Newspapers publish opinions for the same reason that they publish comic strips: people want to read them. Readers seek them out. Newspapers are a business and have to give their customers what they want.
The problematic aspect here is that the current business owner, Jeff Bezos, has a conflict of interest. Bezos is making a bad business decision for The Washington Post, sacrificing it and losing readers for the sake of his other business interests, i.e., government contracts. It's unlikely that an independent owner with no conflict of interest would make the same decision.
You seem to be implying that he made a decision based on other business interests, against those of the Post, but there is no support for that in the article. Do you have a source which describes this motive?
It seems like not endorsing candidates might be good for the Washington Post's business, by improving its perceived impartiality. In addition to this, the WaPo seems to have spent much of its history not endorsing candidates, and it has been doing (financially) poorly recently; perhaps this is a return to more profitable and credible roots.
- "You seem to be implying that he made a decision based on other business interests, against those of the Post, but there is no support for that in the article. Do you have a source which describes this motive?"
There's support in that Trump personally met with Blue Origin's C-suite, on the same day the Washington Post spiked their Harris endorsement—an apparent reward to Bezos, and one that put his business interests in the spotlight.
It would take way more for WaPo to not be in a position where mentioning it in one phrase with "impartiality" wouldn't sound like an absurdist joke. They can walk this road, but so far there's absolutely no indication they want to, and Bezos twisting their arms can't be taken as such evidence.
There is direct support in the article. Amazon lost a $10B contract because Trump doesn't like Bezos, which is because he owns the WP, a paper that is generally critical of Trump. By killing this endorsement, he's buying some goodwill from Trump, at the cost of alienating the bulk of WP's readers.
Untrue. At the top, "KEY POINTS: In a 2019 lawsuit, Amazon claimed it lost a $10 billion Pentagon cloud computing contract to Microsoft because Trump used “improper pressure ... to harm his perceived political enemy” Bezos."
Bezos was blackmailed by Trump ally and National Enquirer boss David Pecker a few years ago. He resisted then and it led to the most expensive divorce in history.
> not endorsing candidates might be good for the Washington Post's business, by improving its perceived impartiality
You're at the wrong meta level - if the paper's owner is making the editorial decisions, there's no impartiality to perceive in the first place.
I mean, if the question at hand was "should the editors endorse someone?" then what you're saying could stand. But that's out the window if they're being overruled by somebody without even a presumption of impartiality.
It takes a lot time to build the reputation of impartiality. To be honest only BBC comes into mind when I think about a somewhat impartial medium.
What I see is a traditionally Democartic leaning newspaper, choosing "impartiality" as an excuse, because they cannot come out and support Republicans. And of course I believe that this is the choice of the owner.
Trump has repeatedly threatened media companies he thinks have wronged him with specific actions he's said he will take as president. Bezos has a whole business empire to worry about that goes way beyond WaPo. He doesn't need a petty president trying to wreck his bottom line for 4 years. And with a business that big, Trump has a lot of ways he could cause trouble.
> In a 2019 lawsuit, Amazon claimed it had lost a $10 billion cloud computing contract with the Pentagon to Microsoft because Trump had used “improper pressure ... to harm his perceived political enemy” Bezos.
The implication being that endorsing Harris might cause Amazon to lose out on government contracts in case Trump wins the presidency.
Really this is a lesson in why the corporate news model is doomed to fail. Upping my contributions to serious investigative journalist organizations like ProPublica
One of ProPublica's greatest recent victories (in my opinion) was the FOIA lawsuit to secure public release of PPP loan information, along with other COVID relief loans like EIDL. Aside from the sheer scale ($1 trillion) and the rampant fraud [1], there were politicians from both sides of the aisle who took these forgivable business loans while delaying other forms of government relief.
I think new-tech/mass-consumer-facing tech is always going to have a liberal bias - that just plays well with the dynamics of getting new users to use your procuct. It's only once a company/organization establishes itself as a mega Corp will we see the conservative idealogy exerting it's want to sustain/conserve the accumulated power.
Ridiculous is thinking there is no legacy liberal media bias. Take the top 100 political articles from WaPo and the NYT from this year and tell me how many are anti Republican. I’m guessing nearly all of them.
Conservatives keep moving the goal post. I see a less criticism of conservatives due to the fear of being labeled as bias. i.e. the coverage of Biden's cognitive decline vs Trump's cognitive decline.
He is the outright (ultimate, through a holding company) owner of The Washington Post.
Therefore there is no conflict of interest. He gets to decide what its interests are.
I think it is worth asking whether it is in the public interest to allow people with other extensive business interests to own influential media businesses, but that is usual these days. Most media is owned by media (and sometimes more) conglomerates with many interests around the world.
My point is that Bezos would likely make a different decision for The Washington Post if he wasn't concerned about retaliation against his other business interests, and in fact he allowed the paper to make political endorsements in the past.
No he doesn't. He can choose to do with it whatever he may like. But whether it's in its interest or not is a property purely derived from the current state of the journal and the market. Whether he likes it or not.
And, yes, the issue stems from business ownership of a so-called "independent" news outlet which has clear conflict of interest. Which is something that we should not accept and continue fighting against, whether it's usual or not.
this is absolute BS. Journals are meant to have a split between the editorial board and their owners, because the credibility and ethics of the journal comes first. People don't read, or shouldn't want to read anyways, a paper that is just whatever the fuck Bezos decided was good that week; things should be as unbiased as possible.
> Newspapers publish opinions for the same reason that they publish comic strips: people want to read them. Readers seek them out. Newspapers are a business and have to give their customers what they want.
The customer is predominantly the advertiser. Newspapers publish opinions to have something to fill the empty space surrounding the advertisements.
Calling it a "bad business decision" just reveals your political preference. People who get their opinions from journalists is a constantly shrinking crowd. Today I mostly see only people of age 50+ who still actively think journalists can provide an accurate worldview for them.
> If this is all we expect of journalism in a Democracy
Straw man. I didn't say that.
It's not a maximum, but it is a minimum. Newspapers require money to operate, and they're competing for attention in a capitalist economy. No attention. no money, no newspaper. In a democracy, you can't force-feed newspapers to the population. They voluntarily choose to read or not read.
The "good news" is that many people in a democracy are interested in the hard truth. Nonetheless, it helps to package that along with softer marketing and entertainment.
Having an editorial opinion is not the same thing as having a conflict of interest. In general readers don’t expect newspapers to contain only news, but also opinions and editorial decisions. Candidate endorsements are a typical part of what’s expected.
> Isn't that supposed to be news and not worthless institutional opinions on the presidential office?
That's the goal of Journalism. Newspaper only goals: sell newspapers, sell ads in those newspapers (and since it we live in the age of internet - their website).
> An unconflicted owner wouldn't endorse either candidate. In general, hopefully, but in this election, particularly.
WaPo needed someone to make a difficult decision, conflict of interest or not, to just rip the bandaid off of their imprisonment of endorsing candidates
that's over now. the end. the market is going to forget this was ever a thing.
WaPo takes a hit if they don't endorse, but that's not Bezos's core business. If they endorse Kamala and Trump wins - other businesses of Bezos would suffer. Basically it's safer to not endorse anyone.
> Newspapers are a business and have to give their customers what they want.
This is true, but it shouldn't be viewed as unproblematic. Audience capture is a huge problem, and news organizations telling their audience what they here to the point that people get siloed in their own echo chambers is one of the main reasons why things are such a mess.
I'd say it's definitely possible to be in business and at the same time have business ethics, to care about the truth. I don't think it's inherently wrong to publish honest opinions, as well as funny comic strips, along with the other news, if it helps sell papers.
The problems occur when business ethics, and the truth, honesty, get tossed out for the sake of profit and/or partisanship.
I don't think it's a bad business decision. I stopped reading the WaPo when I got sick of its partial treatment of everything. And I'm not talking about supporting one candidate or another, I'm talking about sticking to facts and not ideological positions.
This decision by Bezos is a shot across the bow in the right direction, in my opinion. Clear eyed news are needed and aside from FT.com (which these days is also trending toward alarmism) there's precious little left out there. I don't care about a journos' opinion, I really don't. I just want them to report about facts on the ground and not pick sound pieces for clickbaits.
> I just want them to report about facts on the ground and not pick sound pieces for clickbaits.
There's no evidence of an overall change in the newspaper's direction. Bezos did not fire all of the opinion editors, for example. Neither did Bezos announce this "policy" in advance. It was a last-minute retraction after the editors had already drafted an endorsement.
It's the editorial board that has the conflict of interest--between running a newspaper, and using the newspaper as a vehicle to advance their personal political ideologies. I grew up in the D.C. area reading WaPo. It went from being a milquetoast paper to being a vehicle for political radicals. And that's been a disaster for the business. The paper was on pace to lose $100 million last year, and has lost 500,000 subscribers since 2020: https://www.foxnews.com/media/washington-post-lose-100-milli....
WaPo's business is catering to D.C. professionals. The nature of the country's electoral politics is that roughly half of those are going to be batting for each side. It's a good business decision not to seem like you're rooting for one side or the other.
the result of 'business' decisions can be measured in more than just profits. News media routinely make 'bad business decisions' because they are tools of their owners. Hence why they go bankrupt often
Newspapers are supposed to be about news, you can't trust someone who tries to tell you how to think about things. I just want news and I want to figure out how to think about it myself.
Companies (mainly media based) have been moving from giving the customers what the customers want, to giving the customers what the company wants. This is just another one of those.
that’s some mental gymnastics. so newspapers are free to publish opinions, it is in their business interest………………(but only if the opinion is the one I want otherwise it is not good business)
That's a strange way of putting it. Newspapers are free to publish anything, by the first amendment to the Constitution.
> but only if the opinion is the one I want otherwise it is not good business
I didn't say that. I said that people want to read opinions. Sometimes they enjoy reading opinions that they disagree with, and arguing with those opinions.
> Newspapers are a business and have to give their customers what they want.
I really want to challenge this idea. Businesses can have missions quite distinct from what the majority of their prospective customers would want.
If I had practically unlimited money I wouldn't ever think of funding a news organisation and then only have it produce content that customers wanted. I would have a purpose for it, stemming from my own ethics.
I think it quite naive to consider Bezos has not done the same and that this decision is simply in line with his personal political interests.
Neoliberalism is a really poor substitute for personal morality and accountability.
> Businesses can have missions quite distinct from what the majority of their prospective customers would want.
Failing businesses.
> I would have a purpose for it, stemming from my own ethics.
