Not My Washington (blog) Post: Why Quarter Horse Is Keeping Our Post Subscription
Credit: John S., Flickr
by Katie Jacobs, Senior Director of Media Relations
As a publicist whose job it is to follow the news and understand the forces shaping it, I’d like to discuss the Washington Post’s recent decision to abstain from endorsing a 2024 presidential candidate—and explain why Quarter Horse is keeping our Post subscription.
News, like history, is always biased. It is written by human beings (and even when it isn’t, research shows it contains bias nonetheless), and there is no such thing as a person with no biases. When you read a history book, you read what the author and editors deem important, from the perspectives they deem worth exploring. Ideally they have training, including in mitigating bias, that helps them to determine the most useful way of analyzing and presenting information. They are transparent, neither leading with nor obscuring their perspectives.
The same goes for news. It can never be 100% objective. And the Opinion section of a newspaper, like the one where the Post’s proposed endorsement would’ve been published, certainly can’t be unbiased or objective. It exists to provide specific perspectives.
The reason I (and many others) take issue with the Washington Post’s decision and the way owner Jeff Bezos has framed that decision is that in choosing not to endorse a presidential candidate in the Opinion section, the paper does not appear less biased, but more.
In recent years, many in the media have reexamined the expectation that news can or should be unbiased or objective. At the closing plenary at the Society of Environmental Journalists Annual Conference in April of this year, for example, a panel of reporters discussed the value of inserting their own voices into their reporting. Everyone agreed that good and responsible journalism is defined not by aspiring to a total absence of bias, but rather by a dedication to accuracy and transparency of perspective and agenda.
It doesn’t serve anyone to pretend editors and reporters have no opinions of their own, but it does serve a news outlet’s credibility to demonstrate that it can provide a useful, well-researched argument that takes into account multiple perspectives and explains how coverage is shaped.
It certainly doesn’t help improve a paper’s credibility when decisions, like the decision not to endorse a presidential candidate, can be directly tied to the political impact on an owner’s other lines of business. In Jeff Bezos’ op-ed on the Post’s decision, he claims to be pursuing that gold standard of unbiased news, saying, “What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence.”
But in reality, he’s obscuring his own biases. There is a significant monetary value that can be easily assigned to the federal contracts his company Blue Origin currently has, and the potential for those contracts to be renewed, expanded, or terminated. This creates a profound “perception of non-independence,” and arguably a tangible non-independence, that far outweighs the impact of an endorsement in the paper’s Opinion section. And while it is harder to assign a monetary value to readers’ trust in a newspaper, it is a currency that is vital to the success of any publication—and one that cost the Washington Post 250,000 subscribers, roughly 10% of its digital subscribers, in just four days.
So if Quarter Horse disagrees with the Washington Post’s decision, why aren’t we unsubscribing? After all, one candidate in this election, in addition to proposing dangerous and irresponsible legislation, is committed to repeatedly telling proven, brazen lies that cause tangible harm to our most vulnerable populations. By not endorsing Kamala Harris, the Washington Post tacitly accepts this as valid behavior for a president, a choice we can’t stand behind.
We have heard the argument that unsubscribing is the only way to show Jeff Bezos that this decision and behavior won’t fly—that impacting a mogul’s bottom line is the best and maybe the only way to impact their decisions. But ultimately, based on our understanding of the media landscape and experience working with the Post’s dedicated journalists, we know that while unsubscribing may not meaningfully impact Jeff Bezos, it does impact Post reporters who had no say in the endorsement decision or shallow justifications that followed.
The Washington Post is but a drop of water in the bucket of Bezos’ profit machine, but many top-notch reporters depend on it to platform their crucial work and provide their livelihood. And without these reporters, the media landscape shrinks dramatically.
As a communications agency, it is our job to understand what is happening in the news, to be tapped into news sources, and to help our clients tell their stories when and where it matters—including, on occasion, in the pages of the Post. In addition to further eroding an already precarious information ecosystem, unsubscribing would mean neglecting our responsibility and slacking on our end of the bargain as a part of that ecosystem.
If we have a client with an audience that pays close attention to an outlet we might not normally pitch, our feelings about the publication aren’t our priority—it is important that our client have a presence there. What’s more, because we choose to work with as many companies doing mission-driven work as possible, we can leverage the opportunity to present a new perspective to these outlets’ audiences, one that may even help inspire positive change.
Ultimately, the question of whether or not to unsubscribe from the Washington Post distracts from the more important issue at hand: If we can’t impact the billionaires running the news by withholding our precious dollars, how can we? And if we simply can’t impact them at all due to their staggering power, isn’t that the problem?
News outlets, like the individuals they hire, make mistakes. They sometimes fail to report correctly or ethically, or they hire people whose biases push them to violate journalistic integrity. But like the humans who work for them, news outlets can turn things around and correct course. There will always be bias. Rather than insisting that the news pretend to be utterly objective, we should uplift responsible reporters who are transparent about their perspectives and dedicated to accuracy. Jeff Bezos, with his attempts to obscure his vested monetary interest in this election, may not understand that, but we firmly believe that the journalists who truly define the Post do.
Democracy dies in darkness. We hope that the Washington Post, and the journalistic landscape in general, will choose to turn on the light.
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