The Washington Post followed in the footsteps of the Los Angeles Times and USA Today when it decided not to endorse a presidential candidate (read: Kamala Harris) in the 2024 election.
While WaPo claimed it was returning to historical norms with the decision that came from owner Jeff Bezos, the backlash was swift. The paper is reportedly down some 200,000 subscribers between print and digital and has seen a third of its editorial board resign.
That led Bezos to pen an op-ed calling out his own newsroom for the increasing lack of trust in media. But as Megyn and Glenn Beck discussed on Tuesday’s show, the Amazon founder seemed to miss the point.
Playing Politics
Late Monday, Bezos published an op-ed titled “The hard truth: Americans don’t trust the news media,” which Megyn and Beck quipped is something they could have written 20 years ago.
As it relates to endorsements specifically, Bezos argued that “presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales on election” and instead “create a perception of bias” and “non-independence.” Megyn said the billionaire is kidding himself if he thinks endorsements alone are to blame. “I hate to break it to you, Jeff, but that was riddled all over your newspaper long before endorsements,” she said.
He determined that ending endorsements is “a principled decision” – and “it’s the right one.”
Credibility Problem
But the piece largely focused on what is wrong with media today. Bezos cited the latest Gallup poll that found 36 percent of adults in the United States have “no trust at all” in mass media and view it as the least trustworthy political or civic institution, even behind Congress. “Our profession is now the least trusted of all,” he wrote. “Something we are doing is clearly not working.”
Bezos went on to offer a theory for why that could be. “We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate,” he wrote. “It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased.”
Why might that be? “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,” Bezos continued. “Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.”
Megyn was unmoved by what she called a “Jeff Bezos ass-covering” disguised as a mea culpa. “What he is doing here is trying to justify his decision not to endorse any candidate without taking ownership of the many errors, lies, and repeated false stories that they have pushed over the past eight or nine years,” she said.
Beck likened it to an alcoholic picking and choosing the steps of an AA program. “You can’t just say, ‘I’m an alcoholic, and you know what my real problem is? People now know I’m an alcoholic,’” he said. “No, that is not the real problem. The real problem is this, this, this, this, this, and this. That is what led to your alcoholism.”
Fleeting Relevance
Rather than look inward, Bezos saved some of his harshest criticism for non-establishment media. “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,” he wrote. “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.
“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,” Bezos went on. “It’s too important. The stakes are too high.”
That reasoning, Megyn said, proves just how out of touch Bezos is. “You can tell this is a man who knows he has lost relevance, who is clinging to the last vestiges of the golden days when WaPo used to be a thing… when they could control the narrative and bring down a president,” she noted. “Those days are gone, and he knows it.”
Case in point: Joe Rogan’s interview with Donald Trump that has racked up more than 35 million views on YouTube alone. “The Washington Post, as of 2023, had 136,000 print subscriptions… and 2.5 million digital subscriptions,” she noted. “I have more than that on my YouTube channel… No one is listening to them anymore.”
Currying Favor?
For those reasons, Megyn said Bezos can spare us the sanctimony. “This ‘I’m not going to endorse because I’m going to resurrect my paper’ makes no sense. They have already sold their credibility up the river – and they know it,” she noted. “It has become a last minute trend… because they believe Donald Trump is going to win and, I think, they are trying to curry favor with him.”
As for the publication’s now tattered reputation on both the left and right, Megyn wasn’t sure who Bezos was trying to appeal to with his op-ed. “He is trying to say ‘we have lost credibility’ without going through [why],” she concluded. “This is not a mea culpa designed to actually bring back in anybody right of center.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Beck by tuning in to episode 929 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.