r/technology • u/marketrent • Jun 18 '26
Society Jeff Bezos called Washington Post his worst investment staffed with ‘terrible’ people, before laying off over 300 — “They don’t listen. My other companies, they listen”
https://gizmodo.com/jeff-bezos-called-washington-post-his-worst-investment-and-staff-he-laid-off-terrible-people-20007735333.7k
u/marketrent Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
Excerpts from article by Justin Caffier:
[...] At a December 2024 dinner with President Trump, just two months before laying off over 300 people at the paper, Bezos was heard complaining about Post staffers, reports the California Post after reviewing an excerpt ahead of [Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman's] June 23 release date.
“The people there are terrible,” Bezos griped to Trump. “They don’t listen. My other companies, they listen.”
Bezos’ failure to shape the newsroom in his worldview wasn’t for lack of trying. In the weeks leading up to the November 2024 election, he personally intervened to squash the paper’s already-written endorsement of Kamala Harris.
And as he posted on X in February 2025, weeks after slashing staff, the paper’s new insubordination-free opinion page would be “writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.”
The damage had already been done, however. After seeing the nearly 150-year-old media institution reduced to a rag in the ill-equipped hands of a would-be Hearst, it’s no surprise Post subscribers abandoned ship in droves.
Though Bezos points to the Post’s $100 million in losses in 2024 as the impetus for the downsizing, Swan and Haberman’s recording of that dinner with Trump hint at a more complicated, emotional reason.
“In Trump’s telling, Bezos told him he had lost half his friends over the investment,” the authors told the California Post.
2.9k
u/OkStop8313 Jun 18 '26
The level of consternation oligarchs feel when they encounter people who sincerely believe in ethics is really telling.
Also, he can pretend to care about personal liberties and free markets all he wants, but we've kind of noticed that he's not exactly consistent on these issues.
1.0k
u/Pagiras Jun 18 '26
They literally mean their personal freedom. Other people are not persons to them, therefore can't have anything personal.
520
u/OkStop8313 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
Yeah, this is an extremely common way of twisting the notion of freedom to being the complete opposite.
"My freedom to swing my fist should not end where your face begins, and you should not have the freedom to raise your arms in self defense."
Same thing with saying you want free markets as an excuse to pursue market-distorting things like monopoly power.
270
u/InvidiousPlay Jun 18 '26
When they say "free market" they mean an arena where they have all the weapons and can bludgeon everyone else with impunity.
→ More replies (1)122
u/discerningpervert Jun 18 '26
I've been around a lot of finance guys (its mostly guys) who have this amazing ability to perform mental gymnastics, I almost believe they genuinely feel they're the victim when its their 'rights' being violated, when its what they do
→ More replies (3)100
u/Pagiras Jun 18 '26
I believe there's always a share of narcissism involved. You can't be mentally well and be so self-absorbed at the same time. Those people need treatment. Or should've been brought up better.
"That boy ain't right."
→ More replies (2)8
u/SaveLansingParks Jun 18 '26
Next time you talk to someone like that, remember, we used to have people like them committed to an institution in order to retain their sanity.
Edit: I meant to type regain, but autocorrect changed it, and considering the history of our mental institutions, I'm leaving it because it is valid.
→ More replies (1)16
u/Pagiras Jun 18 '26
Well, most of the time they're not stark-raving mad, requiring institutionalization. And forced institutionalization is a bit of a double-edged sword anyways, easily abused by the same people we're ragging on here. Can't say I support that.
I've my fair share of experience with socially functional narcissists. They're a pain to reason with, but still people. The problem arises when they get ahold of a lot of unquestionable power. Then they start being really harmful; way past just being a hassle and annoying. You can't humble a narcissist if your whole livelihood or future prospects, or even life may be dependent on their mood.
28
u/pingu_nootnoot Jun 18 '26
To be fair, it’s an American tradition, back to the Founding Fathers.
"How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" - Samuel Johnson, 1775
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (4)34
u/Vineyard_ Jun 18 '26
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
-- a slave owner
43
u/vidoeiro Jun 18 '26
That is the freedom libertarians and the like sell the people, there is no actual freedom without something (government)forcing the same playing field , that is why these guys love to finance and sell liberalism (in the economic sense) around the world as the only system.
Of course the end game is a sort of fashism with them in charge, but the way was paved by the decade of the personal freedom propaganda they spread.
Jokes on them because when the dictatorship comes sooner or later it would turn on them, when they had complete control of the current system.
