Can Jeff Bezos SAVE Mainstream Media??

(00:00.68)

Jeff Bezos unplugged. boy, man, the left is having a hissy fit. many, many, subscribers. The Washington Post have canceled their subscription. They’re upset that the Washington Post didn’t endorse anybody. Well, again, they would have they would have canceled their subscription if the post endorsed Donald Trump.

It’s not just the Washington Post. It’s also the LA Times, USA Today taking a pass on this. So Bezos, Bezos put out an op-ed. First and foremost, okay? Love him, hate him, whatever it may be. I’m sorry. I most certainly respect that guy. I do.

How can you not respect somebody who started a company and go online and take a look, take a look at the pictures. Google Bezos 1994 and see him working at like a tiny little office with a spray painted sign, amazon.com on the side, him loading up books, loading up books to sell online. Again, this is the

the early advent of the internet. Again, I remember back in the day, they had all of these internet retailers that were coming out at that point in time. was Amazon and Pets.com. Remember the sock puppet from the commercials. Young people are not gonna know about this. There was CD Now. All of these companies. at the time, didn’t, again, I said, which one is gonna make it? I don’t know. And a lot of these companies,

Their stock price went to the roof. You had various different analysts back then trying to make a name for themselves, driving the price up. when push come shove, Amazon won. They stopped just selling books and now they sell everything. Everything. We’ve got people working for us at Markowski Investments.

(02:27.694)

20 something offices around the country. This guy’s doing over a half a billion dollars in revenue a year. He has over 1.5 million employees. That is number two in the world. Number one is Walmart. Think about that. You’re not impressed by that? Okay, might not like the guy for whatever reason it may be, but you certainly.

Gotta respect him. Okay, go back. said, look at the pictures of Bezos back in 1994. He almost looks like Gilbert from Revenge of the Nerds. Now he’s hitting a weight room and all sorts of stuff and he’s around on his yacht. People are all upset about that. my God, it’s ridiculous. He just bought a $500 million yacht. So? So he didn’t.

earn it, he didn’t build something worthy of that, not to mention the fact, so what? How many people, think about this for a second, how many people are putting food on the table based upon the fact that he spent $500 million on the not the people just working on his yacht and driving his yacht and the chefs on the yacht and the people working on it and all that good stuff, but the people that built it and the suppliers, that’s what makes the world go round. Again, take that and put that aside, I’m sorry.

Okay, I want to talk about his opinion piece today based upon the fact that all journalists are quitting and this one is quitting and that one’s quitting, whatever. He writes, 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’ve managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working. You’re right, Jeff, you’re right. 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.

(04:52.012)

The second requirement is distinct from and just as important as the first. Likewise with newspapers, 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. Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. Again, I’ve said this a zillion times. Why in the world do newspapers endorse

anyone. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, I’m going with newspaper A’s endorsement. None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias, a perception of non-independence. 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.

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. I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it. That was an inadequate planning and not some intentional strategy. I would also like to be clear that no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here. Neither campaign

nor candidate was consulted or informed at any level or in any way about this decision. It was made entirely internally. Dave Limp, the chief executive of one of my company’s Blue Origin, met with former president Donald Trump on the day of our announcement. I sighed when I found out because I knew it would provide ammunition to those who would like to frame this as anything other than a principled decision. But the fact is, I didn’t know about the meeting beforehand. Even Limp didn’t know about it in advance.

(07:16.258)

The meeting was scheduled quickly that morning. There’s no connection between it and our decision on presidential endorsements and any suggestion otherwise is false. When it comes to the appearance of conflict, I am not an ideal owner of the post. Every day, somewhere, some Amazon executive or Blue Origin executive or someone from the other philanthropies and companies I own or invest in is meeting with government officials.

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. You can see my wealth and my business interests as a bulwark against intimidation, or you can see them as a web of conflicting interests. Only my own principles can tip the balance from one to the other. 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. You are of course free to make your own determination, but I challenge you to find one instance in these those 11 years where I have prevailed upon anyone at the Post in favor of my own interests. It hasn’t happened. Lack of credibility isn’t unique to the Post. Our brethren newspapers have the same issue and it’s a problem not only for media, but also for the nation.

Many people are turning to off-the-cuff podcasts and accurate social media posts and other unverified news sources which can quickly spread misinformation and deepen divisions. The Washington Post and New York Times win prizes, but increasingly we talk only to a certain elite. More and more we talk to ourselves. It wasn’t always this way. In the 1990s, we achieved 80 % household penetration in the DC metro area.

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. Now more than ever, the world needs a credible, trusted, independent voice. And where better for that voice to originate than the capital city, the most important country in the world. To win this fight, we will have to exercise new muscles.

(09:39.66)

Some changes will be a return to the past and some will be new inventions. Criticism will be part and parcel of anything new. Of course, this is the way the world. None of this will be easy, but it’ll be worth it. I’m so grateful to be a part of this endeavor. Many of the finest journalists you’ll ever find work at the Washington Post and they work painstakingly every day to get to the truth. They deserve to be believed. Again, no problem with this and I’m be honest with you.

post for some time. Has it changed since Bezos has taken over? No, it hasn’t. Had the same thing. New York Times changed. Not really. Same left-wing rag. I do have to say the Wall Street Journal most certainly has changed a lot since News Corp has taken it over. But again, I would love to get back to

a day and age where can some credibility can be brought back to these publications. But again, like Bezos says, they got a long way to go. Again, you might not like the guy, whatever it may be, but gotta respect that decision. Watchdogonwallstreet.com.