Deep Throat/Deep Cerebrum And The Big Miss

Did The Washington Post Cost the Election?

What makes a book compelling? Join me in developing our “Eyes and Ears” for finding compelling stories.

In the flotsam-filled wake of the 2024 Presidential election, we’ll look at a Changed News Landscape, OpEds, and Backyards, all of which may well have produced The Biggest Miss of the Century.

And which falls within TBW’s mandate of writing and compelling stories. In an earlier post, 2024 Ways to Raise Our Enthusiasm, I did try to anticipate and help with the malaise many are now experiencing.

In the 70s, Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein cultivated an anonymous inside source, Deep Throat, who spilled the goods on a burglary of a rival political party HQ. Their reporting helped bring down a sitting US President when it reported Nixon’s complicity in the burglary.

A lot has changed in the news business since then.

When the same Washington Post declined to endorse a 2024 presidential candidate, much hatred spewed forth (The LA Times experienced much the same). Rumors had it the Post was on the verge of endorsing Harris when Bezos, its owner, killed it. It wouldn’t surprise me if Bezos read the equivalent of tea leaves, say a sharp increase in Amazon sales of blue flags sporting “Vote Felon 2024” by people buying things on sale and trying to get by.

What’s remarkable was the number of people canceling their Post subscriptions, not for faulty news reporting, not because the Post endorsed a candidate they hated, but because the Post stayed neutral.

I doubt the people who canceled rely on a newspaper’s endorsement of a presidential candidate to make up their minds.

It’s a shame when readers cancel because a news publication withholds an opinion. It’s the equivalent of putting on blinders. You know, blinders are what they put on horses to keep them from seeing what’s alongside.

Here’s why such cancellations deserve attention. Imagine this scenario inside the Washington Post, circa mid 2023, or a year and a half before the election:

Duddard: I just met with a source inside the administration who says the president is in a rapid decline in his competence. Like fast.

Editor: Who’s the source?

Duddard: They’re anonymous.

Editor: “They?” Is it more than one person or one of those pronoun things?

Duddard: You’re basically asking me for the gender and I can’t say, because they don’t want to be identified. They want to be called Deep Cerebrum.

Editor: I like it. The double entendre. Our source is highly intelligent tipping us to someone who’s losing his. I like it a lot.

Duddard: It’s what I wanted to hear. I’m already well into the story.

Editor: Drop it. I like the name, but I hate the story. Can you imagine the subscriptions we’d lose if we run a story about the aging of this President? Legions. We’d lose legions.

Duddard: Who cares? It’s the story of the century, an American President thinking of running again who has the ability to launch nuclear weapons and yet is losing his mind! We’ve got to do it.

Editor: Kill it. Now. Give me a piece on Trump, that’s the kind of investigative journalism we do. It’s what our readers want.

Imagine if the Post had reported what everyone saw a year later when Biden debated Trump. The Political Machine who handpicked Harris could’ve convinced Biden not to run and clear the field for Harris and who knows who else to run in the primaries. In other words, they’d have a fair start at campaigning, instead of being called off the bench in the fourth quarter expecting to throw the Hail Mary.

Why didn’t the Political Machine, the anonymous group of cigar-smoking, cocktail-sipping, toes-dug-into-the-sands-of-the-ritzy-Hamptons men and women of the Democratic Party, act earlier to talk Biden out of running? Because they didn’t have to fear The Washington Post outing the story.

The Washington Post offers an introductory subscription at a teaser rate. I almost took it, my interest piqued by the paper’s assertion of wanting to overcome the perception of bias and distrust many have over the news media. A laudable goal and one I welcome. Give me the facts and so I can talk to others and come to my own conclusions. And for Pete’s sake, don’t judge me if I don’t agree.

But, I’m not subscribing to the Post. They missed the biggest story of the century by failing to report on the President’s cognitive decline. Either they buried it, or, more likely, they failed to cultivate inside sources who knew. They wore blinders just like their readers.

Because they focused on somebody else, they missed the story about the guy who lives in the biggest house in their own backyard. That’s incompetence for any news organization.

Why would I want to pay good money to that?

All the Best,

Geoff

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