Carl Bernstein joined Bob Woodward, Marty Baron and lots of different journalists in talking out towards Washington Submit proprietor Jeff Bezos after the paper made sweeping cuts to its employees on Wednesday.
Bernstein, one half of the legendary duo that led the historic newspaper’s Watergate investigation, took to Instagram on Friday to decry the slashing of 1 third of the Submit’s employees in a transfer that government editor Matt Murray known as a “strategic reset.”
“The guiding proverb of the Washington Submit as enshrined on the Submit’s masthead nonetheless declares that ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness,’” Bernstein wrote. “But Jeff Bezos’ determination to chop the information employees of the Submit by virtually one third, gutting and eliminating reportorial departments from the Center East to sports activities to the paper’s metropolitan protection, sends yet one more highly effective message from its proprietor at odds with that declaration.”
He continued: “Over a number of generations the Submit has come to signify excess of simply one other media enterprise proposition: Slightly, as Bezos as soon as appeared to know, it embodies the guarantees of the First Modification as a shining mild of American democracy.” You possibly can view the complete assertion under.
Bernstein went on to talk to the Submit’s legacy, saying that he and Woodward aimed to seek out “the perfect obtainable model of the reality” in all their reporting. It’s a sentiment Bernstein known as indicative of the Submit’s general mission — one which “should not be allowed to wither and die underneath the possession and management of Bezos or anybody else.”
“In the present day’s proprietor of the Washington Submit is likely one of the 5 richest individuals on the planet,” Bernstein additional wrote. “His duties must be, above all, to enlarge these journalistic and democratic prospects: and never, as we’ve got witnessed this previous yr at Jeff Bezos’ Washington Submit, to curtail or demean them.”
Bernstein’s feedback come simply hours after Woodward — whom Bernstein labored alongside on protection of the Watergate scandal — launched his personal assertion.
“I’m crushed that so a lot of my beloved colleagues have misplaced their jobs and our readers have been given much less information and sound evaluation,” Woodward posted on X. “They deserve extra.”
On Wednesday, well-known Submit editor Marty Baron equally spoke out towards the layoffs, calling the paper’s fashionable period “the darkest days in historical past of one of many world’s best information organizations.”
