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In February 2019, after serving as the executive editor of The Washington Post for six years, I was astounded at how easily President Donald Trump and his allies were agitated. To emphasize the importance of a free press, the newspaper aired a one-minute Super Bowl ad featuring a voice-over by Tom Hanks and paying tribute to journalists who were killed or taken captive. The ad concluded with the Post’s logo and the powerful message, “Democracy dies in darkness.” The intention was to showcase the commendable and often courageous work of journalists, including those at the Post and even at Fox News. We wanted to make it clear that this message transcended politics and was not just about us.
In this ad, Tom Hanks stated, “There’s someone to gather the facts, to bring you the story, no matter the cost. Because knowing empowers us, knowing helps us decide, knowing keeps us free.” Unsurprisingly, President Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., couldn’t resist expressing his disdain. In a typically belligerent tweet, he suggested that journalists could gain credibility by simply reporting news instead of what he referred to as “leftist BS.”
Two years prior, a month into Trump’s presidency, we had added the phrase “Democracy dies in darkness” to our nameplate in the printed newspaper, as well as at the top of our website and on all our content. This was not a reaction to Trump, as some may have assumed, but rather a mission statement conceived by Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Washington Post. Bezos, the founder and executive chair of Amazon, had acquired the Post in 2013. In early 2015, he expressed his desire for a phrase that would encapsulate the newspaper’s purpose: an idea rather than just a product. It had to fit nicely on a T-shirt, embody our heritage and location in the nation’s capital, and be both inspiring and disruptive. Bezos wanted something that would make people feel like they belonged to an idea rather than just subscribing to a newspaper. The idea was simple: We love this country, so we hold it accountable.
Coming up with the perfect phrase was no easy task. Bezos was deeply involved in the process, insisting on being part of every step. He encouraged us to rely on gut feelings and intuition rather than metrics, and he wanted the words to encompass the Post’s historic mission. He believed that we should not shy away from using the word “democracy” because it was what made the Post unique.
We formed staff teams and held numerous meetings, but frustration grew as we struggled to find the right words. We even enlisted the help of branding consultants, but their efforts proved fruitless. We ended up with a lengthy list of ideas, some of which were quite absurd. The brainstorming yielded options like “A bias for truth,” “Know,” “A right to know,” “You have a right to know,” “Unstoppable journalism,” and many more.
By September 2016, Bezos urged us to make a decision. We gathered nine Post executives and met with Bezos at the Four Seasons in Georgetown. We had just half an hour, starting at 7:45 a.m., due to Bezos’s tight schedule. Several options remained on the table, including “A bright light for a free people” or simply “A bright light for free people,” “The story must be told,” “To challenge and inform,” “For a world that demands to know,” and “For people who demand to know.” Unfortunately, none of these choices met Bezos’s expectations.
Finally, we settled on “A free people demand to know” (subject to a grammar check by our copy desk, which approved). However, our triumph was short-lived. That same evening, Bezos sent an email stating that he had sought the opinion of his then-wife, MacKenzie Scott, and she found the phrase to be awkward and called it a “Frankenslogan.”
At that point, we needed Bezos to take decisive action. Thankfully, he did. He declared, “Let’s go with ‘Democracy dies in darkness.'” This phrase had been on our list from the beginning and had been used by Bezos in the past, inspired by a line from federal-appellate-court judge Damon J. Keith’s 2002 ruling stating, “Democracies die behind closed doors.”
Without any official announcement, “Democracy dies in darkness” made its debut in mid-February 2017. The response was astounding. The phrase garnered attention both nationally and internationally. The People’s Daily in China even tweeted about the Post’s new slogan, juxtaposing it with President Trump’s criticism of the media. Merriam-Webster reported a surge in searches for the word “democracy.” Late Show host Stephen Colbert humorously joked about rejected phrases in correspondence with our mission statement. Twitter users commented on the Post’s “new goth vibe,” and media critic Jack Shafer contributed his own whimsical suggestions for rejected mottos.
Bezos couldn’t have been happier with the public reaction. He believed that being the subject of satire was a positive sign. The four words atop our journalism had undeniably drawn attention to our mission. It would have been much worse if the response had been indifference. Although some of us, myself included, had reservations about associating our work with themes of death and darkness, we had to accept it and move forward. The Serenity Prayer seemed fitting at that moment: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.”
To our surprise, readers embraced the phrase, particularly during the Trump era, even though that had not been our initial intention.
Five months after Trump’s inauguration, Bezos invited us to a dinner at the White House. It was an interesting sight to see Bezos, with his distinctive bald head, and Fred Ryan, the publisher, towering over the table. Accompanied by the first lady, Melania Trump, and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, we sat in the egg-shaped Blue Room. Coincidentally, as we gathered, the Post published a report suggesting that Special Counsel Robert Mueller was investigating Kushner’s business dealings with Russia. This was part of Mueller’s broader investigation into potential collusion.
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