I never said that business is inherently in conflict with ethics, and I, as an entrepreneur myself, believe that ethics are necessary for business: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41951447
> I think it quite naive to consider Bezos has not done the same and that this decision is simply in line with his personal political interests.
I claimed that his decision is simply in line with his personal interests. Whether those are financial interests or political interests is difficult to determine. Nonetheless, the decision was bad for The Washington Post. Compare to Twitter/X: Elon Musk is indisputably using the social network he acquired for his personal political interests, and that has indisputably been bad for the business, driven away users and advertisers, and his creditors have vastly downgraded the value of the investment.
> Neoliberalism is a really poor substitute for personal morality and accountability.
This seems like a nonsequitur. How is "Neoliberalism" relevant? Is that what you believe I proposed? If so, you're wrong.
Editorials, by an outlet's editorial board or otherwise, have consistently been among the most popular content in news for over a century. That includes endorsements.
Opinion articles aren't about the opinion (well, technical sw dev articles where I'm looking for the standard way to do something are, but not non-industry news stuff) unless the writer is in a position to make their opinion matter, they're about the reasons for the opinion. They're interesting if there are reasons that are interesting, or if the writer's choice of reasons is interesting.
To play Devils Advocate for a moment: Why do we need, or even want, a newspaper to endorse a President? How does it not undermine a paper's journalistic ethics to be neutral and fair?
I actually agree with you, newspapers really shouldn't be doing this. Our major local paper in the Twin Cities basically torched its reputation by endorsing wildly unqualified candidates for city offices (like, one guy they endorsed for Minneapolis city council didn't even live in Minneapolis). They recently decided to stop doing endorsements at all, which I think is the right decision.
But that's not what happened here. The editors did their normal endorsement process, but the owner of the paper stepped in and personally overrode their process for this one particular endorsement. That's a way different story from deciding to stop doing endorsements.
Another point that just occurred to me: Who is the endorsement supposed to influence? I think in America at least, the national media has become so hyper partisan in the eyes of its readers, that an endorsement of a newspaper is really just preaching to the crowd. What difference does that endorsement really make?
At the national level, I don't think it really makes a difference if a newspaper endorses a candidate for President. Those who read and value the opinions of that newspaper are more inclined to vote for the endorsed candidate anyways.
> But that's not what happened here. The editors did their normal endorsement process, but the owner of the paper stepped in and personally overrode their process for this one particular endorsement.
Endorsements are published by the editorial section which is specifically separated from the rest of the newspaper so to not undermine the neutrality of the journalism in the other sections.
Opinion and analysis has always been part of news publications, and plays an accepted role in adding layers of interpretation onto the raw "facts" that is crucial in making those facts interpretable by readers who aren't expert in the subject matter.
The idea that editorial team has some kind of expertise, unavailable to general population, that allows them ecxlusive ability to properly understand current events, seems to have no factual support at all. They are professionals in giving their opinions, it doesn't make their opinions be better that anybody else's. Experience suggests they are usually worse.
It seems like the newspaper editorial section really ought to endorse somebody to make their biases clear, if nothing else. What are we to believe, that a bunch of people whose job it is to write opinion pieces don’t have an opinion about the election in their own country? Haha, yeah, sureeee…
In practice there is little or no distinction. The list of top articles always includes opinion pieces, the choice of “neutral” fact articles to publish (and the headlines used) signals bias, and on a basic common sense level a newspaper isn’t going to publish an opinion piece that goes against the opinions of their workers/owners. Every time an opinion piece is published that goes against this, it’s a huge brouhaha.
Interestingly on another note, opinion writers are often actually less qualified than you’d expect, because the business model of a newspaper doesn’t really work for accumulating expertise vs. a specialized magazine/Substack / etc. The only way to have consistent opinion pieces is to have a generalist, not a specialist.
If it were the editor's opinion, how is it any different from the opinion of anybody off the street? Why do the editors get the newspaper platform to publish their opinions?
I guess we need to think about what it means to be “neutral”. If half of Americans believe the earth is flat, is the neutral stance to say it’s unclear? Or is it to figure out what the truth is? In my mind there’s a difference between journalists and pollsters.
Of course with endorsements you can technically bring up the is/aught dichotomy. The facts may be what they are but that doesn’t necessitate any particular action. While this is technically true, I never see anyone complaining about the ethics of testing products and endorsing good ones. Wirecutter is basically doing the same thing with headphones and running shoes. Yet I only ever see pushback on political endorsements.
In short, umpires are neutral and fair but the fact that some teams win a lot more than others doesn’t mean they’re not doing their job.
That’s because if you praise a terrible toaster, life for most Americans is unaffected. If you endorse a political candidate, and nudge the election in one direction or other, roughly 50% of Americans will see that move as hostile.
It's not automatically unethical for a journalist to advocate for something.
I guess if they entirely stopped publishing self authored editorials it might be "neutral" to not publish a particular one. But that isn't what is happening.
A journalist's job is to journal something, nothing more and nothing less.
If a purported journalist wants to influence or otherwise lead his audience somewhere, he is many things (commentator, advocate, activist, influencer, etc.) but he is not a journalist.
> How does it not undermine a paper's journalistic ethics to be neutral and fair?
Where did you get this? Every news source has some bias, journalists, editors and owners of the media house are not some ideal beings. The good ones are honest about their bias.
As to endorsing a candidate, it's absolutely for the paper to decide. Endorsing a candidate might alienate some readers, not endorsing others.
To play Devil's Advocate to the Devil's Advocate... I would posit that journalistic neutrality isn't possible: and if that's the case I'd rather the journalist or publication wear their biases on their sleeve.
I can read a biased story, with values very different to my own, and still draw conclusions that are still meaningful. Mind you, I would expect omissions and couching that is flawed, but understanding the thinking of those I oppose is valuable and allows me to see their blind spots (or my own for that matter).
But a news organization or journalist being clear about their values and politics also disposes of the harmful notion that they've actually achieved some sort of objective reading or that they're being complete and well rounded. There's a deceptiveness in that pretense which some readers (watchers) may actually take for truth and not think more critically about what they're consuming than that.
I'm 100% on board with impartial reporting, with the caveats that a) endorsements are of the Opinion section, and b) the fact of the matter is that only the higher-minded news orgs would attempt impartiality -- so it's really just ceding the argument.
And LATimes and WaPo endorsements almost certainly won't have an effect on this election.
But, this reeks of cowardice. If you wanted to return to the journalistic standard of impartiality, that's a great thing to do when the pressure is low. Feb 2021 would have been perfect.
Less than two weeks before the most contentious election in modern history? And specifically when one candidate has threatened news organizations and their owners with retribution (legal, commercial, extralegal) for stories they don't like?
That's capitulation, not impartiality. If you believe in the mission of journalism, the honorable option would be to anti-endorse any candidate who threatens that mission.
If you don't believe in that mission, then what are you doing operating a newspaper?
I think people "need" their publications to do this in the sense that the publication may worry about losing readership for not "doing their part to support the morally correct candidates." But you're right. Ideally a publication would report the objective reality and let its readers decide what to make of it.
Newspapers have several different departments- a news reporting department, which ostensibly attempts to be neutral and fair (but often isn't), and an editorial department, which is neither neutral, nor fair. The endorsement comes from the editorial side.
I can't answer why we would want newspapers to endorse presidents- except that historically, newspapers played a big role in shaping public opinion (now mostly replaced by social media).
As long as the Post has an editorial page, with people employed to share their opinions, what are they supposed to do?
Opinion and reporting are separate- famously the WSJ reporting is quite strong and their opinion section is ... often wrong- but as long as an opinion section exists that's kinda their job, to share their opinion. If you want to get rid of opinion that might be a reasonable thing (with cable news and the internet no one has a shortage of opinion these days!) but doing it in such a ham-fisted way so close to the election is not a sign of a carefully thought-out business decision, it's a sign of cowardice.
Only in this hyper-partisan world has politics become a liability for business. If a restaurant hosted a candidate it didn't get death threats and calls for boycott 20 years ago. It's hard for some retail businesses to stay out of politics because they get dragged into it. Perhaps another way of looking at it is to not take too seriously when businesses get involved in politics.
The editorial board is separated from the newsroom and consistently writes persuasive opinions in the editorial page. "We think you should vote for X" is not structurally different from anything else that appears on the editorial page.
I find endorsements very valuable when voting in down-ballot elections. A good endorsement includes the reasoning behind the decision. I read the endorsements of multiple outlets and find myself agreeing more with one or the other.
What's the alternative, do comprehensive research on the record of 20 candidates? I don't have time for that. Read the blurbs they write about themselves in the voter's guide? Why should I trust that, they can write anything there.
Supposedly some voters are undecided. Perhaps they would be swayed by a persuasive argument; this doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t think critically.
I say supposedly because I find it hard to believe the WaPo endorsement would actually sway anyone.
It wouldn’t be interesting or newsworthy to me personally if they had done that.
Given that editorial boards at newspapers like WaPo traditionally do, I find it notable when the billionaire owner steps in to stop them from publishing the endorsement, due to fear of retaliation from one of the candidates.
The idea is that these people spend their days in the weeds, working over stories and leads, getting to know people personally, absorbing information and insight that doesn't make it to print, seeing the connections and threads between all the things they publish, and are literally professional news people the way many of us here are professional technology people who might have some insight on technology topics.
You can make the case that they might be disingenuous or manipulative in sharing what they claim to be their opinions, or that their opinions reflect cultural indoctrination rather than professional assessment, etc -- and so you don't have to take their endorsements seriously.
But it's not a crazy idea that they have something valuable to share for all the time they spend very close to news and politics, and it's not bad to know what their big picture view of topics and people are as they write and select stories for the rest of the paper as it helps you contextualize them in their subjectivity.
Those people working in mass media are going to have massive biases and blind spots the same way tech people do. That’s because news isn’t an accurate representation of reality, it’s representing the most extreme examples and outliers in society. If you have a group of people reading about outliers all day they aren’t going to be grounded in what ordinary people are actually experiencing.
If you'll pardon me, as a devil's advocate, it could go either way. They have a value but it's difficult to know to whom they owe that value to, the party, the corporations, voters, readers etc. The other is that.. they have value in the act of playback.
One political faction/side knows a publication is favored by one of the two parties. It can use that fact to feed it false information, or truthful, and watch to see how it gets reported, and the reaction of that electorate.
But it’s sold as keeping you informed about the world. When it actually is just about what journalists think.
Like you said, that can be valuable, especially in politics, when one hopes they aid your messaging. But it’s not a moral or even practical imperative to keep up with journalism.
Imagine learning about sports through ESPN commentary and never actually watching a game.
