'Trust' is an issue under the old rules, in a context where an essentially democratic, free society was desired by all and where therefore public trust and a well-informed public mattered.
The new rules are about power alone, which is essentially anti-democratic. Bezos has power and he demonstrates it - demonstration is essential under the new rules - by mocking and thumbing his nose at trust and at informing the public. He uses his power to bend public opinion his way; lots of people still read the Post, and in a post-truth world, truth doesn't matter to many of them. He doesn't care about trust, and he actively and intentionally demonstrates it.
It's the context of post-truth philosophy: Words are about power, they are weapons; they are not about truth, expression, or information.
The worship (rather than distrust) of power, post-truth, it all leads to the non-democratic outcome.
As unpopular as Bush was in 2008, not very many people seriously thought he would be or even should be arrested. I think the patience of good people is getting severely tested in 2025 though, I think by 2028, or sooner, people will be demanding scalps.
What, of the things I described, have Black Americans experienced more than others?
> even the most milquetoast centrists of 2020 are turning into people calling for actual consequences for the corruption going on in our government.
I see the opposite: Look at congressional and other Dem leaders - they talk about economics and healthcare despite everything else going on.
in a context where an essentially democratic, free society was desired by all, black people were systematically shut out from, (redlining, the gi bill, etc.). Like how you were supposed to trust that stop-and-frisk and the broken window policing policies were not thinly veiled attempts to over-police black neighborhoods because the paper you read or the politician you voted for told you so... but the people that were the victims knew otherwise.
My hypothesis is that his current heavy handed editorial intervention is designed to convince only a single person: the President of the United States.
It's presumably worth burning the paper's reputation in order to curry favor with a mercurial and vengeful autocrat who controls the power of the federal government's purse.
In 3 (or 7?) years, perhaps he will reevaluate.
It is a bit more interesting than "everyone took their mask off the day after the election". Plenty of hard-line right wing people in the world, of course, but at one point if you're that deep in the right all the posturing pre-2024 would be really hard to do. But if it's all cynical then any amount of posturing makes sense!
He even wrote an editorial saying "the news media isnt trusted, we have to do better".
Then he decided he didnt want to do better.
I am fairly certain he decided to and is executing "do better" - nevertheless the 1 or 2 people with net worths of 100's of billions have different opinions on what "better" looks like than the other 8 billion of us.
I would bet that something like 80 or 90% of Washington Post subscribers don’t know who owns the paper, and I would save you the same thing about the Wall Street Journal.
The world's richest man has at most a few hundred.