Dramatic cuts to the Washington Post are being met with outrage as employees and the broader journalism community try to understand how such a storied institution could unravel so quickly.
The perceived lack of empathy from top management and the company’s billionaire owner Jeff Bezos is compounding the fury.
As of Wednesday night, neither CEO Will Lewis nor Bezos had made any public statements about the cuts, which will impact roughly 30% of the Post’s staff.
“This ranks among the darkest days in the history of one of the world’s greatest news organizations,” the Post’s celebrated former editor-in-chief Marty Baron said in a lengthy statement.
Not the worst in the world, but somewhere between Sierra Leon and South Korea. A significant drop from last year, and we can be assured of a huge drop again this year.
That’s bad enough, but it’s actually worse.
Problem with that chart is that it assumes USA is a democracy and the press is actually independent, but in reality USA is as much an oligarchy as a democracy, and viewed by that standard, the majority of the press is owned by the same ruling class that control the government.
And that would make USA more like for instance Turkey.
As I mentioned before, they’ve managed to keep up the appearance of a free press way more than actually being a free press.
Democrats may criticize Republicans and vice versa, but when Democrats began talking about taxing the rich, some key press leaderships were quickly changed to more Republican leaning.
Actual press freedom in USA is dead.