A similar professional blindspot occurred when many engineers thought twitter would collapse when Elon fired all those people. Because they see twitter as a piece of software, not a brand and organization.
This reminds me of when The New Republic had a bunch of staff quit en masse because the new imported editor was blatantly bullshitting them. He didn’t realize that he was talking to a bunch of professional journalists who knew exactly what being bullshit was like.
And it's also bad for business. I think people on either side of the aisle underestimate just how tilted the other side can get when you go against them
I think there's arguments either way, but I also think as a certain point there is an obligation to point out that Trump is basically an anti American who probably takes more notice of a roll of toilet paper than the constitution. I'd argue that maybe it would behoove an institution of trust to make an endorsement only rarely, but it's also long been part of the means of public discourse for papers to put out opinions and endorsements.
More so than that question, I think it's more obvious to ask "if you're going to have that argument, is the year Trump, the nation destroying clown, is running, the year to suddenly make a change after something like > 3 decades? Especially when it seems like your owner might be making the change because he wants to curry favor for contracts?"
It's a pretty pathetic look, but I don't particularly expect any civic virtue from Bezos, so not shocked.
No doubt this will be portrayed as Bezos reigning in "Democrat" conspiracies and used to normalize Trump by the denizens of that delusional universe.
Your question is irrelevant. If Bezos or the leadership of the post had an ideological issue with endorsements, they should have decided that 6 months ago or one month from now.
It is blatantly obvious that this decision was done solely for Bezos business interests. Ignoring this and leaning into a theoretical debate to defend the decision is insulting.
Let's do an extreme example. If one candidate were to say, "I will burn down the Washington Post" would you expect the Washington Post to be neutral? Seems fallacious.
It’s a statement of the values of the newspaper. This is what we stand for, and we are endorsing this person because of those values. It tells people about the paper and about the candidate being endorsed.
The issue here is that Trump is a threat to our democratic system of government. It’s not the time to be changing policies and refusing to endorse. It’s a time for taking a stand.
That’s a bit beside the point in this case. Newspapers are supposed to have a first amendment right to say whatever they want and the key concern is that Bezos spiked the editorial to curry favor with Trump.
I don't know for sure, but I suspect that this phenomenon of news media endorsing political candidates is almost entirely unique to the US. Please prove me wrong.
It was done under the name of the Director of Le Monde, rather than as an unsigned editorial as is common in English language newspapers, but it sure looks similar to my American eyes.
Making a big song and dance about the entire business of "endorsements" seems to be a very US thing as far as I know. I am of course not familiar with all democracies of the world, but it doesn't seem common anywhere else I've seen.
I can't prove you wrong, but I think political alignment of newspapers come in many flavors. Many countries have more parties than two, and as the choice ls less binary, the endorsements can be more subtle.
The Venn diagram of those who'd be influenced by a WaPo endorsement and committed Kamala Harris voters is a perfect intersection. For 50 years, WaPo has endorsed the democratic candidate [1] for president. No mystery here. It's a pointless endorsement.
The endorsement lets them write why they support the candidate. Laying out the reasons is what could be convincing, and is what's also being blocked here.
I think the intuition of the parent comment is right, but you also make a fair point[1]. I just wonder if you genuinely believe that any prospective Trump voter could be convinced by any argument to vote for Harris at this point. I mean after all the things that have already been written and said by so many, even by Trump himself, and have failed to convince ~47% of Americans that he's unfit to be the president.
Honestly, I look at the billions of dollars being poured into political ads, and I can't help but think that it's all a tremendous waste because it's hard to imagine that there's anybody left who didn't already form a strong opinion about Trump at some point over the past ten years.
[1] Like even assuming that prospective Trump voters don't read this newspaper, an especially novel or powerful argument could get picked up and spread by other outlets that do reach prospective Trump voters.
And it opens to them up to retribution from Trump if he wins, which is his entire method of operating. From a game theory perspective it doesn't make sense for them to do an endorsement when a mob boss type character is about to get elected.
So many times HN posters have extolled how Bezos hasn't interfered with the WaPo and those of us who expressed concern about his purchase were chicken littles. It has never been true and it's plain as day now. He bought it for the same reason Musk bought Twitter. To have control over a media outlet he values.
Well, it might have been true until now. Certainly there's no previous good evidence for Bezos-directed coverage or editing at the Post.
But regardless: you were right. I was one of the folks who viewed him as a basically benign entity who, sure, had opinions of his own, but clearly would never put his fingers on the editorial scale. And I was wrong, and he isn't.
They're not really saying Bezo or Musk are acting illogically. He's lamenting everyone who has set with their heads buried in the sand and pretended they aren't doing the things they're doing.
Because you believe in something more than personal gain. The US and other countries were built by elites who believed in more; it's the current generation that are failing.
> The newspaper also published an article by two staff reporters saying that editorial page staffers had drafted an endorsement of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris over GOP nominee Donald Trump in the election.
This is a bizarre way to use his control as a owner. If you own a newspaper or tabloid, we know from Trump how you use it effectively: you practice 'catch and kill', or you kill your own inconvenient stories, or you sic your reporters on the enemy disproportionately (while still scrupulously reporting only true things), or you selectively amplify stories from elsewhere.
You don't... kill editorial board endorsements (while still publishing an article on it!). Is there a single person in a swing state who, despite being bombarded by advertising for years, is now going to vote for Trump but would have voted for Harris once they saw the Washington Post endorsed Harris instead? "Ah, well, if WaPo says so, I guess I was wrong about her! I wasn't expecting them to endorse the Democratic candidate!"
I can only read this as Bezos trying to kiss up to Trump, who is narcissistic enough to actually take personally a foregone editorial board endorsement of his opponent.
This is extremely similar to the sudden announcement of policies by all the major newspapers that they were not going to publish documents that they thought were stolen by foriegn intelligence services from political campaigns: it is a reasonable position to have, and if announced well before the election season started would be completely unobjectionable. Doing it when they announced it, however, is significantly changing the rules in favor of one candidate.
Doing it after the board had already written up a document endorsing a candidate (demonstrating clearly that it was not a policy of anyone but the owner, who decided to be an utter coward at the last minute) sends a clear message that even one of the richest men in the world is scared of possible backlash against him.
It's more about how a presidential candidate has repeatedly made credible threats to go after specific media companies using the power of his office if he wins. That candidate also happens to have a terrifyingly broad idea of what those powers are. That's in the context of a 9-member Supreme Court where 3 are his own appointments and 2 are appointments from a previous president with similarly broad ideas about presidential power.
And no, not everyone knows how they're going to vote, as crazy as that seems, but I agree that newspaper endorsements are a tiny factor, especially in this election.
That’s what an undecided voter is, and that demographic is the one effectively deciding the next president, so yes these endorsements are consequential.
Is it censorship when your boss forbids you publishing your personal opinion as the official position of his company?
It's funny reading the comments here but has anyone considered that Bezos may in fact support Trump? Bezos is a billionaire and Harris seeks to target them to fix the deficit.
Its just possible Bezos supports Trump and it makes economic sense too, though its terribly unfashionable to come out and say such a thing.
> I’m pretty sure everyone knows who they’re gonna vote for at this point.
I already did (yay early voting), but I was pretty close to just flipping a coin. Not for red vs blue, but for the lesser evil vs one of the more amusing third parties.
I know at least one person who votes based off a publication. As for changing minds, I have no idea if this person even considered who to vote for until the publication releases their endorsements.
> Is anyone really changing their mind based on some newspaper endorsement? I’m pretty sure everyone knows who they’re gonna vote for at this point.
Clearly Bezos thinks they are[1], otherwise he wouldn't have gone through the trouble of killing it 11 days before an election.
People in this thread are badly conflating the idea of "Newspaper Opinion Journalism is Bad" with "It's OK for an owner to arbitrarily influence newspaper coverage in real time". You can agree with the former and still agree the later is a horrifying precedent.
[1] Or, "Bezos thinks that Trump thinks they are" might be closer to the truth.
It's relevant on the margins. WaPo not endorsing Harris would be a very negative signal about Harris for fence-sitters and lukewarm voters - this is the paper that hated Trump so much they changed their motto to the apocalyptic "Democracy Dies in Darkness"!
How many fence-sitters and lukewarm voters are following WaPo? It’s the third-most popular newspaper (in the US), but seems to attract people who are either very politically aware, or partisan.
If they had announced in 2022 that the paper would no longer be issuing presidential endorsements because they aren't useful or aren't a good use of resources, I think that would be a reasonable and much less controversial decision. Doing it now, when the paper had already drafted an endorsement of Harris and was about to publish it, is in fact an endorsement of Trump.
That's why this is news, it's not about a paper changing a policy, it's about one billionaire blatantly burying criticism of a fellow billionaire because they are having a personal fight (or they were having a fight and this is how they've resolved it).
This really is an interesting question. You are asking it rhetorically, and it's not like I'm going to argue with the implication, that it "basically doesn't matter", but then one could ask the same about Trump working at McDonald's as a part of his campaign, and pretty much about everything these guys do. Unless it's a major fuckup, it almost doesn't matter, because it doesn't convert anybody but one hypothetical guy who says "you know what, I'll pick a random newspaper right now, and the first guy I'm gonna see, I'll vote for him!"
At some level of approximation it doesn't even matter who the candidate is at all. An established trend in the USA is that the public is divided pretty much 50/50 between 2 colors, and hardly sways no matter what happens. Which makes it all pretty laughable way to make the choice (seeing votes as weights, and God makes a choice using these weights to make a decision) on an important question. If we assume the elections in the USA are "fair", it's pretty much flipping a coin every time. (But then, most people are already settled on the idea that it isn't an important choice, hence the "giant douche and turd sandwich" joke is so relatable.)
So while it largely doesn't matter indeed, at some low enough level any small detail might matter. I don't imagine who is that guy who was going to vote Kamala based on WP endorsement, but, well, maybe there is one. Really, I have no idea.
I think there are some number of people who are trying to decide what's "true" or "real" and while I don't think they'd have even noticed a WaPo editorial, I do think they might hear that Bezos prevented an endorsement and see it as indicative that the endorsement of Harris was somehow dishonest and tally it as a stone on Trump's side of the "reality scale."
I'm sure you're mostly right, but there are no doubt a few still on the fence, which can only either be people who have not been exposed to the truth about Trump (e.g. people who only watch Trump sane-washed sources like Fox), or republicans who are well aware of the danger he poses, but are having a hard time accepting that the responsible thing to do is vote against him.
For the few that are still on the fence, then more straight shooting reporting, from any source, can only help.
