Inherent in the outrage is the idea that media outlets exist to advance their progressive view of the world, prioritizing their beliefs and preferences above all others.
Progressives have whipped themselves into a frenzy over The Washington Post’s decision not to endorse a candidate for president this year or, assuming they stick to it, any future contest. According to some reports, over 200,000 people have canceled their subscriptions and several journalists have resigned. NPR put it this way, “The Washington Post has been rocked by a tidal wave of cancellations from digital subscribers and a series of resignations from columnists, as the paper grapples with the fallout of owner Jeff Bezos’s decision to block an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president. More than 200,000 people had canceled their digital subscriptions by midday Monday, according to two people at the paper with knowledge of internal matters. Not all cancellations take effect immediately. Still, the figure represents about 8% of the paper’s paid circulation of roughly 2.5 million subscribers, which includes print as well. The number of cancellations continued to grow Monday afternoon.” Critics have decried the lack of an endorsement as exhibiting both cowardice and a failure to live up to some undefined principles, questioning the timing of the decision and insinuating that Mr. Bezos is being intimidated by former and perhaps future President Donald Trump, somehow, in some equally undefined way. “If this decision had been made three years ago, two years ago, maybe even a year ago, that would’ve been fine,” explained former NPR Executive Editor Marty Brown. “It’s a certainly reasonable decision. But this was made within a couple of weeks of the election, and there was no substantive serious deliberation with the editorial board of the paper. It was clearly made for other reasons, not for reasons of high principle.” A retired editor at the Post itself, Martin Baron, claimed the decision showed “disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.” Legendary journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame shared their thoughts as well, calling the decision “surprising and disappointing.” “We respect the traditional independence of the editorial page, but this decision 11 days out from the 2024 presidential election ignores the Washington Post’s own overwhelming reportorial evidence on the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy. Under Jeff Bezos’s ownership, the Washington Post’s news operation has used its abundant resources to rigorously investigate the danger and damage a second Trump presidency could cause to the future of American democracy and that makes this decision even more surprising and disappointing, especially this late in the electoral process.” The Post’s own opinion columnists are also in revolt, writing “It represents an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love. This is a moment for the institution to be making clear its commitment to democratic values, the rule of law and international alliances, and the threat that Donald Trump poses to them — the precise points The Post made in endorsing Trump’s opponents in 2016 and 2020,” a group of 17 wrote. “An independent newspaper might someday choose to back away from making presidential endorsements. But this isn’t the right moment.”
Like so many things in recent years, the reaction to what should be a relatively non-controversial decision given its undoubtedly non-existent effect on the outcome says more about progressives than Jeff Bezos or anything else. Inherent in this outrage is the idea that The Washington Post and media outlets in general exist to advance their progressive view of the world, prioritizing their beliefs and preferences above all others. While they would like to pretend the Post is an independent, objective, and fair voice in American media and politics, they know that it’s really a progressive voice, reinforcing progressive opinions and serving progressive causes. Putting this another way, none of the concerns expressed by anyone cited above or venting their ire on X have even briefly paused to consider the possibility the Post would’ve endorsed Donald Trump for any reason. As my wife put it, would they be saying the same thing if the publication planned to endorse him? In their mind, the endorsement of his opponent, perhaps the only candidate in American history to never receive a primary vote, one of the least popular vice presidents in modern memory, and a self-evidently less than stellar candidate who has abandoned all of her prior positions, was a given. It was simply hers by divine right, despite doing next to nothing to earn it. Consciously, they are likely to be aware that everyone who follows the media knows where The Washington Post stands on the Donald Trump question and that an editorial endorsing Vice President Harris would have no measurable effect among voters. Emotionally, however, they react as if something was stolen from her and perhaps more so than that, crave yet another anti-Trump rant, not yet satiated by the thousands which have already been published and continue to be published on the pages of the very same media outlet they are attacking. To be sure, there might be some small sliver of their readership that believes one more would have done it, as absurd as that sounds. The New York Times, for example, was recently targeted by Salon.com as not being sufficiently thorough in eviscerating the former President, writing that their failure to do so was impacting the election. “If Trump wins, blame the New York Times. America’s paper of record refuses to sound the alarm about the threat Trump poses to democracy,” they opined. “If Donald Trump wins the Nov. 5 election, the New York Times will be partly responsible. As the dominant voice in American journalism, the Times could have fundamentally changed the way Trump has been covered not just by its own journalists but by the political media as a whole. It could have stopped using soft, empty language and false equivalence, and made it crystal clear to the public that if elected Trump would turn America into a racist, authoritarian regime where facts don’t matter.” This strikes me as wishful thinking masquerading as analysis, but as in all things related to President Trump, it’s very difficult to be certain.
