Three days ago, in a column published in the Washington Post, billionaire (and owner of this newspaper for 9 years) Jeff Bezos wrote: we have to work harder to control what we can control so that more people believe us. Over the past week, the publication has lost 250,000 subscribers which is 1/10 of the total number. All that due to the decision announced 11 days before the US presidential election: The Washington Post will not support any candidate. After that, many employees wrote angry columns (published in the newspaper), for example, satirist Alexandra Petrie titled hers as follows: ‘Now it's the Washington Post satirist’s job to support Kamala Harris’, in which she reminded us that the last time the paper was neutral was in 1970. Another journalist, Molly Roberts, posted on social media platform X that she was resigning from the editorial board that endorsed that decision because it was not their decision, but the decision of the owner, Bezos. The statement, signed by 21 columnists, says that Donald Trump is dangerous for the country, its democratic values and international alliances. Trump's reaction was easy to predict. The day before, at a rally in North Carolina, he described the decision of one of the country's oldest and most popular publications as follows: ‘They only support Democrats, and because they didn't support Democrats, they tell you that Democrats are not good. They know that I am doing great things. They just don't want to say it out loud.’

Neither current or former WP employees nor independent observers have any doubt as to why Bezos imposed this suicidal behaviour on the publication. Former WP editor-in-chief Marty Baron insists that if the decision to refrain from political statements had been made by the board of editors three years ago, or a year ago, it could have been considered deliberate. But what the country and the world have seen today is as far from high standards of journalism as Donald Trump's statement quoted above is from the truth. But Bezos's big businesses - his aerospace company Blue Origin and Amazon - depend on government policy. Against the backdrop of the potential damage from what Trump could do to the billionaire if he returns to power, the loss of 10 per cent of Washington Post readers is a much smaller, almost imperceptible evil for Bezos. Moreover, he can appeal to objectivity and independence. Moreover, colleagues have begun to stand up for the Washington Post, with The Slate columnist Laura Miller calling for the publication's journalists not to be punished by cancelling their subscriptions, because ‘it's not the horses’ fault’. Instead, she suggests cancelling Amazon Prime subscriptions to demonstrate to Bezos that protecting his big business backfires.

I myself have had an Amazon Prime subscription for the three and a half years I've lived in the United States, and I can assure you categorically that this will not work. In addition to the video service, Prime offers free two-day shipping anywhere in the United States and a range of discounts on everything Amazon sells (literally everything). Imagine an outlet that works ten, no, twenty times better. It's unlikely that we'll see Prime subscribers decline by 10 per cent, or even 5 per cent, anytime soon. Laura Miller herself admits this. In her column calling for the punishment of Bezos's business, there is no mention of the fact that she herself has already done so. And the journalists who are leaving WP's board of editors one by one are in no hurry to leave the publication. In the end, at least in the short term, Bezos' calculation is justified, the dollar trumps principles. Habit trumps principle. Saving a big business at the cost of a stain on the reputation of a major publication is absolutely acceptable.

There is a noticeable dose of bitter irony in describing this vicissitude from Ukraine, where most qualified TV journalists have been under the yoke of the United News Marathon for three years, and where our Western partners have been speaking out against it for years. It's no secret that the credibility of the Marathon is systematically declining every month, and the constant change of channels on the same button is causing a consistent devaluation of individual brands, which are no longer able to make money from their own news and therefore depend on chaotic attempts at monetisation on YouTube, grants and government funding. Few people, apart from those involved in the production of the Marathon's news and programmes, can keep track of the broadcast schedule of different channels, and there is constant confusion about which channel aired which material. Leaving aside the obvious consequence of undermining public trust in classical media in general, this is economically unprofitable for any of the private participants in the Marathon. However, there is no sign that Ukrainian TV channels will be given a sock to walk away with any time soon. Just as there are no signs that Bezos will change his mind and allow the Washington Post to publish the statement of support for Kamala Harris written just before it was decided not to publish it.

In the late winter of 2017, a month after Donald Trump became the 45th president of the United States, WP's motto was ‘democracy dies in the dark’. The same Slate magazine whose columnist recently suggested that Amazon Prime should be abandoned said that it was darker than the titles of famous metal bands' albums and more suitable for the end of the world than for a daily newspaper. But democracy does not die by itself, in the light of day or at dusk, just as a war does not start by itself. Just as discrimination on racial or other grounds does not spread by itself. Nor does fascism spread by itself. 

Democracy is a social contract that is valid as long as the majority of society feels a vital need for it. The daily struggle for its existence, that is, the constant support of society in a state where democracy is its main value, is one of the cornerstones of modern journalism. When it is suspended or postponed for any reason, the consequences are not long in coming. Unlike the consequences of global warming, our lifetime will be enough to assess them.

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