To me this is a total cop out, and very irresponsible, for the Washington Post to not want to "take sides" and express an opinion. I guess they would've let Hitler win election too, rather than want to "take sides" and say anything bad about him. It's like not wanting to express an opinion on whether a grizzly bear or a hamster would be a better pet for a 5 year old, because you're afraid of upsetting the grizzly bear.
I like that many people here have speculated that Bezos simply wants to avoid the ire of a possible Trump administration. This is very charitable, so much so that it ignores another reasonable guess a person could make based off of the same objective information that we all have — that this action is an endorsement, and the person that chose to endorse a candidate did so because he wants them to win.
On one hand you can imagine that Bezos somehow wants a Harris presidency but doesn’t want to appear that way out of fear, but that sounds more fantastical and wishful than “The guy whose company is currently trying to wholesale eliminate the National Labor Relations Board(1) likes Trump’s policies and wants him to win”, especially when you think about what’s going on with the other guy(2) that’s trying to destroy the NLRB.
Sometimes when people indicate they want something to happen it is because they want that thing to happen.
I think the act of spiking the endorsement sends a stronger signal than the lack of endorsement. He could always make his own endorsement, but he didn't.
I don't know what's in his head. I just know that Trump sources are saying it's because of fear of reprisal [0]
I think it can be both. In scenario planning it makes sense for billionaires with large business empires to vote for Trump. One, the few details that can be determined from his platform are around lowering taxes on the very rich and making it easier for them make more money. Two, Trump has been pretty clear in his rhetoric he holds a grudge and will use the government to punish anyone who he perceives is against him. Taken together, there is little to no downside in supporting Trump, even if Harris wins. It's not like Harris is threatening to throw people she doesn't like out of the country. Whereas vocally supporting Harris where Trump wins runs the risk of becoming a target.
By the way, I think Musk did the same math. He likely thinks/knows Trump is an idiot, but it's almost all upside supporting him and little downside. Plus, Musk is likely still upset he was left out of a Whitehouse summit on EVs a few years ago. Regardless of what people think of Musk that was BS, and I wonder if that snub is part of what led him to come out in support of Trump so vocally.
“Elon Musk has been in deep-cover WWE-level kayfabe for the past several years” is an opinion you literally have to make up out of thin air and hopes. There is nothing public indicating that that is true. His enthusiastic and wholehearted embrace of the value set endemic amongst Trump supporters has been and continues to be very much on public display. The dude posts nonstop about culture war bullshit all day when he’s not showing off that he’s carrying around two shields in Elden Ring for some reason.
Billionaires are not aircraft carriers or nation states. They do not have a special type of existence that bestows their opinions or decisions with a deeper complexity or meaning than any other person exercising whatever level of power they have access to. “Jeff Bezos is a guy that has the power to decide what’s printed in a newspaper and exercised it in support of his preferred candidate” as an opinion only sounds outlandish to a non-billionaire because people aren’t comfortable with the idea that for one guy, changing what goes in the newspaper is easier than buying a bumper sticker.
Endorsements have never been without the blessing and influence of the owner of that paper or institution. The extent that an owner lets the editorial team pick an endorsement is the same extent to which they align philosophically. It's an illusion of choice or independence.
If papers were meant to be more neutral, I suppose they would need to be owned as cooperatives by the subscribers themselves, assuming the subscribers were balanced and philosophically diverse.
The key point here is that despite all their biases, the Washington Post and The New York Times were at least perceived as independent, with both of them famously publishing articles that would upset those in power. If their owners feel the need to spike articles unfavorable to the administration, then no more Pentagon Papers etc.
I agree. I was reading about Rupert Murdock's start in Australia. He was able to swing an election there through his ownership of a few newspapers. Newspapers don't have the same pull as they did back then. Now I guess it's the online platforms like Facebook, X, or Reddit. Reddit seems to be captured by the Democratic party.
There used to be a concept of journalistic integrity, to just report the facts, not to put any spin on them. These days that's totally abandoned, it's considered entertainment.
Has an owner ever killed an already-written endorsement 11 days out from an election? You're right that there is an implicit assumption that an owner condones the paper's operation. But to exert control like this so specifically and in such a baldly partisan way is unprecedented, thus the resignations both at the Post and the LA Times.
It's one thing to hire an editorial staff with whom you agree, it's quite another to step in and overrule their attempt to do the job you hired them to do.
It is ironic because Washington Post is the most left leaning of all major news paper. Their endorsement is really a no-op, because there is really only one candidate they could ever consider.
If the Post endorsed Harris but then added an addendum that this was the last election they’d be endorsing, this would make sense and seem a lot more impartial to a now 40-year tradition.
I went to return something to Amazon and though it was clearly their fault for sending the wrong item, the rep said “we’ll make a one time exception here” and I said fine whatever. Seems like there’s a Bezos precedent for this kind of “last time” approach lol
A while ago, the failing/risks of banks that were too exposed to particular sectors (crypto/blockchain) brought some discussion on the merits of diversification of key risks.
In a highly partisan landscape with increasing geopolitical tensions, is ownership a key risk to objective news? Is diversification of ownership of news sources a good way to help mitigate that? If so, any good ideas from the HN crowd?
For me, seeing a person or business consciously claim neutrality this year is reprehensible and impossibly out of touch. Whether Bezos likes it or not the business he is in comes with the assumption of an endorsement, and silence is an implicit endorsement. I’d never hold an individual to that standard but power comes with responsibility and this choice is putting his privilege on full display.
Funnily Bezos has probably made more for Harris by stopping the endorsement then if he let it go through. No one would have cared about the endorsement, now this story is everywhere..
Only if your greed is bigger than your pockets. Which is bound to be true for anyone who accumulates this much money and still exploits workers to the degree Amazon does.
A single man issued an edict and ended decades of precedent/history. All for the sake of the mighty dollar and ensuring his multibillion dollar fortune doesn’t take a tumble by a 5-10B in the _possibility_ the wrong candidate gets elected.
Everything is awful about this. What would it take WaPo away from this horrible person?
I find it strange that people are so upset about the absence of an opinion piece from this newspaper. What is the reason? Either you want to be told what to think, or you want everyone else to be told what to think. I think it is the latter. Would there be any outrage here if Fox news decided not to endorse a candidate? I highly doubt it. Some people may like being challenged on what they believe, which is good, but that's probably the edge case
Perhaps one wants to be told what they - the paper as institution, to include both owners and editorial staff - think. What values do they hold, and why? These inform their reporting content and choices.
Moreover, no one thinks well in isolation. Others’ ideas challenge and inform one’s own. To engage, to converse, to question: this is not being told what to think, but rather a catalyst of unique thought. Else why are you posting here?
That’s not exactly what happened. What happened at both the L.A. Times and the Washington Post is that the editorial staff was prepared to endorse Harris until the owner quashed it. That’s what people are upset about.
Endorsing Harris is a no-brainer. Quashing an endorsement of Harris reeks of cowardice.
It seems like it would be less polarizing if it was the default state for news and information outlets to not endorse any candidate ever and just remain as neutral as possible.
Why would they want to appear neutral? All news reporting, no matter what, is inherently biased in some way. There isn’t some “ideal” where that isn’t the case. There can’t be some magical font of unbiased information because just selecting what stories to put on the front page introduces bias.
News can’t be unbiased and being unbiased was never a goal. News is meant to inform, which includes facts as well as analysis. That seemingly the average American doesn’t understand that is a failure of the education system.
> Why would they want to appear neutral? All news reporting, no matter what, is inherently biased in some way. There isn’t some “ideal” where that isn’t the case. There can’t be some magical font of unbiased information because just selecting what stories to put on the front page introduces bias.
Sure, but just because you can't be perfectly unbiased doesn't mean the only alternative is to become a mouthpiece for a political party.
That just isn't true. It is possible to be unbiased in journalism, and it was a major goal of journalists at various times in history. Obviously not all journalists at all times have striven towards this goal, but some have. Stop making excuses for blatant partisanship, instead hold them to a higher standard.
That pretentious “above the fray” belief some news orgs and reporters have is awful and harmful.
NYT is particularly guilty of that behavior.
How one contextualizes a story and presents the attention grabbing headline puts a massive thumb on the scale of how the topic is perceived.
Because of what the article mentions or doesn’t mention, provides context for or no context for, the exact same core story centerpiece is biased and leading. Any impression the author wants to convey is easy to bring out in the “neutral” writing. This is simply a fact of writing.
And yet some reporters and news orgs, like the NYT, profess they are neutral observers as if from the planet zorg recording a miraculous unbiased story.
No, that is impossible and everyone knows it. Claiming to be neutral is gas lighting.
> Why would they want to appear neutral? [...] There isn’t some “ideal”
Getting some notion of what USA politics are like on HN, I can understand why you'd have this viewpoint, but I don't think it's true
The news I am used to, I couldn't tell you what political color it has. The selection they make seems based on the perceived severity, which certainly means there is a selection process that must be introducing some sort of bias, but as near as I can tell, this bias is towards a shared humanity and not a party
Perhaps I am just naïve, so I opened the local Wikipedia and it has no mention of them being accused of having a bias, political coloring or selection, notable omissions, or any such thing
I disagree strongly with the party for hate and egocentricity having come out as the biggest one in the most recent election, and to a lesser extent with the rich people be rich party from the previous ~decade, so it's not like all noses are pointed in the same direction where I'm from; but I couldn't tell you how this organization (the default thing if you turn on your TV at prime time) feels about any particular party beyond that I expect they would condemn hate and violence in general -- shared humanity, basically.
You’re suggesting there’s no difference between journalism that attempts objectivity and outright political advocacy which is clearly false. Perfect neutrality doesn’t exist, we can even get into a discussion of what knowledge is, that doesn’t mean news outlets don’t have an obligation to try. They did in decades past which is evident from a review of older journalism.
maybe biased opinions should be entirely separate from journalistic enterprises if those journalists want a single shred of credibility. people are mad at trump supporters and anti covid and anti vax stuff, and while i agree that's all stupid, i don't blame them at all for falling for it because main stream corporate journalism has destroyed any and all trust with absolutely everyone. maybe if we weren't constantly being lied to and sold something, more people would believe them when they say important things like "trump is taking away reproductive rights" and "covid exists and people are dying"
News outlets by definition can not be neutral. Just look at the insane amount of stuff that the global news agencies like Reuters or AFP push out every minute, and on top of that comes all the state, county and local news.
