The ‘free’ press
“Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” – A.J. Liebling, renowned journalist and essayist, in The New Yorker magazine.
WASHINGTON – The big news that shook the world of newspapers in this country like an earthquake – with aftershocks all over the world – was the sale of The Washington Post for $250 million to Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com and one of the world’s wealthiest men (the purchase price is approximately the equivalent to one percent of his personal fortune, estimated at $25 billion.)
The purchase intensified the big debate about the future of newspapers in the U.S. and highlighted the fact that a man who not long ago said that “20 years from now there will be no printed newspapers” in this country has now decided to invest in one.
“The Internet is screwing us all,” is the plaint of almost all of us who practice this profession. Almost 20,000 newsroom professionals in the U.S. have lost their jobs in the past few years (The Post has 600 employees in its staff, whereas not long ago it had more than 1,000) and several newspapers have either shut down sections and even bureaus in this country and abroad or completely disappeared. The dirge of funeral marches is heard throughout the “industry.”
Newspapers have seen their corporate value plummet to a fraction of what it was 10 or 20 years ago. The Post was sold for $250 million, whereas not many years ago it was valued at billions of dollars. The New York Times has just sold The Boston Globe for $70 million to John Henry, a multimillionaire whose other accomplishments include ownership of the Boston Red Sox. The Times had bought The Globe in 1993 for $1.1 billion.
The root of the economic problem is that, after a very successful century, the business model of newspapers is no longer viable. Newspapers’ revenue came from advertising and, secondly, from the sale of its printed issues. The Internet has stolen both sources of revenue and for now there’s nothing to replace them. People no longer buy newspapers, say analysts when they proclaim the death of the dailies.
The satirical newspaper The Onion came up with what may have been the best reaction to the sale of The Post. Its headline: “Nation Stunned as Man Buys Newspaper.”
Much of the crisis in the economic model of this sector arose when the newspapers were turned into companies that traded in the stock exchanges, subject to the exigencies not of their readers or the market but of Wall Street. Profits became most important, and with them came costs reductions to please the investors. That was like giving poison to a sick man.
A paradox emerged. Whereas with the development of digital technology and the Internet fewer and fewer people (particularly young people) buy printed newspapers, the newspapers have never had more readers than in this cyber-age. It’s not that the mission and function of newspapers is in crisis; the current model to sustain them is.
To some, a temporary solution seems to be transferring the control of newspapers – in other words, removing them from Wall Street – to the hands of multimillionaires: Jeff Bezos last week; Warren Buffett (the second wealthiest man in the U.S.), who has bought several local newspapers; John Henry, with The Boston Globe, and others, like Michael Bloomberg, who have acquired news media. At present, there is strong speculation that the Koch brothers, ultraconservative multimillionaires, are interested in buying the Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune, among others.
Obviously, all this has political implications. As always, the point is who controls the major media – including the reference newspapers that remain, like The Post, great political powers – and for what purpose. The Post is not good as a financial investment but it’s fine as a political investment.
Bezos bought The Post as an individual; it was not a purchase by his company, Amazon.com. Therefore, we should see what Bezos has done as an individual to find some clues about the interests behind his purchase. The Post is not a woolen goods factory but a powerful political instrument.
Among other things, Bezos is a liberal in social affairs (for example, he donated to pro-gay marriage campaigns) but in business affairs he defends the interests of the 1 percenters. He has donated thousands of dollars to defeat a campaign that hoped to raise taxes on the wealthiest people in Washington State, and promotes “educational reform,” investing on the privatization of public schools through the so-called charter schools, for example.
It is also worth recalling, as journalist Amy Goodman did, that Amazon.com shut down the Wikileaks website in 2010, purging from its servers at the urging of a senator. At the same time, companies that Bezos owns have signed technological contracts with the C.I.A. worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Robert McChesney, an expert in the media industry, commented in Democracy Now that newspapers “are becoming toys for these multimillionaires who can use them aggressively to promote their political interests.”
“It makes sense that they would be interested in buying newspapers as a political investment, both because [the newspapers] are cheap now and because they can dominate public discussion in the way they wish. It is a very wise political investment.
“Except that for the people worried about […] democratic governance, it is the antithesis of what this country needs now to make the constitutional system work. When the news media, the fourth estate, a pillar of our constitutional system, become toys for multimillionaires, there is no accounting.”
McChesney goes on to say that, to solve the problem – something that the more advanced democracies have done – public investment is needed in a journalism that is independent, not commercial and not for profit.
(From the Mexican newspaper La Jornada)
