Faith and Perfidy at the Washington Post
In the age of Jeff Bezos, a complete turnaround from
the values of Katharine Graham.
October 28, 2024By Roger
Rosenblatt
In the late 1970s I was a columnist and editorial board
member at the Washington Post, more suited to writing columns than
editorials, since one doesn’t need to know anything to write a column, whereas
editorials require a certain amount of authority and expertise. I was an expert
in nothing, and so only the oddest assignments were tossed my way.
A man had murdered a goose on a Maryland golf course.
Told to determine the seriousness of the crime, I wrote my piece and asked my
editor, Meg Greenfield, for a “hed,” or headline.
These were the days when placards were hoisted outside the White House telling
drivers to blow their horns if they believed Richard M. Nixon should be ousted.
For the title of my editorial on avicide, Meg suggested “Honk If You Think He’s Guilty.”
It was fun writing for the Post’s editorial
page in those days, serious fun, in that a small number of good-natured people
were asked to guide the paper’s many estimable readers toward decisions
important to their lives. Father Goose was mere comic relief, and functioning
as comic relief, it emphasized by contrast the seriousness of the other
editorials of that day on the economy and government projects and all matters
that might be useful to a trusting public.
The public trusted us to arrive at opinions useful to
them. They respected the paper. The paper respected them. And Katharine Graham, the owner of the paper,
respected both her writers and our readers.
Graham was a monumental figure in journalism, not
principally because she was a woman, and not because she was rich, but because
she was principled and understood that a newspaper represents a tacit agreement
between journalists and readers that the common good requires thought, honesty,
and fair play.
So scrupulous was Kay, as most everyone called her,
that whenever she sat in on our board’s daily meetings, she never said a word,
or gave a nod, or tossed a glance that would indicate her opinion. She knew
that her opinion was likely to be taken as law, and she was not about to abuse
her authority. No one could have been more “in” the Washington Post than
Kay, yet she stayed out of the ed board’s business because she understood the
moral requirements of power.
To say such a thing these days is so antique as to
sound ludicrous. The moral requirements of power? Tell that to Elon Musk, who
has returned from outer space to attempt to buy a presidential election. Tell
that to Donald Trump himself, who speaks of using the military against his
opponents. And tell that to Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post now
and who has ordered the current editorial board not to support one candidate or
the other.
Bezos’s defenders claim the Post has a
long tradition of neutrality in elections. Well, I don’t know how long is long,
but the past fifty years would seem sufficient to me to establish a tradition.
And the main point is that Bezos stuck his nose in an honorable procedure, thus
treating a newspaper as if it were any commodity. As if it belonged to him
alone.
So is the question whether billionaires should own
newspapers? Patrick Soon-Shiong, billionaire owner of the Los Angeles
Times, beat Bezos to the punch by forbidding that paper from endorsing a
presidential candidate. But the Ochs-Sulzberger family, also wealthy, who have
owned the New York Times since 1896, seem to have no trouble
letting the paper of record operate freely. And the rich owners of other papers
in the country seem to have no trouble recognizing that their commodities are
trusts.
No, the problem isn’t money. It’s the way one looks at
money. To be specific about the coming election, if Soon-Shiong and Bezos are
loath to support Kamala Harris over Donald Trump—the likely decision of their
papers’ editorial boards—it is their pockets they are looking after, not the
welfare of the readers they are supposed to serve.
And they are supposed to serve their readers by giving
them the very best thought the paper can summon. Not only does a fair editorial
say to the reader, Make up your own mind; it gives that reader the
highest expression of that thought, honoring them the way a good poem or essay
or novel does. It is a celebration of the mind itself, and as such is a work of
generous imagination.
Would the support of the Post or of
any paper have made a difference in the election? Would enough readers be
swayed by the passion and language of a good editorial to vote one way or the
other? I doubt it. Editorials are not cause-and-effect entities. They state a
case as forcefully, persuasively, and beautifully as a case may be stated. Then
they rest, having done their work.
The blocking of the endorsement has already triggered
an exodus from the paper: columnists Robert Kagan and Michele Norris have
resigned, along with editorial writer Molly Roberts. David Hoffman, a
forty-two-year veteran of the Post, is leaving the editorial board,
though he plans to continue writing for the paper; only last week, Hoffman
received his Pulitzer Prize for an editorial series, “Annals of Autocracy.” In
his letter resigning from the board, he wrote: “I believe we face a very real
threat of autocracy in the candidacy of Donald Trump. I find it untenable and
unconscionable that we have lost our voice at this perilous moment.”
I know of several long-term subscribers to the Post who
have canceled their subscriptions; NPR just reported that there have been
200,000 cancellations. Others have called for canceling Amazon Prime in lieu of
the Post. Their cancellations won’t put a dent in the Bezos
coffers. I suggest something else. To all those who are driving around in the
vicinity of the Bezos Washington Post, honk if you think he’s
guilty. And don’t lift your hand from the horn.