The Washington Post’s Looney Liberal Readership

It has been years since I gave a rip about anything in the Washington Post. Like the New York Times, the Post has become so dreadfully biased that reading it is downright agonizing. There is little point in reading it, other than as an exercise in masochism or for the explicit purpose of finding a cornball leftist perspective. Colleagues here at The American Spectator will attest that if I need a quote from the Times or Post, I’ll ask them (as suffering subscribers not blocked by the paywall) to cut and paste the text for me.

Thus, it was largely by happenstance that I read Post owner Jeff Bezos’ statement to readers explaining why the newspaper didn’t endorse Kamala Harris for president. I saw the Bezos statement posted at RealClearPolitics, a rare and genuinely balanced source that daily does a splendid job of posting both liberal and conservative opinions. RCP displays a remarkable nonpartisanship that the dominant mainstream newspapers are clearly incapable of doing, including the Washington Post.

And so, I clicked the Bezos statement at RealClearPolitics, and I was surprised and impressed. If you haven’t read it, I think you’ll agree, unless you’re one of the ideologically deranged readers of the Washington Post (more on that in a minute). Here’s what Bezos wrote under the headline “The hard truth: Americans don’t trust the news media”:

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….

We [newspapers] 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. 

Spot on, Mr. Bezos. And as I’ll note below, the Washington Post readers raging at Bezos do so from a position of refusing reality and fighting it like petulant preschoolers. Bezos continued:

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. 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 inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy.

Indeed, when a purportedly unbiased newspaper endorses a political candidate, it reveals its bias in favor of that candidate and against the opponent. In turn, readers naturally suspect biased coverage. How does that help the newspaper portray itself as objective? It would be better for newspapers to stay neutral or at least try to appear so.

Bezos’ statement then dealt defensively with various rumormongering by silly progressives accusing him of a conflict of interest. Those progressives had also focused their ire at a chief executive of one of his companies, who is apparently guilty of the unconscionable sin of meeting with Donald Trump or some such blather. It’s laughable that such a transgression would have liberals foaming at the mouth, given how many executives and staff at the Post and other media organizations have obvious conflicts of interests with Kamala and Biden and Hillary and Pelosi and every big-time lib in Washington. In liberal la-la land, they’re all in bed together.

Bezos then returned with this strong closing statement:

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, inaccurate social media posts and other unverified news sources, which can quickly spread misinformation and deepen divisions. 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. 

Yes, they do. Of course. No question.

Bezos stated what ought to be obvious: “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?” He finished: “Many of the finest journalists you’ll find anywhere work at The Washington Post, and they work painstakingly every day to get to the truth. They deserve to be believed.”

In all, it’s an excellent statement. Jeff Bezos is exactly right about what newspapers ought to be. His statement almost makes me want to start reading the Washington Post again.

But here’s the most fascinating part of Bezos’ post. At the end of his statement is an astonishing collection of reader comments from the Post faithful. At the time of my writing, there are over 15,000 comments. And really, they are less comments than temper tantrums. Picture a fat, bratty 5-year-old holding her breath and jumping up and down in the kitchen demanding a chocolate donut for breakfast. Actually, I would call the comments childish, but I have eight kids, and none of them talk like these people.

I could fill this website with examples, but I’ll let you click and look for yourself. They’re all against Bezos in the most ridiculous ways. It’s like a parody of liberals. If you received an email from one of these crazies, you’d be even crazier to respond. They’re so poisoned by ideology that they’re beyond the ability to dialogue with anyone who disagrees.

Here are just three examples from the five lead comments in my most recent look:

Mickey Brazil: “I’m not going to tell you [Bezos] to get out of the road, there’s a truck coming, because you might not believe me. He thinks we’re stupid, just like Trump.”

Southernpoliticalbelle: “Sounds to me all you have done is listen to OAN and Fox declaring WaPo as untrustworthy. You clearly do not know the American people. Readers are not going to believe you. Sorry but this was a political stunt or you are too uneducated to filter the garbage. Either way you have cause WaPo to be untrustworthy because it is clearly under the whims of your thumb. If your goal was to destroy this paper then you are right on track.”

susan.micari: “Mr. Bezos, you are a coward, pandering to those who would destroy our democracy. What do you know about democracy? You are king of your sweat shop empire. Shame on you. Hedging your bets at the expense of the Post’s readers, reporters, and opinion writers. You have decided that these reporters and opinion writers don’t matter, and we will all suffer for it.”

Those are merely three examples. And they’re mild. Grab some popcorn or crack a beer and page through them this evening for kicks. There’s one howler after another.

But more important, they prove precisely Bezos’ point, which I’ll express more candidly than he could: The Washington Post is a left-wing newspaper for left-wingers. The bias is so appalling, so repellent, that non-liberals flee it like the plague. If you’re not a liberal, there’s no reason to read the Post. It cannot be trusted because of its bias.

If Jeff Bezos is truly trying to change that, then good for him. But as he does, the Post’s looney liberals will be kicking and screaming.

READ MORE:

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