Everyone knows traditional media is broken. Nobody knows how to fix it — not even Jeff Bezos.
This week, more than 250,000 subscribers — or about 10% of Washington Post's subscriber digital subscriber base — canceled their subscriptions after owner Jeff Bezos quashed a Kamala Harris endorsement for President to break with decades of precedent at one of the oldest publications in the country.
After more resignations in protest from The Post's editorial board, Bezos penned a reactionary op-ed that sought to explain his reasoning, only to dig the hole even deeper by further exposing the whole reason for the disaster in the first place: Nobody trusts the media.
As a former mainstream journalist turned founder of Trustless Media, the company that helped incubate and launch Coinage and Best Dish Ever as community-owned media outlets, Bezos' op-ed was a fascinating thing to read: both because it was so right, and yet, excruciatingly wrong. I'll explain why (and why we should all further see why Web3 could be the answer to the mainstream media's problems). But first, let's acknowledge where Jeff Bezos is right.
According to Gallup data, trust in U.S. mainstream media has been at all-time lows for the last two years. There are a lot of reasons as to why that might be. Perhaps the most parroted is one that Elon Musk has made repeatedly – that traditional media’s advertising model means it optimizes solely for advertisers, which means clicks, which means outlets increasingly catering to polarized crowds and inevitable allegations of bias. To Bezos, endorsements only worsen that.
"What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence," Bezos says.
As a journalist who has observed and lived under proper editorial regimes where sales teams are separate from editorial, I can tell you that allegations of catering to advertisers are almost always off-base. But, as Jeff Bezos himself writes, saying as much matters little if the readers or the audience still believes an outlet is biased. That is, there really isn’t a good way to refute allegations of bias. Unfortunately for Jeff Bezos, he’s learning that now.
In his op-ed, he claims there was no selfish, ulterior motive for him to block the Post’s endorsement for Kamala Harris. "I wish we had made the change earlier than we did... That was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy,” he said.
But when you’re operating at the lowest levels of trust – ever – you can’t assume anyone is going to trust you either. Which brings us back to the first question: How can the media fix its trust problem?
This is exactly what we’re building Web3 for. It’s for a world where a billionaire media owner can’t just swoop in and unilaterally block an endorsement. The only path forward is to give into the notion of complete transparency.
As proof of this in a parallel example, Coinage faced the same dilemma: Is a Presidential endorsement warranted for a new publication? Rather than a billionaire owner making that call, our community of NFT holders voted on an onchain proposal. Even though we arrived at the same conclusion – that making no endorsement was better than making one in either direction – the transparency of it all creates a far better defense against any allegations of bias or ulterior motives.
Web3 as a technology empowers this for the first time in the internet’s history. It gives individuals co-ownership over not just decisions outlets might need to make, and ownership over those decisions as well.
If Jeff Bezos is right – that the perception of bias is the cause behind record levels of distrust in American media – stopping endorsements in and of itself isn’t going to be enough of a fix (and in this case, can actually make that problem worse.) It’s time Web3 tech, transparency, and co-ownership be built into the heart of a media organization. Until then, allegations of bias will continue to win.
Note: The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CoinDesk, Inc. or its owners and affiliates.