Beyond the man himself, the reaction also makes clear that progressives are not the least bit concerned about the continued collapse of the average person’s trust in American media. Poll after poll continues to find this trust at an all time low, for what I would consider obvious reasons (please see a former NPR reporter lambasting that outlet for its corruption and bias). Most recently, Gallup published their results on this question, writing earlier this month, “Americans continue to register record-low trust in the mass media, with 31% expressing a ‘great deal’ or ‘fair amount’ of confidence in the media to report the news ‘fully, accurately and fairly,’ similar to last year’s 32%. Americans’ trust in the media — such as newspapers, television and radio — first fell to 32% in 2016 and did so again last year. For the third consecutive year, more U.S. adults have no trust at all in the media (36%) than trust it a great deal or fair amount. Another 33% of Americans express ‘not very much’ confidence.” Considering 72% of Americans, well over double the current level, reported a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in 1976, this is an incredibly steep decline, one that has also been accompanied by a general gutting of the media industry as more and more people look for alternative sources aided by the rise of the internet and social media. While 1976 might seem a lifetime ago now, the number was as high as 55% as late as 1999 and 45% as of 2018, suggesting a near continuous erosion. Mr. Bezos himself defended the decision not to endorse a candidate using some of this very same data in an op-ed published yesterday. “In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress. But in this year’s Gallup poll, we have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working.” He continued to define the two criteria essential in running a media operation, “We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion. 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. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.” He concluded, “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. It’s too important. The stakes are too high.”
Strangely, however, most progressives never make the connection between declining impact, cratering subscriptions, and a lack of trust, or if they do, they don’t care as long as progressive causes are sufficiently advanced in their view. Instead, they prefer to blame anyone who disagrees, both substantiating their superiority complex and demonstrating their contempt for those not fully onboard with their grandiose plans to remake America. In their mind, there is no room for debate, save at the margins of what they consider allowable, and anyone who suggests otherwise is effectively irredeemable. X, in particular, was awash with this perspective, and of course experienced its own revolt when Elon Musk purchased the platform. For example, David Roberts, a journalist that covers the electric car and clean energy industry, claimed, “Even if Harris squeaks out a victory, I’m never going to be able to forget that, when fascism came to the door, most US civic leaders & institutions were pathetic accommodationist cowards. What a sad class of people we’ve elevated. Idiot billionaires & simpering apparatchiks.” He continued, “Bezos is just doing what the entire US elite has done for years, what many many center-left pundits still do constantly: contemplate the results of a coordinated 60-year assault on media (& other mainstream institutions) from the right & conclude a) this is our fault, and b) if we cringe more, indulge in even more self-hatred, blunt accuracy even more in the name of ‘balance,’ bend over farther backward, we can reclaim the trust of people who have said, clearly, for decades now, that they want us dead & gone, not improved.” Setting aside the irony of declaring the party that has settled on labeling their opponents fascists and Nazis as a closing argument doesn’t want those opponents dead and gone, these and similar statements only make sense if you assume your position is the only right one, the only justifiable one, the only correct one. It couldn’t possibly be that institutions which hire professors who connect Shakespeare and January 6, or who label white people psychopaths, have become just a little bit unbalanced. It can only be that anyone who objects to this point of view or seeks a return to at least some of the principles that have made America the greatest country in the world have no valid point of view and are irredeemable to the point where they want their opponents literally dead. This sort of freakout might be funny – if it didn’t inform all our debates and poison all our discourse. I don’t want anyone dead – I just want them to respect my opinion, stay in their own lane, mind their own damn business, and leave me the hell alone.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 