

For another, it seems nearly impossible that anyone who questions the accuracy of a storied newspaper's reporting is going to be swayed by its owner's decision not to endorse either presidential candidate. So why is Bezos trying to do so this late in the game?

Pandering Politics

Playing into the illusion of journalistic objectivity, Bezos went on to assert that "presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election" — a statement he could have ended his diatribe with, but chose not to.

"No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, 'I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.' None," he wrote. "What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence."

But ironically, it's Bezos himself who has fueled WaPo's "perception of non-independence" by killing its chosen endorsement. Though he went on to say that there is "no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here," that hardly matters when the man crying journalistic integrity has much more in common with the top of the GOP ticket than the staffers whose wishes he overruled.

"You can see my wealth and business interests as a bulwark against intimidation, or you can see them as a web of conflicting interests," he wrote. "Only my own principles can tip the balance from one to the other."

Right now, those "principles" seem milquetoast at best — and disingenuous at worst.

More on Bezos' bad decision: Jeff Bezos Reportedly Has Secretive "Personal Reasons" for Wanting to Escape to Mars