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Earlier this month, Common Cause, a DC-based watchdog, submitted a proof copy of a “wraparound” advertisement meant to run on a Tuesday on the front and back pages of the Washington Post. The ad, later published on the organization’s X account, featured an image of Elon Musk against a red backdrop, eyes closed and grinning in apparent mirth, with an image of the White House aslant in the foreground. The main text of the ad read, “Who’s running this country: Donald Trump or Elon Musk?” Below, in a smaller font, it continued: “Since day one, Elon Musk has created chaos and confusion and put our livelihoods at risk. And he is accountable to no one but himself.” The ad ended with a tagline, “No One Elected Elon Musk,” and a link: FireMusk.org.
Common Cause, along with the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund, which collaborated on the campaign, had a vision: that staffers in the White House, Pentagon, and congressional offices would receive a striking message along with their morning copy of the Post. Together with a full-page ad scheduled to run inside the paper on the same day, the wraparound was set to cost the organizations $115,000.
It wasn’t to be. Three days after it submitted the proof, Common Cause received notice that the main ad would not be allowed to run, though a sales representative had previously indicated that the copy should not present a problem. In the end, though, “they said, ‘You can have something inside the paper but you can’t do the wrap,’” Virginia Kase Solomón, president of Common Cause, told The Hill. “We said ‘Thanks, no thanks,’ because we had a lot of questions.” Kase Solomón also noted that the sample artwork the organization received to help it understand what the format might look like came from an ad run by the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM). That ad had featured an image of President Trump giving a thumbs-up—indicating that it was not the overtly political nature of Common Cause’s copy that was the problem.
The Post has so far declined to clarify why the Common Cause ad wasn’t allowed to run, leading to widespread speculation that the decision may have had something to do with the will of Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of both Amazon and the Post, and his desire to make nice with Trump’s new administration. “Is Jeff Bezos more worried about an angry phone call from the White House than his paper’s journalistic duty?” Common Cause asked in a written response to the incident published on its website. “It seems like wherever you look, from ‘independent’ media outlets to our elected leaders in Congress, institutions we used to rely on to defend our democracy are dropping the ball.”
The notion that Bezos may be pulling strings did not, of course, spring from nowhere. The tech mogul, who purchased the paper in 2013 for $250 million in cash, has been embroiled in controversy several times in the past year over concerns that he may be asserting improper editorial influence for political reasons. In October, just weeks before the presidential election, the Post’s publisher, William Lewis, announced that the paper would not be endorsing a candidate for president this time around, “nor in any future presidential election.” The paper had been widely expected to endorse Kamala Harris, leading to speculation that Bezos made the decision to curry favor with Trump, a claim he denied. “Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election,” Bezos wrote in an op-ed days after the announcement. “What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias.” He called the choice “a principled decision,” though he also said that he regretted not making the call sooner. Following the announcement, more than 250,000 readers—10 percent of the paper’s customer base—canceled their subscriptions. Two members of the Post’s editorial board resigned.
And then there was the resignation of cartoonist Ann Telnaes in early January. She left her position after the Post declined to publish a drawing in which Bezos and several others can be seen proffering bags of money before a statue of Trump. In a statement via Substack, Tenlnaes wrote that it was the first time since she joined the paper, in 2008, that one of her cartoons had been killed. In response, the Post’s opinion editor, David Shipley, wrote that the “decision was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and had already scheduled another column—this one a satire—for publication,” adding: “The only bias was against repetition.” Meanwhile, Amazon announced that it would license an upcoming documentary about Melania Trump (for which it would pay her upwards of $40 million, $28 million of which the first lady pocketed).
So it appears that an ad meant to critique the influence of one tech billionaire may have been killed at the behest of another—exactly the kind of moneyed influence on politics that Common Cause, with its mission to “put ordinary people ahead of billionaire campaign donors,” seeks to root out. Ironically, the killing of its ad may be a better testament to the precariousness of democratic values than the most persuasive ad could ever be.
In other news…
- On Friday, the Associated Press filed suit against White House chief of staff Susan Wiles, deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich, and press secretary Karoline Leavitt. AP reporters have repeatedly been denied access to press events after the wire service declined to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” in its style guide, in accordance with Trump’s executive order. The AP said that the White House’s actions constituted a “targeted attack on the AP’s editorial independence” in violation of the First Amendment. In response to the lawsuit, Leavitt said, “We’ll see them in court.” Earlier in the week, around forty other news organizations signed a White House Correspondents’ Association letter in support of the AP.
- Yesterday, the New York Times reported that MSNBC’s The ReidOut, hosted by prominent anchor Joy Reid, will air for the final time this week. The change marks the first major shift in MSNBC’s programming since Rashida Jones stepped down as president last month. Interim president Rebecca Kutler has reportedly been making changes to the channel’s left-leaning lineup in an effort to boost ratings, which have declined significantly since Donald Trump was elected in November. According to the Times’ sources, Reid’s show will be replaced by one featuring Symone Sanders Townsend, Michael Steele, and Alicia Menendez, current hosts of The Weekend, which airs Saturday and Sunday mornings.
- And, in a memo distributed yesterday afternoon, the Trump administration announced that it would be placing almost all of the United States Agency for International Development’s roughly 4,700 employees on paid leave, effective at midnight. “Individuals that are impacted will receive specific notifications on February 23, 2025, with further instructions and information about their benefits and rights,” the announcement read. Yesterday, Kate Lamb and Rebecca Ratcliffe wrote for The Guardian about how the situation will affect the work of Myanmar’s exiled journalists, though independent newsrooms around the world will be likewise affected by the agency’s dissolution, as Jon Allsop wrote for CJR earlier this month.
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