The hard truth: People don’t trust billionaires

I try not to be political on this blog. Because I don’t care much about politics. Because each country and each person is different, and each issue requires a lot of knowledge, experience, and time that I simply don’t have. I’m also not a big fan of debates, especially when partisanship is involved. But when things go beyond what I would call “regular politics” I allow myself to rant, just like I regularly do with our least favourite James-Bond-movie villain, Elon Musk.

The US presidential election is now way beyond the state of “regular politics.” On one side, there is a regular candidate, and on the other side, there is something entirely different. Someone that no one would have dared to classify as “republican” ten years ago, and someone that should have been, on a typical political chessboard, the weird, third, extreme candidate that barely anyone votes for.

If it used to be “choose red or blue”, it’s now “choose any colour or scream.” If it used to be “choose left or right”, it’s now choosing between moving in any direction or digging a hole in the ground and sit in it.

This is the moment in history when some brave people, like Mark Zuckerberg, decide to stop being political. Quitting his position as the CEO of Meta would evidently be a better way to stop being political than just being political about not being political, but who am I to judge?

This is also the moment when another brave billionaire, Jeff Bezos, decides to stop being political. This is what he wrote in his column for the Washington Post entitled The hard truth: Americans don’t trust the news media:

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.

Weird to use the word “believe” rather than “trust” here.

We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.

Surely, deciding not to endorse a candidate for the first time in 50 years just 12 days before what is potentially the most crucial election in the history of elections, is not doing a lot for your credibility.

What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence.

I agree. But why are you only realising this now? Also, perception by whom? Why does it matter? Bezos sure likes to talk about perception: how the newspaper will look, rather than, say, what it does or writes, doesn’t he?

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.

If Bezos fancies going back in time for explanations, why not go back to the first time his journal decided to endorse a candidate? Surely there were good reasons to do that then: maybe these reasons still apply today?

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

If the newspaper did that, say three years ago, sure, I would agree wholeheartedly. In Europe, it’s very rare for newspapers to publicly and officially endorse a candidate. Journalists do it of course in the opinion pages, but the company of that newspaper almost never does it like US newspapers do.

As a Frenchman living in France, I’ve always found this a bit strange, but if there was a single time in the history of newspapers when an endorsement mattered at all in the US, it would be this one. If there was a time to stop publishing these endorsements, now is probably the worst time. Deciding to stop doing those less than two weeks before an election where someone who can arguably be called a neo-fascist is running is definitely not a “meaningful step in the right direction.”

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.

It’s weird how many of these billionaires want to run newspapers, social media companies, and media empires, only to complain like little babies when questions are being asked, and when people want answers. Simple solution Jeff, sell. I’m sure you know a little about selling stuff. Nobody is forcing you to be the owner. Nobody is forcing you to do anything really. You wanted this.

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.

Exactly what someone with a guilty conscience would say, and now we have to believe him I suppose. This is the perception I get anyway.

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.

Challenge accepted. Exhibit A: the day you allowed your newspaper to stop endorsing candidates days before the election, when it will evidently be perceived_ the same way Switzerland was perceived for being neutral during WWII.

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?

Translation: “I have billions to lose here. Now is not the time to faff around with principles and — checks notes — democracy. And when is a better time to put a new coat of pain on the house 5 minutes before a storm?”

To be fair, I think newspapers should not indeed endorse presidential candidates. And endorsing a candidate should of course not prevent them to be accurate and objective in their reporting. It probably doesn’t, but since Bezos talks about the perception of the audience, I think that ceasing to do it now, when you’ve been doing it for 50 years, is a bit rich and it is a message in itself: a message of cowardliness.

Good reads on the topic include Donna Ladd’s column, on Mississippi Free Press:

Today, we’re all witnessing courage, but not so much inside media executive suites that seem to think they have to pre-appease Trump in case he wins and Vance in case he ascends.

Another good read comes from Jonathan V. Last, on the Bulwark (h/t to Dan Gillmor’s The Cornerstone of democracy):

The Bezos surrender isn’t just a demonstration. It’s a consequence. It’s a signal that the rule of law has already eroded to such a point that even a person as powerful as Jeff Bezos no longer believes it can protect him. So he has sought shelter in the embrace of the strongman. Bezos made his decision because he calculated that Trump has already won—not the election, but his struggle to break the rule of law.

I tried to think of a good analogy of my own for this situation and this is the best I came up with, so please bear with me.

Imagine your family lives on a farm and only survives by eating chickens or rabbits. Each week, the family has to decide between killing a rabbit or a chicken in order to prepare the next meals that allow them to survive another week. The ideal of this family is to be vegetarian because it’s the right thing to do, but each week, the vegetables alone are not enough to sustain the family, so they have to kill an animal.

One week, there is only chicken to eat. The rabbits have either escaped or have been killed by a mad hyena that has been hanging around the farm for the last couple of weeks. When the family is about to kill a chicken, the hyena appears at their doorstep and start running towards them, threatening them. This is the moment when the family decides to stop killing animals because they realise it is wrong, nevermind self-defense. This is the moment when the family decides to become vegetarian. As if it would appease the hyena.

This is how I feel about the whole thing. Democracy dies in darkness indeed. Thanks for reading.