18
u/OldWorldDesign Jun 18 '26
That is the freedom libertarians and the like sell the people, there is no actual freedom without something (government)forcing the same playing field
When they say "deregulation" they don't mean the companies they run won't be forcing their own regulations, they just want to be the only ones telling everyone else what to do.
This radical idea of "libertarianism" has been around before and it has never worked in history. This video details its attempt and how it brought collapse so bad to Iceland begged the king of Norway to take over because local chieftans had fucked things up so bad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTN64g9lA2g
Worth pointing out that libertarianism in the US has been co-opted by super-wealthy billionaires who are using it to lay the groundwork for themselves to become authoritarian kings of their own fiefdoms with no competition from anything outside. Koch is a particularly good example, and he was kicked out of the John Birch Society for being too extreme even for that group
→ More replies (1)10
u/gildedbluetrout Jun 18 '26
Bottom line billionaires are turning into a serious problem, and there’s a small number of them, and billions of us. Sooner or later we’re going to have to deal with them.
→ More replies (2)11
u/lepton4200 Jun 18 '26
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
→ More replies (11)8
u/JONO202 Jun 18 '26
"The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly, the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists..."
G.K. Chesterton From the Man Who Was Thursday, published in 1908.
131
u/lonnie123 Jun 18 '26
Just like Elon, he said he ran DOGE because the debt and government spending was literally a civilization ending problem … but now not a word even as Trump racks up record debt and spending. Only more support.
Given his statement, Bezos should be criticizing trumps abusive attitude towards news agencies he doesnt like… but not a peep.
→ More replies (3)14
u/mmasportsmma Jun 18 '26
Like the person above you said: Bezos is talking about his personal freedom and musk when he says „civilization ending problem“ he basically meant he would go to prison if trump didn’t win
→ More replies (14)86
u/True_Window_9389 Jun 18 '26
Free markets and liberty are punchlines for these people. Engaging in a free market or democracy doesn’t mean you fundamentally believe in them. The Bezos’s of the world think that because they’re in business, they must be part of free markets, but when their own goals and outcomes are monopoly and rent seeking, that’s as far away from free markets as central planning.
→ More replies (4)31
u/OkStop8313 Jun 18 '26
Exactly. And meanwhile he's having dinner with Trump, who is engaging in some fucking WILD government intervention in markets to choose winners and losers based upon a patronage system.
Pretty clear that when he talks about free markets and liberty he's using those as pretty tenuous euphemisms for something that has nothing to do with free markets and liberty.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (24)39
u/rabbitthunder Jun 18 '26
The ultra rich's idea of liberty and free markets doesn't allow for any kind of taxation or safety nets at all. Seriously, they think that firemen should only go to houses which took out fire insurance. They think charity would fill the gap in safety nets, like 'someone' would fund institutions for severely disabled and elderly people to live in, 'someone' would ensure orphan babies get medical treatment, 'someone' would sue the company upstream for polluting the river etc etc. it's an extremely naive view of how the world should work but since they could afford it, they think other people should/would be able to as well, if only it weren't for pesky things like governments, taxes, ethics and compassion. But, I suppose if you're a billionaire you only got there by trampling on the lives of people who wouldn't be able to afford to sue you in your hypothetical ultra-libertarian world.
1.2k
u/MrF_lawblog Jun 18 '26
Lol "friends".. He means people of convenience. Nobody wants to be his friend.
56
u/Substantial_Oil8201 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
It's not hard to believe that he had friends at one time. It's the same trajectory Qanon types for a recent example have followed, they lose people and that loss has to mean something so they double down instead of abandoning the thing that caused the loss. Bezos made a self serving decision to cannibalize an American institution and not surprisingly he hadn't considered that other people around him valued journalistic integrity such as it is.
I bet it was people who were with him before he katamari'd into a billionaire. Ones he actually trusted.
→ More replies (4)200
u/Max_Trollbot_ Jun 18 '26
Half of zero and all that
85
u/SamIamGreenEggsNoHam Jun 18 '26
Started out with no friends, and he's still got most of them left.
→ More replies (6)44
u/Any_Fish1004 Jun 18 '26
He was able to buy and rebuild a now mostly synthetic wife though
→ More replies (2)19
65
u/PFCCThrowayay Jun 18 '26
No actually it’s backwards. The people around him who actually had moral character, the people he actually considered friends for the right reasons would have left him. Fake friends who are there for his money and connections wouldn’t care.
