“For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
There’s not a lot to say, really. Patrick Soon-Shiong and Jeff Bezos are just the latest generation of wealthy owners of newspapers.
The news titans of the past are household names–Pulitzer, Scripps, McCormick, Hearst, Bingham, Annenberg, De Young, Knight, Ridder, Murdoch, Cox. The list goes on and on. Some of them bought respectability, others just bought incredibly lucrative advertising franchises. Some have museums named after them. Some have great research institutes. Some have only their summer houses and country club memberships. Some went on to own the Grand Ole Opry.
But you can count on just a few fingers those who have consistently, over generations, used their papers to promote the public good. For all of the faults journalists can find with the New York Times, the Sulzberger family values the newspaper above all else. God bless them.
Like most of the Chandler dynasty in California, Soon-Shiong is placing his own personal and business interests above the public’s. At the Post, the Meyer and Graham families believed in the higher calling, but only up to a point. They didn’t let their moderately progressive politics stand in the way of their anti-labor practices and business interests. And now we know that Bezos is as shallow as any other publisher.
In 1776, 248 years ago, most of the wealthiest men in the American colonies endorsed an already ongoing revolt and pledged “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor” to oppose tyranny and to support liberty. So let’s see about today’s wealthiest: Lives? Clearly not, as they won’t cross the tyrant. Fortunes? Nope, not if opposing the tyrant could cost them their companies. Sacred Honor? You must be kidding.
So what have the current Times and Post owners showed us?
It’s so remarkably simple:
- They value their own wealth over the nation that gave it to them.
- They are cowards, unwilling to even entertain the thought that opposing tyranny could cost them something.
- They have no principles worthy of their great wealth and power.
That’s it. That’s who they are, who they have always been and who they always will be.
David Crook has canceled his subscription to the Washington Post.
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