Will the Washington Post Survive?

June 17, 2024

On a quiet weekend, I received several emails from readers outraged over a Washington Post editorial scolding Joe Biden and his campaign for “ignoring the polls.” The editorial is titled, “Opinion: Biden should assume the polls are right, not wrong.” The editorial drips with pique provoked by Biden’s violation of the First Commandment of Serious Journalism: “We are the source of truth, and you shall not question our wisdom.” Or, as the Post editorial board put it, “Mr. Biden has attacked not just individual polls but polling writ large.”

In a bizarre approach, the WaPo editorial board relies almost exclusively on a widely discredited Times-Siena poll, which even the Times’ own chief polling commentator, Nate Cohn, has tried to walk back. After a firestorm of criticism over the poll, Cohn admitted that “[P]olls at this stage are not typically extraordinarily predictive of the final outcome.” Worse—for WaPo—Cohn explained that the Times-Siena poll—when read in a discerning manner—contained some good news for Biden:

Democrats are showing a lot of strength among the most regular and highly engaged voters, and Joe Biden in particular is extremely weak among less engaged voters . . . but it is worth noting that Biden is holding up among well-engaged, high-frequency Black voters. He’s also holding up among Hispanic midterm voters in our poll.

As has been confirmed in other polls and by reliable commentators, Joe Biden is outperforming Trump among engaged voters (a.k.a. “likely voters.”) But journalists insist on writing headlines based on voters who are not likely to show up (“all adults” or “all voters”), which predictably generates worse news for Biden and sensational headlines for newspapers.

What is most disturbing about the Post’s finger-wagging is that it occurs as the Post’s legitimacy as a major media outlet is open to question. A more urgent topic for the Post editorial board would have been, “Will the Post survive for another year?” (To be clear, I hope it does. I am a subscriber and will remain so.)

Discussing the “inside baseball” of the media is generally a waste of time. But the confluence of the Post’s editorial, its deepening crisis of legitimacy, and a travesty of a news story over the weekend provide a good insight into the mind-warping media coverage that we must ignore over the next five months.

I hope you will follow me through a few seemingly unrelated points to get to my message: For reasons we can discuss at leisure after Biden’s victory, the major media has lined up against Biden. It is rooting for him to lose—with a few notable exceptions. The prophets of doom putting profit ahead of democracy include the Washington Post and the New York Times. We just need to accept that fact and focus on getting likely voters and new voters to turn out.

Why are the prophets of doom adopting an anti-democratic stance by applying a double standard to Biden and minimizing the fascist tendencies of Trump? Because it is hard to be a successful media business these days. They have concluded that the profit-maximizing strategy is to “Root against Biden during the campaign and then rage against Trump if he wins.” (To understand that strategy, it is helpful to know that WaPo’s website had 100 million unique visitors in 2020 when Trump was president and 50 million unique visitors in 2023 when Biden was president.)

The Post is hemorrhaging money and would have shuttered several years ago but for the magic of “Bezos bucks” subsidizing its losses. The alternative to shutting down is to become The New York Post or The Daily Mirror. Sadly, Jeff Bezos seems to have given the Post’s management the green light to pursue a model emulating the worst of the British tabloids. If the Post is still in existence in a year, the question will be whether it survived as a serious news organization or has gone to the dark side of Fleet Street.

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The Post’s management has been taken over by alumni of Rupert Murdoch’s British media operations

Murdoch’s News Corporation has been the center of some of the most scandalous and salacious events in the British tabloid press over the last two decades. So, it was a surprise when the Washington Post hired Will Lewis as its new publisher and CEO. Lewis worked for Murdoch News Corporation at the height of the scandal-plagued era. Indeed, Mr. Lewis is implicated in some of that scandalous conduct. See CNN, Washington Post CEO Will Lewis faced with new allegations of phone hacking.

To make a very long story short, when the Post’s own reporters attempted to write a story that touched on Mr. Lewis’s conduct, he reportedly told the journalists to kill the story because it was “not newsworthy.” Lewis shortly thereafter summarily fired Sally Buzbee, the Post’s popular and respected executive editor. Suspicious, no?

Lewis plans to replace Buzbee with Robert Winnett, a protégé of Will Lewis and alumni of London’s Sunday Times (also a Murdoch property). But Winnett himself is accused of resorting to unethical and illegal conduct. Those revelations have been disclosed by none other than Washington Post reporters on the front page of the Post’s Sunday edition. See Washington Post, Incoming Post editor tied to self-described ‘thief’ who claimed role in his reporting. (This article is accessible to all and is worth reading in its entirety.)