The very act of filtering what to report to the audience is political in itself. Say, floods or other natural disasters caused or (like wildfires) made worse by climate change. Most of them tend to be ignored outside of the nation they happen, but not reporting on it also means that people don't grasp just how bad climate change already is, and thus the people may not vote for parties or individuals campaigning on climate change.
You learn this by science, and scientific reporting. Not by reporting events usually selected by severity of harm to humans and clickbait factor to enrich the media companies.
I would read "neutral" here to mean "factual" rather than endorsing trump as part of being neutral or something. If one party proposes e.g. impossible things or financially stupid things or whatever it may be (general examples from politics anywhere), that can and should be reported on and would not break neutrality
But it is not. They regularly make endorsements and call outs. They recently called for Biden to step down from the ticket, just months ago. It seems like we should not examine situations based on idealistic, non-existent scenarios but the world we actually live in.
The Washington Post has endorsed a candidate every election cycle since 1976, with the exception of 1988. The New York Times has endorsed a candidate in every presidential election since its founding in 1851.
100%. People upset about this are just upset cause they didn't endorse their candidate. Trust in media/journalism is at an all time low. This is simply a smart move to not alienate 50% of the population. If individual editors/writers/journalists want to endorse someone, take it to your blog or website or twitter.
> "Katharine Graham the previous owner of the Washington Post during the Watergate years was threatened by Holden who famously said, and I will leave out a bit of the quote because it's too crude to say out on the stage, but he said you tell Kate Graham if she prints that we'll put here blank through a big fat ringer, and then they actually worked to try get their broadcast license resented, it's completely un-American, so I guess the only thing I say is as Katharine Graham my role model I'm very willing to let any of my body parts go through a big fat ringer if need be." Jeff Bezos in 2016 when asked about Donald Trump. ^1
I don't think he is pro Trump, but I think he just doesn't want to be on his bad side just in case, just like Zuckerberg he tried to patch his relationship with Trump after he publicly threatened him
"What is truth?" asked the powerful Roman governor of Judea, of a man accused of blasphemy two millennia ago, and we still don't know. What is "neutrality" for a university? Is creationism "neutral"? It was a huge political deal in the US for decades (though it seems to have died down recently), but in the 1980's, 1990's, and into the 2000's there were plenty of people who wanted creationism taught in science classes, or at least to "teach the controversy." Was picking sides on that topic in science class "neutral"?
Is the superiority of phonics based literacy approaches "neutral" or criticism of teachers unions? If a economics professors research indicates that, say, supply-side economics doesn't work under current circumstances, is it "neutral" for her to tell her class that? If a law professor thinks that judges only make ad hoc arguments to achieve whatever ends they desire, can they teach their class legal nihilism?
"Neutral" is the sort of thing that someone who has never actually tried to teach or inform can think is reasonable, until you actually try and do it and realize that there are people out there who strongly want to contest whether the earth is round, and that either you throw up your hands and accept epistemological nihilism or you accept that you have to pick sides, and try and do a good job of picking the right sides.
It's amazing how motivated reasoning and a poltics poisoned mind can be used to make obvious points out to be unreasonable. Institutional neutrality is simple, the organization does what is ncessary to operate, but doesn't prescribe anything unnecessarily over that.
It does not mean that professors are not allowed to talk about disagreeable things that are required for teaching the subject. If anything, it makes it easier for them to do so, as they can teach whatever is necessary to produce well-functioning members of society.
Eg you don't need to endorse a specific candidate to fulfill your duty of teaching students. You don't need to avoid talking about research that runs counter to the organization's politics. You don't need to openly pick sides on protests besides advocating for enough civilty to allow your institution to keep operating, and so on. I'm fairly certain that a good portion of the neutrality statements from universities have been coming from the difficult ideological situation presented by the flaring up of the Israel-Gaza conflict, where picking sides opens them up to either being islamophobes or antisemites.
I'm not really sure what you're getting at with the tension about creationism as part of science education. In my schooling the early science education often covered the history of the topic, which would inevitably talk about the local religious ideas, working it's way through them, sometimes even with brief readings of some associated stories, through to major discoveries that provided the evidence for the modern consensus. That's just part of providing a comprehensive education and connecting it to the culture kids are exposed to?
Neutrality is a problematic ideology because it serves the powerful and the status quo, the first question to ask back is are they (an authority, an institution) really neutral/impartial?
I think it depends how people interpret neutral. Choosing what to talk about or not in itself has influence. It's impossible to be a newspaper and not in any way help or support one side over another in a conflict, even if you don't intend too, you will be, you might even be helping the side you don't cheer for inadvertently, because it's also hard to predict what direction what you say will influence others.
In that sense, I agree with you.
But you can interpret neutral more as not attempting to influence. In that sense, it does not mean the result will be neutral, but that you tried to be. Neutrality is an effort, like trying to be kind to others, or to be positive. It's an attempt at curbing bias. And I think that's something you'd want journalists to practice. Just like it's beneficial to have people try to be kind and positive, even if it's impossible for them to truly be at all times and to the most extent, it does make the world a better place still when people try.
Now, if you tried to read news, and wanted to form your own opinion, would you rather read the one from someone purposely siding with one side, and specifically choosing their words and what to say in a conscious effort to bring you over to their position? Or would you rather read the one from someone attempting to be impartial, disclosing their bias from the start so you can weigh it in, attempting to show the arguments against theirs, as well as their own, spend some time to discuss the other viewpoint, have quotes from both sides, etc.
This is said by both sides, it is equally stupid every time.
If ethics are pretty universal, how is it that one party wants no abortions at all and thinks any abortion that isn't absolutely medically necessary is evil and the other party wants abortions right up until viable birth and thinks that anything less than that is evil?
Especially when considering that most of the world is somewhere in between, where abortions are legal for a few weeks and then illegal unless absolutely necessary.
Endorsements come opinions editors, a special part of the paper where the paper prints opinions, not news.
I agree that it would be nice if news outlets tried to always be neutral, but a lot of TV news channels in the US would have almost nothing to say if you stopped their opinion reporting.
Opinion sections on websites and on TV/video should be segregated from the rest of the organization in some way. On paper having it as a section was fine because it used to be marked relatively clearly and there were serious logistical issues.
However, with video and websites, it is very easy to mix editor opinion with news. People tuning into a news channel mid-report don't necessarily know they're listening to just an opinion, and same goes for people reading the headline from an embed or URL without clicking through to the page.
Another thing I often notice is that opinion pieces get to play more loose with the facts. They can say completely unsubstantiated things or get actual facts wrong, but still say something as if it had the credibility of the organization. Yet if the backlash gets too strong they get to deflect by arguing that it was just an opinion and not meant to reflect on the organization.
The current state of opinion pieces is like running a blog about my research and getting important things wrong there, then expecting people to assume that my actual research publications are accurate.
There’s not really any such thing as neutrality. Arguably universities can maybe step away from things (although this is complicated with departments that are inherently political), but “neutral” if you’re writing about politics always reflects some kind of value judgement. By definition one person’s neutrality is someone else’s bias.
Being neutral in an unbalanced situation means you are purposefully ignoring things that should be said and not putting on the table things that should be there. Not publishing relevant opinions pieces is part of that.
To get some distance, imagine being neutral to every candidates during Russia's last elections, and refusing to publish well researched and argumented opinions people have about the leading candidate.
What do you mean by 'unbalanced'? "Unstable" or "biased"?
The US seems really unstable right now. It is like a ever growing political cacophony. And blaming the "other side" for a mutual problem seems silly for an external observer.
The bad faith tone is making the caricatures real by moving people further from each other and entrenching distinctive extremes as ingroup markers.
E.g. I feel that during the pandemic supporters of the former president believed the caricatures of his policy on the matter, making it a thing.
So if quality news outlets no longer provide journalism when we need it most (breaking down candidate platforms, keeping candidates honest, …). Then it shifts to a variety of unverified sources (ie, TikTok, Fb, Telegram, et al) for those that couldn’t find anything credible.
The population already struggles with determining fact from fiction. Taking away the power from journalists because a _billionaire_ wants to ensure his wealth remains high.
Should this not fall under the "private company, do what they want" mantra we were all so fond of wrt (pre-Musk...) Twitter, Facebook, et al? The further advice then was; "make your own social media platform."
Same thing happened at LA times a few days ago, also replete with an editor quitting, when owner Patrick Soon-Shiong blocked the same Kamala endorsement.
You're free to not subscribe, some editor or other is free to quit, and owners are free to do as they please with their private property. Freedom. What a great idea.
I don't want to read a newspaper where the owner is suppressing -- well, anything -- because of concerns for how it might affect his fortune. I want the owner walled off.
You didn't draw that conclusion when WaPo lied about Russians hacking US electrical infrastructure, sabre rattling for war, then retracting the entire story when it was proved they fabricated the story? One of the authors of the faked story is still employed by WaPo, by the way.
It's only bad when they refuse to bend to your political orthodoxy, not when they knowingly print dangerous and false stories about nation state hacks (eerily similar to NYT's lies about WMDs in Iraq) -- something likely to drag the world to war again.
Strangely, the same people who call newspapers "legacy" are all over Twitter calling WP a failure and that people need to cancel their subscriptions.
There's a trend among Tech Oligarchs to diminish the role of journalism. Seems to be all about getting slices of government contracts, if not controlling them.
He literally tried an autogolpe. I saw it, live, on TV with my own eyes and ears. He's currently promising to pardon the people that participated in it that have been prosecuted while pardoning himself due to his own immune status.
These aren't nobodies, they aren't the only ones close to him saying this, and that's before his public statements. The bulk of Project 2025 is a how-to guide for rooting out administrative disloyalty. I don't think he'll be successful but I don't want to deal with the shit he's going to cause in the attempt.
It would be really really easy to make everyone feel better by nominating literally anyone else, preferably a Moderate Republican. I'll personally go door to door campaigning for them if it means not Trump.
It’s… really not? The dude tried to overturn the previous election, and repeatedly threatens to throw his enemies in jail. Senior members of his own staff have flat out said he’s a fascist and he’s literally running on a promise to round up millions of people and put them in camps.
Like probably we’ll still have elections but you know, so do Hungary and Russia.
People as diverse and mutually antagonistic as George Orwell, Noam Chomsky and C.S. Lewis said that the outer elites -- the exact kind of people that inhabit HN -- were far more thoroughly propagandized than the working class and the poor. It's on full display here.
I'm going to rewrite something verbatim the other candidate posted on his social media network:
CEASE & DESIST: I, together with many Attorneys and Legal Scholars, am watching the Sanctity of the 2024 Presidential Election very closely because I know, better than most, the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential Election. It was a Disgrace to our Nation! Therefore, the 2024 Election, where Votes have just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again. We cannot let our Country further devolve into a Third World Nation, AND WE WON’T! Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.
