Ben Bagdikian, whose most famous book is The Media Monopoly [1] said that the story of "media bias" is that newspaper reporters are liberal but the owner of the paper is conservative.
The awful truth is that readers are indifferent to real reporting, because they could care less that a young underpaid journalist spent weeks investigating something involving some people they've never heard of, in some town they never heard of, involving some issue they never heard of, and where there is not a clear moral conclusion. [2]
Musk certainly is excited about the MAGA thing, other oligarchs like Bezos might be less enthusiastic but may be going through the motions to say out of trouble. This was the story of oligarchs under Putin, who are much more likely to have their permits disappear, wind up in trouble for paracriminal activities, or fall out of a window than the vast bulk of people who just don't count.
Bezos has announced a change in direction for the opinion page, which Trump cares about. The rest of the paper, less so.
I studied Bagdikian in college. He did not say reporters are liberal. Reporters are representative of the political views of the class they are drawn from, ranging across the spectrum. What Bagdikian noted was that reporters are motivated by telling the truth, while the owner class is motivated by whatever makes them money, and hiding the truth serves that motivation.
https://archive.is/a5bty
https://archive.is/https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025...
The author's previous major work was Dark Towers, about Deutsche Bank:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Enrich#Dark_Towers
Kind of ironic for the Bezos-era WaPo to run a book review about threats to press freedom.
Ben Bagdikian, whose most famous book is The Media Monopoly [1] said that the story of "media bias" is that newspaper reporters are liberal but the owner of the paper is conservative.
The awful truth is that readers are indifferent to real reporting, because they could care less that a young underpaid journalist spent weeks investigating something involving some people they've never heard of, in some town they never heard of, involving some issue they never heard of, and where there is not a clear moral conclusion. [2]
Musk certainly is excited about the MAGA thing, other oligarchs like Bezos might be less enthusiastic but may be going through the motions to say out of trouble. This was the story of oligarchs under Putin, who are much more likely to have their permits disappear, wind up in trouble for paracriminal activities, or fall out of a window than the vast bulk of people who just don't count.
Bezos has announced a change in direction for the opinion page, which Trump cares about. The rest of the paper, less so.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Media-Monopoly-Ben-H-Bagdikian/dp/080...
[2] Thus the likes of Paul Krugman and Bari Weiss who will never tell you something you didn't already know are better off going to Substack.
I studied Bagdikian in college. He did not say reporters are liberal. Reporters are representative of the political views of the class they are drawn from, ranging across the spectrum. What Bagdikian noted was that reporters are motivated by telling the truth, while the owner class is motivated by whatever makes them money, and hiding the truth serves that motivation.