Kudos to the WaPo reporters for having the integrity and courage to write a story about the Post’s publisher and its incoming executive editor. The journalists who wrote the story are Isaac Stanley-Becker, Sarah Ellison, Greg Miller, and Aaron C. Davis.

In short, the current publisher and incoming executive editor of the Washington Post are both implicated in unethical activity while working for Murdoch’s tabloid press operations on Fleet Street in London. And the publisher and CEO—Will Lewis—reportedly tried to kill a story that negatively reflected his role in those scandals.

To say the least, the situation at the Post is worrisome on many levels.

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WaPo’s story about Trump's appearance at a “Black church” in Detroit.

Stick with me, I have a point! Over the weekend, WaPo ran an article about a Trump campaign appearance at a “Black church” in Detroit. The article is here and is accessible to all: Trump portrays rampant crime in speech at Black church in Detroit.

The article peddles the popular narrative that Trump has taken his case to the Black community, where Biden is (allegedly) losing support:

Black voters have overwhelmingly favored Democrats since the civil rights movement. But recent polls show Trump has made gains with Black men, alarming some Democrats because even a small change in Black turnout or preferences could tip such pivotal states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia.

Although it sounds like Trump went to a “Black church” to deliver his message to the Black community in Detroit, the event was a PR stunt created for the media—which eagerly participated in the fraud by failing to write the true story, which is this: No one from Detroit’s Black community—or the church’s congregation—showed up to hear Trump!

The most troubling aspect of the story is that the WaPo reporter knew that the event was a sham but failed to report that story! Seventeen paragraphs into the story, the reporter writes, “No one in line [for the event] identified themselves to a reporter as a member of [the] church.” The reporter also notes in the third paragraph that the audience at the event “was not predominantly Black.”

“Was not predominantly Black” is an understatement to the point of being false. Take a look at this photo of the event (from reporter Russ McNamara) and this video, both of which show that the audience was overwhelmingly white.

And as Russ McNamara noted about the Black attendees,

Of the 8 Black Trump voters I talked to, just one was from Detroit and zero were congregants.

Got it? A “Black church” in Detroit with a mostly white audience where the Post reporter could not find a single congregant in attendance, and another reporter found that seven out of eight Blacks in the crowd were not even from Detroit!

So, the event at the “Black church” was a sham, and the Post reporter either knew or should have known that fact. But instead, the Post reporter and headline writer concocted a story based on a sham event that promoted a false narrative about Trump's popularity in the Black community.

The Post’s narrative is false! Remember, as the New York Times’ Nate Cohn admitted, the Times-Siena poll showed “Biden is holding up among well-engaged, high-frequency Black voters.”

The story that the Post’s reporter should have written was this: “Trump holds sham event in Black church with white audience to conceal lack of support among Black voters.” If Biden had pulled the same stunt, that is exactly the type of headline the Post would have run on its front page. Why the double standard?

My revised headline tells the truth of what happened in Detroit, but the Washington Post doesn’t want to tell that story. Why? Remember, they are rooting against Biden now and will rage against Trump if he wins—a strategy that maximizes profits. (“If it bleeds, it leads.”)

I wish that the Post were not in dire financial straits. I wish Bezos would continue subsidizing the good reporters who had the courage to write about Will Lewis and Robert Winnett. I wish Bezos had decided that the Post deserved better management than scandal-tainted refugees from Murdoch’s scandal-plagued press operations in England. I wish that the reporter who covered Trump's sham event at a Black church in Detroit over the weekend had the experience, intelligence, and courage to write the true story.

But that is not where we are. Instead, as the Post appears to be on the verge of surrendering its journalistic ethics to tabloid profits, its editorial board wags its finger at Biden for doubting the veracity of the Post’s reporting. I suggest that the editorial board review its article on Trump's sham event in Detroit and reconsider whether Biden has a good reason to question the veracity, impartiality, and quality of the Post’s reporting.

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Concluding Thoughts

I am a subscriber to the Washington Post and will remain one. The Post and its reporters performed admirably and courageously during the darkest days of the Trump administration. We owe them a debt of gratitude. They have earned our patience and goodwill as they work through their problems. Moreover, the Post remains home to excellent journalists and insightful columnists who deserve our support. Let’s hope the Post emerges from its present scandals to resume its rightful position as the standard bearer for quality journalism and ethical integrity in the US press. We need another source of truth and accuracy during this perilous moment for democracy!

Talk to you tomorrow!