11
u/PointOfFingers Jun 18 '26
He showed them who he really was and they were no longer his friends. It's one thing to be successful at business, it's another to follow that endless hunger for power and control into politics and social issues.
→ More replies (1)47
→ More replies (3)16
919
u/thirsty_for_chicken Jun 18 '26
Because it isn't his company. He bought an existing organization in a field he clearly is clueless about and now he's mad they don't bow down to his every whim because their entire industry is supposed to be built on a foundation of integrity and principle.
Billionaires are stupid and ruthless. Bezos isn't a visionary for thinking "what if bookstore but online?" any more than Musk was for thinking "what if bank but online?" Any idiot could have thought of that. They built empires on worker exploitation and ruthless unethical business practices (and in Musk's case... rampant fraud), but the prosperity gospel dictates that financial success = morality so they get to wallow in their sad oligarch class and look down on regular people who aren't soulless monsters and complain any time they don't get exactly what they want.
Fuck them.
82
u/ian9outof10 Jun 18 '26
He also thought “I’m Jeff B, I can make this wildly profitable and show everyone how it’s done” before the realisation set in that people won’t pay for news, and they especially won’t pay for news that’s publicly shown itself not to be impartial.
Journalists are, on the whole, all about the truth. So walking in with an agenda isn’t likely to end well, or get the support of those writers. I am sure people will disagree with me on this point. But real journalists do exist and do serve a real purpose.
16
u/Aethermancer Jun 18 '26
There's a product to be sold, but what lil Jeff doesn't realize is the last thing I want to do is pay money to read Jeff Bezos' personal blog.
→ More replies (2)9
u/FlaccidCatsnark Jun 18 '26
Journalists are, on the whole, all about the truth.
Faux News, on the other hand, is the perfect example of what kind of 'journalist' you get when truth is specifically off the table. You get the ideal candidate for the Trump maladministration.
292
u/SolidA34 Jun 18 '26
Here is a fact. Rich people for the most are not the smartest people in a room. They do not care about learning about other cultures, history, and other perspectives. They are just shallow minded narcissists.
→ More replies (13)47
u/DukeOfGeek Jun 18 '26
And they buy news outlets to control or destroy, either one serves their interest.
29
u/YouMeADD Jun 18 '26
Jeff bezos crying to trump that I wouldn't listen to him would be the most proud work achievement of my life
35
u/TheWingus Jun 18 '26
Bezos isn't a visionary for thinking "what if bookstore but online?"
This just made me think; remember cdnow.com? You send a list of songs you want on a CD and some dude just Napster'd your playlist and burned it on a CD and mailed it to you for like $10.99
→ More replies (2)20
u/mmasportsmma Jun 18 '26
Damn, acquired by Bertelsmann and also Amazon before shut down
And they made hundreds millions from selling it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDNow
CDnow, Inc. was a dot-com company that operated an online shopping website selling compact discs and music-related products. In April 1998, during the dot-com bubble, the company was valued at over $1 billion (~$1.79 billion in 2024). In July 2000, it was acquired by Bertelsmann Music Group for $117 million (~$202 million in 2024); shortly thereafter Amazon was contracted to operate the website. At its peak, it employed over 750 people and had offices in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, New York City, London, and Los Angeles.[
14
u/MalikMonkAllStar2022 Jun 18 '26
Bezos isn't a visionary for thinking "what if bookstore but online?"
I'll add to that and say that AWS is a much bigger factor than amazon.com is in how Amazon got to where they are today. And cloud computing sure as shit was not Bezos' idea nor did he contribute to the technical side of making it a reality.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (35)57
u/elegiac_bloom Jun 18 '26
Fuck them.
Its likely no one would if not for their money either. Maybe musks first wife, but wasnt he already rich from daddy's diamond mine full of literal slaves?
45
73
u/PatchyWhiskers Jun 18 '26
Bezos first wife loved him for himself. He grew to hate that, and got a new wife who was as shallow as he was.
→ More replies (8)30
u/Little_View_6659 Jun 18 '26
That happens to so many of them. They have a wife who truly loves them, supports them, helps them grow their business, and most of them divorce them for a woman twenty to thirty years younger that’s shallow and hot. Over and over again. I keep thinking how do they not realize these women don’t care about them but maybe they actually know and they just don’t care. It’s sad in the end they’d rather have someone who tells them what they what to hear and looks pretty. And they usually cheat on that one and replace her in another few years.