He's right there saying it. We're in a slow motion train wreck. Bezos is chickening out because of it.
You really might see the end of democracy in America within weeks. Trump is telling you he's going to end it. One of the richest men in the world is listening to him.
I don't think there could be a more powerful endorsement of Trump so far, much more than if Bezos's paper actually printed an endorsement of him (which would have been laughed at):
It's a signal of Trump as extraordinarily powerful, a stronger signal than probably anything else I've seen. That boosts his image among suppoters - remember power is what he sells - and will intimidate many, many more into complying. What journalists and business people, or any elite, will stand up to him now after Bezos and the Washington Post - probably the second most respected news organization in the country - have bent the knee. And it makes a Trump victory look more inevitable, a key selling point for anyone, but especially a populist.
When Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong did the same thing recently, "The Trump campaign swiftly shared the ... story with supporters." [0]
If I didn't have context about the situation, I'd say it makes sense. However I think that in this flawed two-party situation, there is unfairness on both sides, resulting in some sort of balance, and it's bad that one of the richest people on earth could upset the balance in this way, especially at the last moment.
Yeah, I think you’re missing the point a bit here: the fear of endorsing the “wrong” candidate, as it would lead to loss of profit by the owning company, is what led to the axing of the endorsement. Call it what you want: profit and political strongarming silenced a newspaper.
You could have created a top-level comment instead of replying to mine. I don't see how your reply is about my take on it and isn't just your completely different take on the issue.
Ok, I actually RTFA and it just seems like a bunch of conjecture over what the reasons might be? Nobody actually knows?
And the editorial board's comments seem a bit dramatic?
"It represents an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love, and for which we have worked a combined 218 years"
How does it represent an abandonment? These editors have been sharing their convictions for the past combined 218 years. I don't think any reader is going to ask "I wonder who the Post is going to endorse"?
WaPo endorsing Harris would have changed exactly 0 minds. Everyone that would have read it already agrees with them. But it would have made them feel good about their existing world view.
Them _not_ endorsing _will_ change minds. There are people that read Washington Post that would take that as a sign that not even their trusted left-leaning paper is 100% comfortable with the candidate they should have endorsed, so maybe there's something there they should have hesitancy about too.
> An endorsement of Harris had been drafted by Post editorial page staffers but had yet to be published, according to two sources briefed on the sequence of events who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The decision not to publish was made by The Post’s owner — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — according to the same sources.
Not antagonizing the likely future POTUS is smart business especially when said future POTUS is known to lash out with retaliatory rhetoric and actions.
More interesting to me is that this is the third tech billionaire to take a decidedly different stance than he did previously. Musk is quite active, but even Zuckerberg took a much more neutral stance for 2024.
Honestly I'm more surprised that Bezos even bothered. Does he really think the endorsement of The Washington Post editorial board is so significant that it's worth intervening? That seems implausible.
Well I mean the most generous take would be that he's come around about Trump and has decided that the editorial board making an explicit endorsement for Harris isn't in his own (or the country's) interests.
On X they're floating the theory that he knew this would cause a lot of them to resign, and wanted that for other reasons. All we can do is speculate, I guess.
It's almost as if coming out in favor of taxing unrealized capital gains right before the election wasn't the stroke of political brilliance that Harris thought it was.
"Hmm, I'm facing a close election. Hey, wait, I know! I'll make enemies of people who buy ink by the trainload and bandwidth by the petabyte-second."
I really wish somebody could have talked her out of that idea, or at least convinced her to wait another couple of months before putting it on the table. It was an incredible faux pas, maybe a history-changing one, whose consequences were trivially foreseeable.
Bezos cares because his businesses have billions of dollars in revenue from the federal government. Trump has already claimed to personally review those contracts and was reported as trying to kill the $10B JEDI contract:
By all accounts, he’s prepared to be more authoritarian and less bound by the law if re-elected and he’s already threatening journalists with rape and talking about yanking broadcast licenses for channels which don’t kowtow to him.
of course it is. endorsements by major entities such as major newspapers… endorsements by celebrities and all these other points form the constellation of how a candidate is perceived. a huge chunk of people will not just vote blindly for whoever seems to be more broadly supported but actually deeply like whoever is put in front of them. and they will also believe it if a bunch of newspapers release the same story at the same time… even if there is no evidence offered to support the main assertion. or even if its obviously false. creation of the appearance of a consensus is an extremely powerful tool
Helpfully, the relevant quote I was thinking of is directly on the books website:
> Do not obey in advance.
> Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.
(The quote on the website goes on with several pages of examples.)
I've yet to see an argument against this not delivered in bad faith.
If the publication in question was the NY Post, Washington Times, or another center-right newspaper, the very same group currently having a collective meltdown on social media would be praising them with an equally melodramatic "saving democracy" or some other manufactured phrase du jour.
I'm really not sure of this. The argument I've mostly seen is that the endorsement was always mostly meaningless. If anything, this is a "coverup worse than the crime" situation. Killing the endorsement is much more notable than just letting it happen because it's what everyone was worried about when Bezos bought the paper - that he'd inject his own consideration into it, something he said he wouldn't do. If some billionaire owned the NY Post and banned them from endorsing Trump, that would absolutely be a story as well.
I don't think anyone thinks it's not clear who the writers at the NY Post or the Washington Post generally want to win. That makes this whole situation so much more stupid on Bezos's part.
It makes sense in so much as "it's a risk to our business to endorse Harris because of the risk of falling afoul of Trump's vindictive nature should he win."
From a fiduciary standpoint, I agree with that assessment. From the standpoint of a citizen, I find the implication alarming.
I do believe that this is the reasoning behind the decision, but it is certainly speculation on my part.
If you own a paper money isn't the point. Just like in a hospital or a law firm or even a bank. You do the right thing because society trusts you and making money comes from that. Do the wrong thing, and your business will vanish.
You are forgetting that the ftc is looking at amazon under biden, one would hope that harris will keep kahn in the post (because she's kicking asses that have been needed to be kicked for 30+ years).
I think he's in a bad place. If he endorses trump he's endorsing a potential fascist dictator. If he endorses harris he's contributing to amazon's anti-trust peril.
This is why we need to repeal and replace the First Amendment with an amendment that guarantees freedom of expression within the bounds of civilized discourse (e.g., open Nazism=crime) and severely punishes government officials who use their power to stifle such expression. The First Amendment, as written, protects speech that oughtn't be protected, and fails to protect speech that ought to be protected, hence the current situation with the Washington Post being cowed into withdrawing their endorsement by the threat of a vindictive Trump.
Countries with no First Amendment, where hate speech is in fact criminalized, routinely score higher on international free-speech indices than the USA because in the USA the government, especially the Republican Party, has the means and the will to intimidate the press into silence or capitulation.
I guess there's no regulatory guidance here, on media ownership interfering with media op-ed operations ? Even when Bezos (probably) swore up and down he would never interfere ?
> Scientific American makes second-ever endorsement, backs Kamala Harris. This is only the second time in the magazine's 179-year history that it has made an endorsement in a presidential race
The first time they ever made an endorsement was (wait for it) 2020! Everything has become political these days.
So we have reached the intimidation phase of this election, where businesses owners fear repercussions from Trump (or standing up against him) and his entourage for not supporting him.
It's fascinating to compare other countries on the brink of authoritarianism with our own. In other countries it happens because of bread lines and complete dysfunction here it happens despite a country out of war and an economy that's humming along at a brisk pace.
It's the equivalent of playing chicken with a train because you're bored.
My first thought is that it's sad that a billionaire owner can override the will and culture of the journalists that compose the paper.
My second thought is that it's really bad that this could have been done in order to help Blue Origin get government contracts.
Think about it, the actions of a news paper are being influenced by what's best for a aerospace company. How did this happen? It happened because more and more companies, across all industries, are owned by fewer and fewer people.
According to the article, Jeff Bezos is presumably afraid that Trump would continue to punish Amazon. If that is the case, this seems like an entirely futile exercise.
Not that corporate PR responses are ever particularly illuminating. I read an article regarding information conveyed per syllable. English was near the top. Languages with less information per syllable like Spanish were spoken faster. In dead last place were PR statements from Fortune 500 companies.
Imagine taking as many steroids as Jeff Bezos has taken, only to end up being afraid of an obese elderly man who cheats at golf. What was the point of all that flexing?
This isn't a normal election, or anything remotely close to it. It'd be lovely if we had TWO relatively normal candidates and could vote for them in our normal partisan ways.
You may have noticed that basically everyone in Trump's first term cabinet has come out and called him things ranging from "moron" to "fascist" to a "danger to the country". This is not normal. It's extremely abnormal. It's a warning to the country.
It's at extraordinary times like these when the country needs some leadership, from the media as well as those in power, to highlight the danger. Many senior republicans have stepped up and announced they are going to vote for Harris. It's a very poor look for a newspaper, faced with a once in a lifetime election like this, to effectively say "we're gonna sit this out out - we have no editorial opinion on who is better for the country". Very sad.
Weird, because in Trump’s last presidency he was pretty anti Jeff Bezos. But I guess however they feel about each other, the assumed business tax benefits of a trump presidency make him want trump
It is one thing to be neutral when one candidate wants more military spending and a lower top income tax bracket and the other is in favor of higher taxes on top and more social spending.
But in this case one candidate literally tried to subvert the last election. Even ignoring all his other issues, that one is enough to say we shouldn't vote for him.
The most kind way to read this is that he is concerned of reprisal, no different than the reprisal he faced from the Saudi government (with likely Trump assistance via David Pecker) in 2019.
Here’s an alternative take. Note, I’m absolutely not a Bezos fan. Maybe he is just chickening out against Trump and/or fighting against the proposed billionaire tax (which IMO will never happen.)
But consider that 1) even with all the damage Trump could do, Bezos will still be richer than god, 2) Bezos did not instruct the Washington Post to endorse Trump, and 3) he doesn’t seem to have asked them to keep things quiet either.
So of course this story breaks and of course there is all this media hullabaloo with the upshot being everyone now:
* knows that the WaPo was about to endorse Harris.
* is reminded that Trump has made official decisions and improperly pressured government matters based on personal feelings.
* is aware that even the 2nd richest man in the world fears the personal ire of a presidential candidate in a democracy, ostensibly with a solid rule of law.
I hate that this comes across as “he’s the billionaire we deserve, but not the one we need right now, and oh, BTW he's also playing 4D chess," but all this seems very expected. So maybe another way to look at this is: Bezos appears to submit to Trump, which in itself serves as a very publicly warning to the world about what will happen under Trump, and indirectly endorses Harris anyway.
