Good evening, I’m Dylan Byers.

Welcome back to In The Room, my biweekly private email that takes you behind the scenes of American media. Tonight, some fresh scoops on two very dramatic firings that have rocked the media industry this week: Peter Rice’s surprise ouster at Disney and Felicia Sonmez’s termination at The Washington Post. Plus, a little more insight into what Jeff Bezos wants out of his newspaper.

Chapek was direct and unsentimental on Thursday’s call, sources who participated in the meeting said. He told Rice’s direct reports: “I’ve made a decision, and Peter is leaving the company.” Rice’s unit, Disney General Entertainment, needed “a more collaborative leader,” Chapek said, and someone who could better align the division with the rest of the organization. That leader would now be Dana Walden, Rice’s deputy and the chair of entertainment at Disney Television. The executives on the call, still shocked and perplexed by the news, did not ask any follow-up questions.

And yet, more than 24 hours after Rice’s dramatic defenestration, questions persist: Most notably, what was it about Rice—a widely respected and accomplished executive—that did not align with Chapek’s vision? Yes, Rice had been brought up under the wing of Rupert Murdoch at Fox, where the culture was a little more cutthroat, and sharp-elbowed. And yes, he was notably reserved and ran D.G.E. as a fiefdom. But he was also a fantastic performer, who had racked up several wins across Disney’s myriad television properties, and got along well enough with his fellow executives. And if he was really so uncooperative, why had Chapek re-signed him to a three-year contract last summer?

In their meeting, Chapek told Rice that he didn’t fit with Disney’s culture, sources familiar with the matter said. Rice asked his boss to explain further, but the Disney C.E.O. refused to elaborate, saying: “Now is not the time.” If ever there is a time for Chapek to explain his decision, perhaps we will learn more. But until then, matters of corporate culture aside, the best available evidence suggests that Rice did not fit in with Chapek—and that Chapek, an already embattled C.E.O. with a tenuous grip on power in the wake of multiple controversies, viewed Rice as disloyal, as a potential threat to his control of the company, and, ultimately, as an unnecessary layer on the org chart.

Still, Chapek’s motivation for firing Rice goes well beyond mere annoyance over his ambitions. As my Puck colleague Matt Belloni noted this week, Chapek is operating from a position of immense insecurity. He inherited his job from Bob Iger, one of the most illustrious media executives of the modern era, and was then beset by slowing Disney+ growth, a brutal stock market, and several scandals and controversies largely of his own making—including the ScarJo blowup and the Florida “Don’t Say Gay” debacle. In the wake of Rice’s firing, Disney's board chair Susan Arnold was quick to announce, unsolicited, that Chapek had “the support and confidence of the Board,” a statement that of course had the opposite of the intended effect. As Belloni also noted, the board could have simply announced that it was renewing Chapek’s contract, which as of now expires in eight months.

Fairly or unfairly, an insecure Chapek had come to believe that Rice was actively working to undermine him. For all the respect that Rice commands inside Disney and across Hollywood, it’s also true that many of his colleagues see him as something of a cipher, and in some cases suspect him of using reporters and agents and talent to maneuver his own ambitions. Chapek apparently shared that paranoia, and may have even thought he’d seen Rice's hand in many of the “Will Chapek Survive?” stories that followed Florida. Rice, surely, would dispute that characterization. Belloni writes that if Rice ever called a journalist who didn’t work for him, it was to try to keep his name out of a story, not to get himself credit.

Whatever Chapek’s vulnerabilities, however, it’s important to remember that Rice himself was just as vulnerable because Walden, one of the most beloved creative executives in the television business, with incredibly strong talent relationships and a litany of successes at Fox and then Disney, was working under him. In addition to suspecting Rice of foul play, Chapek may have also believed that Walden was responsible for much of D.G.E.’s success. In the end, Chapek may have concluded that Dana was the real star and talent in that division, and that Rice, in addition to being untrustworthy, wasn't wholly necessary—especially in a world where Daniel managed the purse.

Whatever the case, Rice will be fine, and no doubt land elsewhere in a job of immense influence. Certainly, he knows his worth. In the wake of his ouster, Rice told some of his direct reports that he was the one who insisted that the media headlines note he had been fired—not stepping down, not going off to pursue other opportunities, but fired. Certainly Rice, unlike Chapek, seems anything but insecure.

Sonmez’s termination will give the Post at least a temporary reprieve from internecine Twitter spats among staff, but other newsroom dramas continue to play out in public view. As I noted earlier this week, Post journalist Taylor Lorenz was involved in a controversy last week after one of her articles incorrectly stated that she had reached out to two YouTube influencers for comment. As Lorenz would explain in a subsequent tweet thread, the error was actually due to a miscommunication with her unnamed editor, who had mistakenly inserted the line without Lorenz’s knowledge. This explanation, while factually accurate and even approved by the Post’s P.R. department, led some of Lorenz's own colleagues to conclude that she had thrown her editor under the bus. One among them was Post media critic Erik Wemple, who wrote an entire column about it titled, “Taylor Lorenz said an editor was to blame. Is that okay?”

Whatever Post staffers think about the Lorenz drama—or the Sonmez drama, for that matter—it’s clear that the institution is suffering from an inability to manage controversy and keep itself out of the headlines. Surely that does not please Ryan, who, as I have reported, is incredibly preoccupied with figuring out how the Post can stop its own employees from damaging the company’s credibility. I imagine it is also fast becoming at least a minor annoyance for the paper’s owner, Jeff Bezos.

In my reporting earlier this week, I mentioned that Bezos and his partner Lauren Sanchez had voiced some frustrations with social media during a series of dinners last Spring with the finalists for the Post executive editor position. I’ve since been told about some other things Bezos discussed: First, that he was extremely interested in expanding the Post’s influence, domestically and globally; and second, that he hoped the Post could be a force for toning down partisan rhetoric, fostering greater tolerance for diverse political views, and moving America past the era of cancel culture. It is somewhat harder for the Post’s leadership to focus on either of those goals if it’s repeatedly being forced to put out fires in its own newsroom.