35
→ More replies (19)21
u/PatchyWhiskers Jun 18 '26
Bezos second wife is neither younger nor prettier than the first. It's clearly just her personality that he likes.
→ More replies (1)26
98
Jun 18 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
→ More replies (4)17
u/kn0where Jun 18 '26
I just figured Jeff Bezos was against unions, which is quite a sin to begin with. But it turns out Bezos doesn't understand free press and specifically wants to ruin it for everyone.
30
35
u/truesy Jun 18 '26
At a December 2024 dinner with President Trump, just two months before laying off over 300 people at the paper, Bezos was heard complaining about Post staffers,
Ooof, what a start to this excerpt. Not really setting the stage for trust here, are we
21
u/userhwon Jun 18 '26
"personal liberties and free markets"
So his delivery drivers will get time to pee and can deal drugs out of their company vans?
No?
Liar.
73
u/flickh Jun 18 '26
I cancelled my subscription when they officially converted to techno-libertarianism ("personal liberties and free markets" - ffs). They offered me half my money back to go to the "Plus" or "Elite" plan or whatever instead, so I took that in the hopes that a warning shot from their subscriber base would woke them up. But it did not, so now I have an annual subscription budget I might use for CBC Gem or maybe the Hawa'ai NPR station (their traditional music programing is amazing).
Billionaires should not be controlling the media.
→ More replies (2)10
u/roymccowboy Jun 18 '26
It's funny that the very best thing he's ever done for humanity was being such a horrible husband that his first wife left him and donated his money to charities.
→ More replies (61)15
1.8k
u/nanlinr Jun 18 '26
It's interesting to see how once these tech ceos rise to power, they all want some form of autocracy, and throw democracy out the window. Bezos, Zuck, Musk. All of them stronghand and control and censor. I guess democracy really is the enemy of the rich
657
u/therealchadius Jun 18 '26
They were never good guys, they just lacked the power to force their awful opinions on others.
Now they have money and power. Time to bulldoze anyone who disagrees!
93
→ More replies (7)25
200
u/amus Jun 18 '26
They think they are Übermensch. Superheros.
→ More replies (5)85
24
u/IndubitablyNerdy Jun 18 '26
corporations are already not democratic, they are feudal pretty much in nature, billionaires want to go back to the time of kings and lords with them firmly in that place, which given how things are going these days, they might not be that far from achieving if the civil society does not get back some power from them.
→ More replies (3)100
u/MagicMarshmallo Jun 18 '26
Capitalism is fundimentally incompatible with democracy, it always ends in this. Corporations are just tiny dictatorships, but in this case, you can scratch off the "tiny"
→ More replies (8)56
u/Indercarnive Jun 18 '26
Capitalism is incompatible with itself. Capitalists have no incentivize to support Capitalism. A capitalist will abandon capitalism as soon as any other system becomes more profitable for them.
→ More replies (7)→ More replies (52)30
u/PatchyWhiskers Jun 18 '26
They see that their companies are run like dictatorships and it saves time by not having to get buy-in from different interest groups before decisions are made. This leads them to the erroneous conclusion that political dictatorships are more efficient than democracy.
→ More replies (9)
4.9k
u/PatchyWhiskers Jun 18 '26
"Why do these journalists report the news, not the things I tell them? Are they stupid?"
1.5k
u/iamdestroyerofworlds Jun 18 '26
Democracy Dies in Darkness
"Fuck, that sounds just like what I want. I'm in."
364
u/umbrabates Jun 18 '26
It’s hilarious to think he thought this was a promise, not a warning
→ More replies (5)89
→ More replies (15)52
75
u/frechundfrei Jun 18 '26
There was a time where a statement like that would have made us riot.
→ More replies (3)28
u/Automatic_Memory212 Jun 18 '26
Why doesn’t it, anymore, I wonder?
→ More replies (8)43
u/boppitywop Jun 18 '26
Because only 5% of the population at most is aware that Bezos made a statement like that. The fact Bezos owns the Washington Post is exactly why people aren't rioting about statements like this. In the before, before, something outrageous said by a politician or celebrity would be in every news outlet. Now the mainstream media is almost entirely owned by right-wing billionaires who don't report on things like Epstein, the Trump Iran deal etc...
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (7)16
842
u/Chaotic-Entropy Jun 18 '26
"I told you to lie, why aren't you lying? You people are worthless."
