On MSNBC’s The ReidOut, Angelo Carusone explains how “larger business interests” tie into the media takeover by “ideological interests”
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From the January 16, 2025, edition of MSNBC's The ReidOut
JOY REID (HOST): Angelo, this felt like probably the most important farewell address, honestly, since Eisenhower warned of the military industrial complex. I thought it was spot on. It was frightening, but I thought, honest and accurate. What did you think?
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): Yeah, I agree. And I, you know, I think it's hard to say it now or see it now unless you're really in the fight everyday. But when we look back on this time, there's going to be all sorts of things to think about. COVID and, you know, the finance industry, and everything. But in the decades ahead, when we look back, what this is going to really be defined and described as is sort of the information war and the time at which entrenched powers really, you know, sort of were able to grapple a total stranglehold over our information. Everything else sort of is secondary to that, because those problems are either magnified or solved as a result of that bedrock. And I think that this is prescient and true, and technology is obviously going to intensify and inflame that, as the president alluded to.
REID: Right. I mean, I think people understand that a billionaire, Rupert Murdoch, owns Fox and the New York Post. And then he bought the Wall Street Journal and people went, "Oh, hold on. That was sort of a normal, maybe right-leaning, but business paper. Now it's owned by him." And so -- but people understand that that means, "Oh, you're dragging that all to the right."
Jeff Bezos, I don't think people necessarily saw coming, right? He said, "I'm going to take over the Washington Post, but I'm not going to get involved. And then he said, "Oh, we're not endorsing Kamala Harris. Pull that. But we are endorsing Pam Bondi. Do that." And then a bunch of people started quitting. And Telnaes, who is one of the great cartoonists of all time, Ann Telnaes, quit because Bezos killed a cartoon that she was going to run that lampooned him and lampooned Donald Trump. A bunch of Washington Post employees, they sent a letter. They've asked for a summit with him, more than 400 employees asking Bezos to meet, saying they're deeply alarmed by recent decisions at the paper. The paper has lost Jennifer Rubin as a columnist. A bunch of other columnists have left. People are canceling subscriptions.
And then, this happened. They changed their slogan at the Washington Post. The Washington Post adopted the slogan, "Democracy dies in darkness," after Donald Trump first entered the White House in 2017. This week, as he attempts to come back, they've changed it to, "Riveting storytelling for all of America." Seems like a change. Your thoughts on the Rupert Murdoch-ization of Jeff Bezos?
CARUSONE: It's a big change. Yeah, I think that is an example of where we're going. And it ties in with the first segment that he had too about sort of, like, entrenched power, oligarchs sort of getting more and more power. Because obviously what Bezos is thinking about is all of his larger business interests, and he doesn't want the Washington Post to become a liability.
What's worse, though, is that even if at best he says, "We're just going to be neutral, we're not going to do anything," he's still privileging lies. Because, as Margaret Sullivan, who used to be at The Times, has described it, journalism is being a truth vigilante, that -- it is a profession, it's not a storyteller. That is a thing you do to get the truth out there, you tell stories in effective ways. But you're ultimately, as a journalist, you're a professional that has a mechanism for getting to and sussing out the truth, and then you have to advocate for it. And if you're taking the position as an enterprise, as that slogan does, that we're interested in happy customers and making money, that means you're not going to be a truth vigilante. That means you're going to make sure that you're not telling your customers things that are going to bother them -- they may get mad and walk away. Or worse, you're not going to do things that could potentially harm your larger business interests. You can't be both of those things.
So he's picking a side here, and he's sort of turning the publication into an instrument of whatever is the dominant narrative. And in an environment that we're heading into, with Trump and this larger avalanche of misinformation and sort of this right-wing echo chamber, when you take a neutral posture, especially from that perch, you are basically enabling and privileging the dominant narrative. And that is going to be the lies of the Trump administration and his allies.
REID: Yeah, I can't imagine the former heads of the Washington Post attending the inauguration. I mean, what is he doing there, you know? I mean, it's just him being there is sort of a bad sign.
Pam Bondi yesterday sort of gave a load of very well-versed gobbledygook. She sounded like a publicist who didn't want to answer a question when she was asked whether or not she would prosecute members of the media for doing their jobs. We're in an environment where if you work for the Washington Post and you're trying to tell the truth, do you believe Jeff Bezos is going to be there for you if you get arrested? I don't know that I would.
CARUSONE: Yeah, I think you're basically getting to the big point here, too, which is that, not only are -- you know, we have to think about what is this from the perspective of these big publications and these top down decisions. I mean, there's a lot of major publications now that have been purchased by ideological interests, the LA Times, as well. And as you noted, though, there's also shrinking newsrooms across the board. And now you have a full on assault and exploitation. So this is the moment where something, you know, one of the few professions that's actually identified in the Constitution, because it's so pivotal to our society functioning, is to have journalists out there doing this work.
You now have an administration that is going to do everything possible, not just to threaten, to bully, harass and intimidate, but basically to cow journalists into making a significant cost-benefit analysis everyday. Even if you have a publication that is not trying to get you not to step out of line, you have to think about whether or not it's worth the harms and the harassment. And that's going to be in everybody's head.