I don't think he has to do 4D chess to signal support against Trump. He could always just use his giant megaphone to decry Trump as a wannabe dictator that improperly used his own power when he was President to punish his political enemies - something Trump does not shy away from publicly admitting.
Trump may be handed unprecedented [0] power, is quite openly and plainly motivated by retribution, has repeatedly threatened to use the power of the military and the state against his political enemies, and at least once has used his own media platform to call for the termination of the US constitution.
(Those are facts. Not political claims.)
Putting aside any broader assessments of his character, I think it is rational to be afraid of the consequences of being on the wrong side of such a person.
What is depressing is the number of people in positions of influence who do not feel like modelling the virtuous position of having fear of the consequences of doing what they believe to be the right thing but doing it anyway.
[0] I realise that in principle there is a precedent for him having this power because he had it before. But what any presidential candidate in 2024 now has is the opportunity to run an executive with the clear legal opinion that they are permanently immune from prosecution for most of their actions, and an implicit handbook on how to bury criminal acts in official communications that are covered by absolute immunity. This extended power has no precedent.
Why is everyone in this thread pushing the idea that Bezos is scared of Trump? It seems more plausible to me he is scared of the DoJ breaking up Amazon under Harris.
Because soon it’s very possible Trump will rally the military behind him and start imprisoning billionaires who dared to cross him. He’ll be the only “billionaire” with real muscle to imprison his enemies for life or even summary execution.
About half of American voters are behind Trump. More poor/less educated coming to him compare to past cycles. Why wouldn’t a billionaire scared of him?
There's been so much focus on education as the new fault line in American politics. And though it is huge, and the less educated increasingly do support ultra-conservative policies, I think the even bigger fault line is across genders. And tech workers, though usually well educated, skew dramatically male and those degrees and salaries don't make them immune to the growing culture of male grievance and victimhood.
I think they, like even some on the left, have reasoned that Trump will only be there for four years. That's it. He's gone, or in jail. That's four years they know who their opponent will be and the Democratic Party can prepare. Thinking a long game, it is possible the left has given up and said fine, let's get it over with.
Probably already mentioned in the comments below, but the subtext here is obvious. Bezos thinks Trump is very likely to win and he has killed this endorsement because it might screw his broad business interests in all kinds of ways under the administration of a vengeful Trump. The nature of Amazon makes it much more exposed to regulatory heat inside the U.S than would be the case for a more purely digital tech-driven firm like, say, Meta.
Aside from the likely cynicism of the move, the cliquish criticism of Bezos reeks of moralizing hypocrisy. Is there some exact moral duty among major tech company founders to effusively endorse specifically progressive, liberal elite-endorsed democrat candidates, to show their own kumbaya credentials? Bullshit. Even the ones who vigorously support democrat politicians are no less self interested in doing so. It almost always boils down to money and favorable regulations, whether someone supports the donkey or the elephant.
It's not a novel observation but there's another conclusion you can draw from the same information: it's in bezos's best interest for trump to win and he wants him to.
Comparing the NYT and WaPo, seems to me the latter is more stridently alerting everyone to the dangers of a Trump presidency, this killed endorsement notwithstanding.
Actively making the Democrats chance of winning less likely for your own personal interests is shortsighted.
Jeff still needs customers, he needs a sane society where his businesses can operate from ?
Sorry but the leader of the Republican Party is completely unhinged. Bezos might get away with a tax break or avoid some other legal scrutiny or even Trumps gestapo hit squad,but wow, you’re giving up a lot for a little.
Actions like this completely undermine one of the main reasons people believe Trump should be president. Which is that he is too rich to be bought. Well, look at the rich people being bought by their own greed and shortsightedness now.
Do you vote according to what others tell you to? Or do you believe most other people do so blindly? Dem voters will stay home because they didn't read a papers opinion? Or you believe that others can't tell the stance of a newspaper regarding a candidate from their reporting on them?
Cannot in any way understand why this is an actual issue.
Sheesh If more newspapers would stay out of endorsing political parties we would live in a better world.
Frankly leftist newspaper propaganda has done little but make the rightist ( especially the ones with a racist agenda ) political parties expand massively.
Every election i. almost any european country is showing this trend.
Why on earth are you all flaming this? Because it means its a hidden Trump support? Kamala is immensly unpopular, outside of all the glam endorsements.
She is no Obama thats for sure.
How abour adressing the root cause of that?
Wow I wish every newspaper was properly unbiased.
tldr I think you are all idiots for outrage over lack of proper political bias in a newspaper.
Your comment broke several of the site guidelines, by (1) posting in the flamewar style, including nationalistic flamebait, (2) being snarky, (3) doing political battle, and (4) commenting about getting downvoted. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules? We'd appreciate it because we're trying to avoid hell here.
One candidate has proposed a day of violence and given indications they consider “anyone who disagrees with me” as an “enemy within”. I don’t think they have talked about televised tribunals, and they also have a … tenuous … relationship with the truth or following through on promises (even when baselines against normal “politician lie rate”)
To be clear, the camps never went away, and we’ve been mass deporting for decades now. Support of ICE is a bipartisan effort. Iirc the only change Biden made was to end the policy of family separations. The rhetoric is massively different, but the actual policy is not.
I really wouldn’t hold my breath for a president that doesn’t fearmonger about immigration in the forseeable future.
Which party is ending capitalism? I'm curious, because there's one party saying explicitly that they intend to end the democratic process, one party explicitly stating the goal is the end of the rule of law, and one party saying they want to deploy the military against the supporters of the other political party.
You could make the argument that those positions are fundamentally opposed to capitalism as well, but that's not as explicit.
Regardless, only one party is threatening either of your alternatives, your straw man nonsense about ending capitalism not withstanding.
HN is not a living organism, it’s an abstract entity formed by the people who engage in the site. As it happens within any community, there’s no such thing as consistency. In fact, so diverse is this community that I’d wager that luck and chance explain much of what gains traction or gets flagged here.
What an odd view of history to imagine that newspapers weren't always (and importantly) open about their editor's opinions.
The idea of "objective journalism" is both ahistorical and unsound and mostly just acts as cover for claiming that certain journalism has subjectivity we're not allowed to call out.
It's far better to know how the editors see the world than to falsely pretend that they don't.
What a sad state of affairs when people who consider themselves educated enough to opine about what newspapers should and should not do clearly has no historical understanding or basic familiarity with newspapers.
Every choice of coverage is an opinion about what is important, and shapes the tone of coverage as surely as an editorial. This is actually a very common critique of the News Media, which loves to aggrandize itself by saying that it is neutral.
At least editorials are honest about the views of the institution.
Facts still must be interpreted. It could be a fact that a credible source claimed X and a non-credible source claimed the opposite. A newspaper's job is to also provide this context, not merely the "facts" of what was stated.
Similarly, an endorsement could in countless ways not simply be partisan. For example, based on what is most predicted to help the country with X/Y/Z.
If this was a long-standing policy, or one at least announced well in advance of the election it wouldn't get much attention. That it's coming right before the election for transparently selfish reasons on the part of the paper's owner is not great.
For the past 100 years, literally since WWI, all media organizations have been used to constantly launder opinions into the brains of the American people, disguised as 'fact'.
The traditional ideal is that editors and journalists exercise a freedom of practice that owners don't intefere with, much the same as the academic freedom tenured professors are traditionally given at universities.
In practice, that's of course not the case (in either domain), but it predictably makes front page news when an owner acts too egregiously domineering.
> Couldn't a simple answer here be that he felt Kamala is unqualified and terrible and as a newspaper with a lot of readership and influence, he decided against endorsing her?
Sure, but why should the personal opinion of the owner of the newspaper prevail over the opinion of the editorial staff?
Sure, but then Bezos should be writing something explaining it. Instead, he's silently just using his money to squash opinions he doesn't agree with. The is the exact sort of conspiracy that Trump likes to claim where Soros is the reason anyone doesn't endorse him, except now it literally happened and it's to help him, and he turned around and took a meeting with Blue Origin right after.
I think Biden fell UP stairs more often on camera.
Recent paper came out suggesting that classifying media coverage of major media outlets identified something like a 94% positive take for Kamala and a 98% negative take for Trump. I think the media companies gave up the mask a while ago. James O'keefe had a great undercover journalism piece where one the producer's of MSNBC outright said they are a propaganda arm for the DNC.
Regardless of its impact on the election, this decision ends the Washington Post a serious news organization. Prior to this, you could reasonably trust it as a decent source, if questionable on tech & Amazon stories due to the ownership bias. After this, it's clear that Bezos purchased it with intent to push his own views. It's no longer a reliable source for news, it's just a mouthpiece for Amazon & Bezos's other companies.
Sad to see an important newspaper die in this way. I hope the people that do good work there are able to find new employment.
Yes we can infer. His political leanings are fairly Democrat. His media puppet is very left leaning. He didn’t announce this policy years ago when it would have been a nothing burger, instead just a couple weeks before the election as a splashy egg on face moment.
I can smell fish. His best information is that he was backing the wrong horse and now he is scrambling to contain the damage. Because it’s also quite a slap to the Harris campaign, he must not think much of their chances or sees a very, very asymmetrical risk profile here. Snub versus scorched earth.
We are going to be in for a very interesting four years.
I think the endorsement was just bad journalism or bad writing and Bezos just did not want to risk it. If such an endorsement would come out in such a divided climate, then i would want it to be excellent. Maybe it was just partisan.
They endorsed in 2020 and 2016 and 2012 and 2008 and if they were so serious about adopting national neutrality they should have announced this in January instead of spiking an existing endorsement
So why is it that this is about money and Amazon contracts? Why isn't it about Kamala just being so bad, in Bezos's eyes, that she doesn't deserve an endorsement. I think that's way more likely.
I am not surprised however that the liberal media will look for any problem over admitting it's their own candidate that's the problem.
Bezos owns 9% of Amazon. His personal share of any 10bn contract might be a few hundred million over many years. He doesn't care!
> Bezos owns 9% of Amazon. His personal share of any 10bn contract might be a few hundred million over many years. He doesn't care!
The rest of your comment aside, I think this sentence proves too much. You can use it to prove that Bezos doesn't care about almost anything in Amazon, or that most billionaires don't care much about what happens in their companies, because it only impacts a small part of their already vast fortune.
It's pretty clear that this is not true for many billionaires.
> Why isn't it about Kamala just being so bad, in Bezos's eyes, that she doesn't deserve an endorsement.