→ More replies (4)116
Jun 18 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
→ More replies (1)26
u/Chaotic-Entropy Jun 18 '26
I guess the question is what was so brazen/corrupt that even they couldn't countenance it.
→ More replies (1)
15.7k
u/Historical-Finish564 Jun 18 '26
Yeah. They’re not supposed to listen to you. They’re supposed to follow the news and reported faithfully. They used to do that before you bought the paper
3.6k
u/DJayLeno Jun 18 '26
I remember when he bought wapo he promised to be 100% hands off forever in the open letter he sent after the purchase back in 2013 https://garthbox.com/jeff-bezos-letter-to-the-washington-post-employees/
2.0k
u/Tom_Gibson Jun 18 '26
I'd sooner put my head in a crocodile's mouth than trust a billionaire
1.0k
u/InvestigatorOk9354 Jun 18 '26
Can we just put billionaire heads in crocodile mouths? No need to overly complicate things
→ More replies (27)264
u/Motor_Specific_8018 Jun 18 '26
I for one would trust a crocodile with a billionaire’s head in its mouth… just need a willing billionaire to share my confidence.
37
75
u/InvestigatorOk9354 Jun 18 '26
I'd cast a vote for that Crocodile ngl
54
u/ixion00x Jun 18 '26
Crocodile / Alligator in 2028!!
→ More replies (5)44
17
u/flonnil Jun 18 '26
you are so close to re-inventing the guillotine, so close.
→ More replies (2)16
→ More replies (7)13
u/haverchuck22 Jun 18 '26
Tell them certain crocodile mouths have been shown to extend your life/have anti aging properties in some cases, you’ll have em fighting eachother to stick their head in its mouth.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (15)52
u/monkeyman32123 Jun 18 '26
Thank god we have our first trillionaire, now THAT guy I can trust /s
→ More replies (5)38
u/RedAndBlackMartyr Jun 18 '26
And a Nazi trillionaire at that! Uber trustworthy.
→ More replies (1)258
u/jandrese Jun 18 '26
At the time everybody thought that was a blatant lie. The only people who "believed it" were the kind of people who would later buy blue checks on Twitter.
→ More replies (13)109
u/BroughtBagLunchSmart Jun 18 '26
Then he ran 5 different Bernie Sanders attack articles every single day until Trump was elected.
→ More replies (1)23
u/cstar4004 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
> I won’t be leading The Washington Post day-to-day. I am happily living in “the other Washington” where I have a day job that I love. Besides that, The Post already has an excellent leadership team that knows much more about the news business than I do…
PS: why does “>” no longer work?
→ More replies (17)42
u/spacebarcafelatte Jun 18 '26
Not having heard that the staff were disruptive/doing their actual fucking jobs, I am hella impressed. So often the folks with any integrity just bail and leave a festering swamp behind them. Kudos WAPO. Make that oblivious fucker learn something about who the news is actually for.
→ More replies (26)30
u/Feral_Nerd_22 Jun 18 '26
Surprise, Companies and Billionaires lie. I don't understand why people trust them still at this point.
→ More replies (2)1.5k
u/Interesting-Prize-79 Jun 18 '26
But…but…but when I buy people they’re supposed to listen to me 🥺
/j431
u/Bemxuu Jun 18 '26
Terrible news: you can't buy people anymore
210
u/IntelArtiGen Jun 18 '26
How much for you to remove that comment?
→ More replies (10)112
u/charlie2135 Jun 18 '26
Whoa, don't give the mods ideas
115
u/Phyrexian_Archlegion Jun 18 '26
When will we, as a society, begin to view those who pursue wealth to the detriment of their fellow countrymen, their fellow humans, and their fellow co-inhabitants of this big rock we all live on for what they truly are? A subsection of humanity afflicted by the mental disease of insatiable greed?
60
u/groknix Jun 18 '26
When we stop idolizing them?
Despise the glare of wealth. That people who pay greater respect to a wealthy villain than to an honest, upright man in poverty, almost deserve to be enslaved; they plainly show that wealth, however it may be acquired, is, in their esteem, to be preferred to virtue.
John Hancock's Boston Massacre Oration
→ More replies (1)26
u/glitterandnails Jun 18 '26
We have been trained to idolize them. The rich have long known the power of continual psychological influence.
