Martin Baron Speaks about Trump, Bezos, and The Washington Post

Comments on Marty Baron’s book and his time as editor of The Post

Martin Baron spoke in a conversation at Stackhouse Theater on October 1, 2024, about his 2023 book Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and the Washington Post. He responded to questions about his time as editor, his book, and his thoughts on present topics in journalism.

Baron, who was executive editor of The Washington Post from 2013 to 2021, commented on  former President Donald Trump’s criticism of the media during his presidency. W&L’s Professor Alecia Swasy, who moderated the conversation, noted that “On his first day as president, Trump said he was at war with the media.” Baron responded that “We are not at war with the administration, we are at work,” he said.

Baron elaborated by referencing the First Amendment of the Constitution and James Madison, the principal author of the Bill of Rights. “In talking about the need for the First Amendment, [Madison] simply talked about the need for freely examining the public characters and measures,” he said.

Baron spoke on Trump’s rocky relationship with the media during his presidency, especially in regards to The Washington Post. “Trump called me to complain about a story, and he said words that I never thought I would hear from the president of the United States.”

On the media’s coverage of Trump’s use of social media, he stated “that what he said on social media was a window into his mind.” He elaborated that Trump’s posts were “like an insight into … what he was thinking, how he thinks, for better or for worse.”

Baron was very critical of Trump when talking about the statements he made during his presidency, saying, “At the end of his four years in office, it was well over 30,000 lies and hundreds in a single day.” He said that Trump was a president “doing everything that is possible to discredit us and — worse than that — to actually dehumanize us.”

Baron made clear his opinion on how those in positions of influence should act, saying, “in order to have a strong democracy, we have to have strong institutions, we have to have a strong press that adheres to standards, we have to have strong courts that adhere to standards … and we have to have a president who adheres to standards.”

Baron went on to further criticize Trump, describing him as “a president who has decided to abandon all norms of political behavior.”

Continuing onto other matters in his book, he discussed Jeff Bezos’s acquisition of The Washington Post. He noted that despite being known in the tech world, Bezos, the founder of Amazon, “did have a real strong appreciation for the qualities that a print newspaper had.”

He assured the audience that Bezos has not interfered with The Post, saying that “he never suggested a story, he never critiqued a story, he never suppressed a story, he never did any of that.” Baron further stated that “Amazon had no influence over us whatsoever.”

Clarifying the changes which Bezos made to help the Post, Baron stated that Bezos told The Post, “you have the name, The Washington Post, a name which can be leveraged to a national audience and a global audience.” This was in contrast with the traditional focus of The Post which “covered national politics but other than that we covered the Washington metro area, and that’s it”.

He explained The Post’s expansion of digital news distribution, in which Bezos told them that “the internet, for all the damage that it had done to our business … had given us a gift.” With a news website, Bezos suggested, “we could distribute our journalism without having to deliver a physical newspaper, which meant that we could deliver our journalism now to people at virtually no additional cost.”

When responding to questions from the audience, Baron emphasized the importance of reporters providing context for readers so they can “check our work.”