The free press dies in broad daylight

The writing was on the wall. William Lewis, publisher of The Washington Post, and blue-eyed boy of its owner, Jeff Bezos, scarcely attended meetings with the editorial staff of the venerable newspaper since he took over in early 2024. But he set alarm bells ringing across the newsroom with less-than-constructive comments to journalists such as “People are not reading your stuff”, openly calling for staff who “do not feel aligned with the company’s plan” to leave, and reportedly describing some of them as “activists, not journalists.”

Driving internal corporate disenchantment with the journalistic practices of the nearly 150-year-old newspaper was an apparent deepening ideological clash between the management and the long-standing, well-considered political position of the Post on a number of issues. For example, Mr. Bezos’s decision to end the established practice of endorsing a presidential candidate before the U.S. election — thus effectively avoiding the image of the newspaper supporting Kamala Harris in November 2024 — raised eyebrows among insiders and external observers alike. Last year, he said that the opinion pages would defend “two pillars: personal liberties and free markets”.

It should have come as little surprise then that the Post has now led what is widely being described as a “bloodbath” for quality journalism. In what will be remembered as a pivotal moment in the struggle of the U.S. media to stand up to challenging economic conditions and a president who routinely denigrates the free press of the country, Editor-in-Chief Matt Murray, reportedly told employees this week that the newspaper was undergoing a “strategic reset to better position the publication for the future”. To this end, he announced sweeping layoffs of close to one-third of all editorial staff across departments, including international desks and correspondents worldwide, the books and sports divisions, and metro and cultural coverage.

At first glance, the proposal — apparently the motivation for this large-scale termination exercise — to narrow the focus of the broadsheet exclusively to politics and national security coverage might work in theory; yet upon closer inspection it fails the common sense test. Even if we accept the premise of the management that it is unprofitable to pursue the idea of a broad news offering — in the face of evidence to the contrary, offered by The New York Times, for example — how is the bottom line served by a strategy that rips away some of the finest international reporters and desk editors who are critical to producing quality journalism in politics and national security? A simple example highlights the contradictions inherent: shutting down reporting hubs in Ukraine — as reports suggest the Post has done — would directly impinge upon the newspaper’s coverage of the machinations of the Donald Trump-led White House as it seeks to curry favour with Russia or reset ties with Europe by brazenly undermining NATO unity.

The deep learning for media houses across the free and democratic world is this: overzealous corporate owners of newspapers who are prone to genuflection to their political masters will happily seize the excuse of falling subscriptions or profits, even of a publication with a rich, hoary legacy of quality journalism, to re-bundle it as a prosaic, pliant publication that might offer a steady income stream to shareholders.

Editorial leaders who hope to avoid this fate would do the opposite of what the combative Mr. Lewis suggested, which is to pre-empt an exodus of readers and financial losses by reassessing what the core readership of the publication cares about and double down on multi-pronged offerings built on the latest and most suitable technology platforms.

The fate of the Post is a cautionary tale and its moral is this: while democracy may die in darkness, the free press dies in broad daylight.

narayan@thehindu.co.in