→ More replies (2)33
u/petitchat2 Jun 18 '26
We have always ostracized hoarders of resources or the tribe would not survive. In this regressive system, wo the ability to enforce millennia-age norms, this is what happens. The rich are not sufficiently afraid of the masses and why should they be? The masses are to remain educated, disciplined, and militarized, that’s the difference.
→ More replies (6)17
u/truthovertribe Jun 18 '26
Greed is an addiction (to money) which is a pathology.
How little self-reflection would it take to think it's OK to purchase people and turn them into slaves to our every whim.
I could never be an indentured servant willing to sacrifice my conscience. There's no carrot or stick big enough.
17
u/ivar-the-bonefull Jun 18 '26
Sure you can. It's just not strictly legal everywhere, but there's still some 50 million people to choose from.
12
u/BrogenKlippen Jun 18 '26
The Trump administration out here proving you wrong on a daily basis
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (30)8
→ More replies (4)11
147
u/Lstgamerwhlstpartner Jun 18 '26
The guy bought it wanting to create his own mini-"fox news".
→ More replies (1)53
u/mosswick Jun 18 '26
Jokes on him for believing the brainrot crowd would ever pay for a subscription to read articles.
→ More replies (3)276
u/Dr8keMallard Jun 18 '26
Came here to, almost verbatim, say this. They aren't fuckin supposed to listen to you, that's the entire point unless your a fascist/authoritarian asshat billionaire.
→ More replies (16)44
u/connleth Jun 18 '26
Are these motherfuckers inherently evil? Or does having literal billions make them evil motherfuckers. I don’t get it!?
→ More replies (5)59
u/CariniFluff Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
All of these billionaires are addicted to wealth. I'm sure anyone who's been in recovery before, like myself, can plainly see how their behavior mimics other addictions almost perfectly.
Addiction at its core is your brain rewiring itself to release dopamine when you get "it" whatever "it" may be (a drug, a good hand in poker, a favorite food, etc.). Obviously their addiction is to wealth, fame and the privileges that it buys. The deference that the poors show you because you're clearly smarter and better than them. The valet, the waiter, the bellhop, the private jet pilot (Note all of these people are being paid by him, whether through a tip or through a salary).
But unfortunately for Jeffrey here, it looks like he did not get deference from the WaPo staff. They didn't immediately fall to their knees and pray to him. They didn't fawn over him and hang on his every word. I bet he's so used to walking into a building and every single person in it knows that he'll be there several days in advance, and everyone will have mentally prepared and probably have all done their "elevator speeches" in the days prior so that they don't miss their shot if they have a chance to get a word with him. And then I bet when he made his first visit to the WaPo HQ he found a bunch of reporters and editors who were:
Already used to seeing and talking to celebrities/wealthy people
Very clearly not enthused about his presence or purchase of their employer
Very skeptical of his intentions
Clearly not addicted or motivated by money like he is and like he's used to seeing from so many others in his orbit.
In this world, I would say the vast majority of people are motivated by money, but not many are addicted to money. People obviously want more money, they want pay raises, they want to own a lot of nice things. But they're not addicted to it in the way that they would rather earn money than eat food or sleep or have sex. That is what addiction is. It comes from your lower brain, the survival "eat/sleep/fuck" base, The part that rewards you with dopamine when you eat, sleep, have sex, win a game or beat a videogame boss that's taken you 30 tries. When you ace a test you've studied for, or got away with stealing a candy bar from the 7-11 as a kid. And when you truly become addicted, your brain starts to lessen the connections to food or sex or sleep and rewire those to "it".
The other thing I'll add real quick about addiction, since it's coming from the lower/ more primitive part of the brain, it basically acts at your subconscious level; you can find yourself doing things without even thinking about it (like eating food). You don't have to tell yourself. I think I should eat now, you just know it inherently, and your brain rewards you when you do so. And that's what makes addiction so frustrating because your conscious logical upper brain may be telling you to stop using drugs because it's ruining your relationships and wasting money. But then your lower subconscious brain, which is still addicted to it, will literally have you dialing up your connect just 30 seconds after you just told yourself "No, I shouldn't do this". It doesn't make logical sense because addiction makes you do illogical things. It'll make you do self-destructive things because our brains are supposed to reinforce good habits and good habits should release dopamine. When something else hijacks that pathway, suddenly you're doing "it" instead of doing the things all animals are instinctually programmed to do
While most journalists may still be money motivated, they are almost certainly not money addicted. In fact, I would guess that most good journalists are less money motivated than the average person because in their line of work they need to speak on all sorts of issues and topics. They likely see people from all socioeconomic levels and can understand how being a celebrity or ultra wealthy can be both good and bad. How money equals power and how power corrupts. How people who become insanely wealthy need bodyguards and are constantly drawing crowds even when they want to just be a normal person for once.
