Op-Ed, Opinions

Jeff Bezos Is Missing The Point

Just 11 days before the U.S. presidential election, Jeff Bezos decided to kill The Washington Post’s editorial endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris on grounds of “compromised objectivity.” I think his decision undermines the very foundation upon which journalistic credibility is established.

When I was elevated to news editor at The Heights in 2018, my approach to the job focused on two approaches to journalism: fact-finding and providing context. What I didn’t realize was that I need not have worried to such a particular degree about the dividing line between fact-based news reporting and the opinion side of the paper. What actually earns newspapers—or any media organization—credibility is a process that mirrors a pendulum.

When a story breaks, the pendulum sits squarely on what I was most concerned with: fact-finding. Who, what, when, where, why, how—the question words I learned in first grade that are coincidentally also the pillars of a story. It’s a reasonably straightforward home base for the pendulum to start swinging from. 

As it moves downward, the next threshold is providing context as a follow-up. Often, journalism is criticized for moving beyond this point. Every step journalists take further could serve to compromise their credibility in the exact way Bezos is concerned with. Where is the line between fact and opinion if the demarcation line is blurred between analytical understanding and fact-finding?

Analysis, both from an objective, fact-based approach as well as from a subjective opinion style, is a huge part of the journalistic process. Readers engage with media to better educate themselves about topics, often through their own criticism of various styles of analysis. It makes sense that readers would look to both descriptions of facts and analysis of that coverage through either approach in order to better hone readers’ understanding of issues important to them. 

Beyond that point is where the pendulum reaches more traditional opinion columns. It’s an equally important part of the process—when an opinion writer chimes in on important news issues, it magnifies their importance. The story is now in conversation between more than one section of the paper. If the opinion writer takes issue with the way the facts are presented within the initial news story then they can pick it apart. If it’s of foundation-shaking importance to the writer they can crow about how this changes everything

That leaves editorials, through which newspapers cement their credibility at the end of the pendulum’s swing by collectively staking their name on a position backed by facts, context, and opinion. Editorials are a chance to take all that work and place a period at the end of it, weighing in on critical issues with the gravitas and reputation of a hundred-year-old paper. It’s the final point on the pendulum’s swing.

I think the journalistic pendulum swings from the fact-finding spectrum to the editorial and all the way back if the editorial engenders more reflection and analysis or further searches for more facts and context. It’s from the entire process that a newspaper can make itself into something larger than itself, pursuing what Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein described as “the best obtainable version of the truth.” 

Bezos is theorizing that endorsing candidates presents only negative opportunities for the Post, which is why he has decided to kill the paper’s endorsement of Harris. Some are picking on Bezos for cowardice, caving toward his personal business interests, but I think it’s more important to consider the actual argument he makes in his response to the outcry against his decision.

The numbers say that readers don’t believe in facts at all in 2024, Bezos argues, so ensuring the wall between the newsroom and editorial—never to be crossed for credibility’s sake—is the most important objective. Killing off an endorsement that will be published under the name of the newspaper is too big an ask of readers who are already skeptical that the paper is biased.

But Bezos has missed the whole point of the journalistic enterprise he’s tasked with shepherding. Journalistic credibility is not established based on how many times you put a reported fact into your newspaper.

The Washington Post is famously the paper that held America and its government accountable when they published the Pentagon Papers and through Woodward and Bernstein’s reporting on the Watergate Scandal. Partially in reaction to America losing faith both in its own government’s willingness to tell the truth, the Post realized in 1976 that merely using the editorial as a tool to lead readers toward a stance on an issue rather than taking a position was not what served the paper’s credibility best—that year, the Post began endorsing presidential candidates, often basing the paper’s endorsement decision on news cataloged in the newspaper’s pages. To abandon that position because Bezos believes readers have lost faith in American journalistic institutions due to bias is completely off base.

Readers don’t pick apart editorials for creating bias under any auspices other than what amounts to a public relations point—how can a newspaper cover someone they’ve endorsed the opponent of? The answer is staring Bezos in the face: by reporting and contextualizing facts in the newsroom, subjectively analyzing them in the opinions section, and taking united stances on them through editorials.

The whole pendulum process acts collectively as an opportunity for newspapers to converse with themselves about whether or not the truth is being reported accurately. When executed at a high level, this is what makes for trustworthy journalism, which is precisely what Bezos is seeking as proprietor of what I, at times, would’ve called the best newspaper on the planet. Bezos’s choice to end editorial endorsements risks replicating the phenomenon he fears has already occurred—the American public losing their faith in news media. To some degree, they already have, but pulling the rug out from the exact thing journalistic credibility is predicated upon only exacerbates that problem.

November 12, 2024

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