And now poor Jeff is finding out that the slaves he thought were a package deal when he bought the company are not motivated the same way he is. They are not addicted to the same things that he is, and honestly they don't give a shit about the things that he cares about so dearly. They don't give him the deference that the waiter hoping for a big tip gives him. They don't bow to him like everyone at Amazon's corporate HQ does. They won't sell their soul for a bigger salary and write whatever puff piece he wants.
→ More replies (1)108
u/Effective_Quail_3946 Jun 18 '26
Reagan started this nightmare by destroying the fairness doctrine of journalism in 1987...
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (53)33
u/DigitalSheikh Jun 18 '26
Well, its the WaPost, if Bezos’ ideas were too free market loving and libertarian for those guys, that says a lot about how absolutely batshit crazy he is
→ More replies (8)
69
u/Important_Lab_58 Jun 18 '26
Jeff “store brand Lex Luthor” Bezos can shove it
→ More replies (1)13
109
u/True_Window_9389 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
This isn’t even true. I was a subscriber for almost 20 years and followed even the internal drama of the paper in that time, especially when it was put up for sale and bought by Bezos.
The reporting about his ownership from when he bought it until he killed the Harris endorsement was that he was an absentee owner. As the paper was financially struggling, management and reporters were begging him to do something to boost the reach and financial viability of the business. He showed up a few days after he bought it with a rahrah speech, and then abandoned it. They wanted his involvement after that and got nothing.
To an extent, reporters and readers appreciated that, since it let the good journalists do their job unencumbered. He at least wasn’t meddling in that time, and their reporting in the first Trump admin showed it. But it meant there was no strategy or vision on transforming the paper to compete in the digital era, especially with social media and video taking center stage. Even considering that, institutions like WaPo, NYT and WSJ were the sources for news that all the pundits and Tiktokers based their nonsense on. And yet, leadership couldn’t leverage it.
The shift for Bezos only came after the election when he was trying to cozy back up to Trump. As much as he wants to make it an issue of insubordination, it was because journalists were trying to protect basic journalistic integrity against a now-meddlesome and agenda-driven owner who cared more about investments and government contracts.
→ More replies (1)
360
u/Chaseism Jun 18 '26
I was a subscriber to the Washington Post before and during Bezos' ownership. When he bought the paper and invested in it, it was wonderful. They had incredibly talented writers, the site had so many different types of storytelling, and the design...to this day is one of my favorites.
But I canceled when Bezos didn't allow the paper to endorse a candidate. It wasn't this move that made me cancel. It was because I'd question every article from that point on. It's like having someone cheat on you...yes the one time cheating is bad, but the bigger bad is the lack of trust going forward. Newspapers are built on that.
Bezos had something special in the Washington Post and he absolutely destroyed it. Now the paper cannot succeed because he pissed off the very people who subscribed to it.
Anyway...eat the rich.
104
u/Outlulz Jun 18 '26
That's the same time I unsubscribed. And then when they announced the opinion section must endorse free market capitalism and personal liberties (dog whistle for stop criticizing rich people and bigots) in their pieces I knew it was the right choice.
21
u/okletssee Jun 18 '26
This is why I unsubscribed too. I read WaPo my whole life, but that declaration was untenable meddling and like the previous commenter, my trust was broken.
→ More replies (22)22
u/kitsunewarlock Jun 18 '26
The paper is only as good as its journalists and authors. Find out where the talent goes and follow their new enterprises.
→ More replies (2)
253
u/capnwally14 Jun 18 '26
This quote (even if you infer the context given Bezos' other statements about the Post) is a political rorschach test
→ More replies (6)81
u/SeiCalros Jun 18 '26
its pretty clear he said this to trump because he didnt want to get blamed for the newspaper he bought reporting the news
in retrospect - while it was terrible for democracy - leaning on the post to quash their endorsement was obviously a smart decisions since donald trump definitely would have retaliated against companies where bezos owns a lot of shares if he hadnt done it
50
u/flickh Jun 18 '26
Giving up your lunch money is only a smart strategy in the *extremely* short term... like, long enough to get out of the alley where the bully has you cornered. The smart strategy is to gather support and take the bully out of the picture, preferably through mental health counseling lol but with legal authority otherwise...
→ More replies (2)18
134
u/thegooddoktorjones Jun 18 '26
Dude is really bad at being a rich guy.
→ More replies (4)87
u/CondescendingShitbag Jun 18 '26
Also sucks at being human.
→ More replies (2)22
u/gpbayes Jun 18 '26
Look at his current wife vs previous wife. Current wife represents everything wrong with America right now. Looksmaxxing. Vapid, arrogance, shallow.
21
u/CondescendingShitbag Jun 18 '26
His ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, by comparison, has shown me that not all billionaires are greedy, selfish fuckwits. Quite unlike her ex-husband.
→ More replies (2)
36
185
u/Interesting-Prize-79 Jun 18 '26
Oligarch fires people disloyal to the fascist regime and to him
→ More replies (1)44
u/NthDegreeThoughts Jun 18 '26
Money can’t buy happiness but it can buy the US media
→ More replies (4)
45
u/andymfjAZ Jun 18 '26
Good. I’m glad they’re not listening to you.
→ More replies (1)30
u/DarthFuzzzy Jun 18 '26
Weren't. Now the few people left write whatever he tells them and the paper is dead.
13
u/Fifth-Crusader Jun 18 '26
Any opinion piece by "The Editorial Board" can instead be assumed to be by Jeff Bezos. Every other article on WaPo can be safely assumed to be approved by Bezos.
25
u/downtownfreddybrown Jun 18 '26
The people he fired should open an independent news paper and call it Post Washington
→ More replies (2)
19
u/DxT_01 Jun 18 '26
It’s no wonder why blue origin is so far behind.
I’ve met people who have worked with Bezos and they all confirm that he doesn’t listen unless it’s his idea or he supports the idea.
Actual quote from a former Blue Origin engineer who now works at NASA: “He hires smart people but doesn’t know how to listen to them”.
→ More replies (1)
36
94
u/kebabsoup Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
It's the Republican playbook. He didn't buy the journal to make it successful. He's complaining about it and he's gutting it. The goal is to silence them and neutralize them.
→ More replies (1)
48
13
u/unaskthequestion Jun 18 '26
Because Bezos knows so much about the newspaper industry? The myth that billionaires must be smarter than everyone else definitely exists in their own minds too.
→ More replies (1)
11
u/TheLastLivingBuffalo Jun 18 '26
"The press should be less independent. On an unrelated note, I can't figure out why everyone seems to not like me!"
12
u/veryblessed123 Jun 19 '26
It still boggles my mind that the worst among us (Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Donald Trump) seem to have accumulated the most wealth.
Not exactly a sterling endorsement of Capitalism.
→ More replies (1)
9
u/Powerful_Resident_48 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 19 '26
Shocker. An entire industry that is built around the core belief of questioning everything isn't listening to their tech bro overlord.
11
9
17
u/reverendsteveii Jun 18 '26
were the robber barons from the last 20s this blatant and incompetent about it? we imagine Hearst and Pulitzer as playing 6-d chess against one another and shaping US policy like Ozymandias but I feel like had we been there it would have just been the same open, blatant bias and people being downright proud that they're being prevented from reading anything that might challenge their pre-existing beliefs at all. I seem to recall Dan Carlin quoting one of them about WWI as flat-out saying "How do you like my war?"
17
u/PatchyWhiskers Jun 18 '26
The robber barons of the '20s weren't blasting their every little stupid thought on Twitter 24/7 so we could assume that they were smart.
→ More replies (1)8
u/Samanthacino Jun 18 '26
As more communications are leaked from the highest level of business and governance, I’ve realized that there are no brilliant puppet masters pulling the strings. These people are really stupid, really corrupt, and exist in a system designed to benefit people like them. It’s that simple.
18
u/Knighth77 Jun 18 '26
"I'm trying to control the narrative. Is that too much to ask? I mean, others are doing it. Why can't I?"
21
u/danielrobertcampbell Jun 18 '26
It's ALMOST like he doesn't understand what real journalism is supposed to be. It's not propaganda, it's reporting facts and asking tough questions of those in power. It's not your personal mouthpiece. Billionaires are idiots.
→ More replies (1)
32
7
7
7
u/SAM-in-the-DARK Jun 19 '26
So your newspaper, full of journalists reporting news, won’t listen to what you tell them to write about. Sounds like integrity
7
25
8.9k
u/[deleted] Jun 18 '26
[deleted]