Bad for whom? Bezos is a multibillionaire, his problems are not our problems. It’s detached from reality to think a guy that made his fortune exploiting workers and other businesses in any way understands or cares for society’s struggles.
All: when commenting, please stick to this story, and don't do flamewar or generic electoral battle as that's not what the site is for.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Newspapers publish opinions for the same reason that they publish comic strips: people want to read them. Readers seek them out. Newspapers are a business and have to give their customers what they want.
The problematic aspect here is that the current business owner, Jeff Bezos, has a conflict of interest. Bezos is making a bad business decision for The Washington Post, sacrificing it and losing readers for the sake of his other business interests, i.e., government contracts. It's unlikely that an independent owner with no conflict of interest would make the same decision.
You seem to be implying that he made a decision based on other business interests, against those of the Post, but there is no support for that in the article. Do you have a source which describes this motive?
It seems like not endorsing candidates might be good for the Washington Post's business, by improving its perceived impartiality. In addition to this, the WaPo seems to have spent much of its history not endorsing candidates, and it has been doing (financially) poorly recently; perhaps this is a return to more profitable and credible roots.
While you may not take this as proof it affected this exact decision, it's hard to ignore it as a possible reason.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/10/amazon-wants-to-depose-presi...
> In addition to this, the WaPo seems to have spent much of its history not endorsing candidates
In recent history, apparently the last time they did not endorse a candidate was the 1980's.
- "You seem to be implying that he made a decision based on other business interests, against those of the Post, but there is no support for that in the article. Do you have a source which describes this motive?"
There's support in that Trump personally met with Blue Origin's C-suite, on the same day the Washington Post spiked their Harris endorsement—an apparent reward to Bezos, and one that put his business interests in the spotlight.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2024/10/25/2024-ele... ("Trump met with Bezos’s Blue Origin executives after The Post’s non-endorsement")
>by improving its perceived impartiality
Can WaPo really be perceived as "impartial" if we know they already were going to endorse Harris?
It would take way more for WaPo to not be in a position where mentioning it in one phrase with "impartiality" wouldn't sound like an absurdist joke. They can walk this road, but so far there's absolutely no indication they want to, and Bezos twisting their arms can't be taken as such evidence.
Apparently Blue Origin executives were meeting with Trump yesterday
https://x.com/MerylKornfield/status/1849977796304478327
There is direct support in the article. Amazon lost a $10B contract because Trump doesn't like Bezos, which is because he owns the WP, a paper that is generally critical of Trump. By killing this endorsement, he's buying some goodwill from Trump, at the cost of alienating the bulk of WP's readers.
> there is no support for that in the article.
Untrue. At the top, "KEY POINTS: In a 2019 lawsuit, Amazon claimed it lost a $10 billion Pentagon cloud computing contract to Microsoft because Trump used “improper pressure ... to harm his perceived political enemy” Bezos."
Bezos was blackmailed by Trump ally and National Enquirer boss David Pecker a few years ago. He resisted then and it led to the most expensive divorce in history.
Just some context worth adding.
There is support for that reasoning in the article linked.
> not endorsing candidates might be good for the Washington Post's business, by improving its perceived impartiality
You're at the wrong meta level - if the paper's owner is making the editorial decisions, there's no impartiality to perceive in the first place.
I mean, if the question at hand was "should the editors endorse someone?" then what you're saying could stand. But that's out the window if they're being overruled by somebody without even a presumption of impartiality.
It takes a lot time to build the reputation of impartiality. To be honest only BBC comes into mind when I think about a somewhat impartial medium.
What I see is a traditionally Democartic leaning newspaper, choosing "impartiality" as an excuse, because they cannot come out and support Republicans. And of course I believe that this is the choice of the owner.
Trump has repeatedly threatened media companies he thinks have wronged him with specific actions he's said he will take as president. Bezos has a whole business empire to worry about that goes way beyond WaPo. He doesn't need a petty president trying to wreck his bottom line for 4 years. And with a business that big, Trump has a lot of ways he could cause trouble.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-this-the-reason-jeff-bezos-...
From the article
> In a 2019 lawsuit, Amazon claimed it had lost a $10 billion cloud computing contract with the Pentagon to Microsoft because Trump had used “improper pressure ... to harm his perceived political enemy” Bezos.
The implication being that endorsing Harris might cause Amazon to lose out on government contracts in case Trump wins the presidency.
Ignoring the objective fact that Trump is a fascist is not "objective", it's delusional.
Really this is a lesson in why the corporate news model is doomed to fail. Upping my contributions to serious investigative journalist organizations like ProPublica
One of ProPublica's greatest recent victories (in my opinion) was the FOIA lawsuit to secure public release of PPP loan information, along with other COVID relief loans like EIDL. Aside from the sheer scale ($1 trillion) and the rampant fraud [1], there were politicians from both sides of the aisle who took these forgivable business loans while delaying other forms of government relief.
1. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3906395
Pro publica doesn't endorse
I disagree. This is the exception rather than the rule. The more corporate, the more likely to give the people what they want.
I just hope this will finally put to bed any ridiculous mentions of "liberal media bias", or that the tech sector has some liberal bias.
I think new-tech/mass-consumer-facing tech is always going to have a liberal bias - that just plays well with the dynamics of getting new users to use your procuct. It's only once a company/organization establishes itself as a mega Corp will we see the conservative idealogy exerting it's want to sustain/conserve the accumulated power.
Why would it put it to bed? It’s worth people knowing that the media leans over 90% left from all the stats that exist.
Ridiculous is thinking there is no legacy liberal media bias. Take the top 100 political articles from WaPo and the NYT from this year and tell me how many are anti Republican. I’m guessing nearly all of them.
The media isn't even just liberal. It's off the charts liberal even among liberals. Among journalists, Democrats outnumber Republicans 10 to 1: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/dec/30/only-34-us-....
This is reflected in news coverage. Consider how they cover things like Voter ID or proving citizenship to vote, which 80% of people support: https://news.gallup.com/poll/652523/americans-endorse-early-...
Or consider how papers coverage policies like affirmative action that supermajorities of Americans oppose: https://www.forbes.com/sites/vinaybhaskara/2023/07/10/americ...
Conservatives keep moving the goal post. I see a less criticism of conservatives due to the fear of being labeled as bias. i.e. the coverage of Biden's cognitive decline vs Trump's cognitive decline.
> Jeff Bezos, has a conflict of interest
He is the outright (ultimate, through a holding company) owner of The Washington Post.
Therefore there is no conflict of interest. He gets to decide what its interests are.
I think it is worth asking whether it is in the public interest to allow people with other extensive business interests to own influential media businesses, but that is usual these days. Most media is owned by media (and sometimes more) conglomerates with many interests around the world.
This is unhelpfully pedantic.
My point is that Bezos would likely make a different decision for The Washington Post if he wasn't concerned about retaliation against his other business interests, and in fact he allowed the paper to make political endorsements in the past.
> He gets to decide what its interests are.
No he doesn't. He can choose to do with it whatever he may like. But whether it's in its interest or not is a property purely derived from the current state of the journal and the market. Whether he likes it or not.
And, yes, the issue stems from business ownership of a so-called "independent" news outlet which has clear conflict of interest. Which is something that we should not accept and continue fighting against, whether it's usual or not.
this is absolute BS. Journals are meant to have a split between the editorial board and their owners, because the credibility and ethics of the journal comes first. People don't read, or shouldn't want to read anyways, a paper that is just whatever the fuck Bezos decided was good that week; things should be as unbiased as possible.
> Newspapers publish opinions for the same reason that they publish comic strips: people want to read them. Readers seek them out. Newspapers are a business and have to give their customers what they want.
The customer is predominantly the advertiser. Newspapers publish opinions to have something to fill the empty space surrounding the advertisements.
Indeed, I'd assumed paper use opinion columns because they're cheaper than news.
Calling it a "bad business decision" just reveals your political preference. People who get their opinions from journalists is a constantly shrinking crowd. Today I mostly see only people of age 50+ who still actively think journalists can provide an accurate worldview for them.
> Calling it a "bad business decision" just reveals your political preference.
It absolutely does not. You have no idea what my political preferences are, and I'm quite confident that your guesses are wrong.
> Newspapers are a business and have to give their customers what they want.
If this is all we expect of journalism in a Democracy, then the current state of the "business" of "news" in the US should be satisfactory to all.
> If this is all we expect of journalism in a Democracy
Straw man. I didn't say that.
It's not a maximum, but it is a minimum. Newspapers require money to operate, and they're competing for attention in a capitalist economy. No attention. no money, no newspaper. In a democracy, you can't force-feed newspapers to the population. They voluntarily choose to read or not read.
The "good news" is that many people in a democracy are interested in the hard truth. Nonetheless, it helps to package that along with softer marketing and entertainment.
> Newspapers are a business and have to give their customers what they want.
Isn't that supposed to be news and not worthless institutional opinions on the presidential office?
> It's unlikely that an independent owner with no conflict of interest would make the same decision.
An unconflicted owner wouldn't endorse either candidate. In general, hopefully, but in this election, particularly.
Having an editorial opinion is not the same thing as having a conflict of interest. In general readers don’t expect newspapers to contain only news, but also opinions and editorial decisions. Candidate endorsements are a typical part of what’s expected.
> Isn't that supposed to be news and not worthless institutional opinions on the presidential office?
That's the goal of Journalism. Newspaper only goals: sell newspapers, sell ads in those newspapers (and since it we live in the age of internet - their website).
> An unconflicted owner wouldn't endorse either candidate. In general, hopefully, but in this election, particularly.
unconflicted owner's opinion shouldn't effect editorial staff opinions.
that's my stance as well
WaPo needed someone to make a difficult decision, conflict of interest or not, to just rip the bandaid off of their imprisonment of endorsing candidates
that's over now. the end. the market is going to forget this was ever a thing.
'...sacrificing it and losing readers for the sake of his other business interests, i.e., government contracts.'
Sound point unless you figure Bezos is accepting government may be about to change?
WaPo takes a hit if they don't endorse, but that's not Bezos's core business. If they endorse Kamala and Trump wins - other businesses of Bezos would suffer. Basically it's safer to not endorse anyone.
> Newspapers are a business and have to give their customers what they want.
This is true, but it shouldn't be viewed as unproblematic. Audience capture is a huge problem, and news organizations telling their audience what they here to the point that people get siloed in their own echo chambers is one of the main reasons why things are such a mess.
Newspapers have always been like this.
Here's a front page title from the Nov. 5 1888 edition of the New York World, run by Pulitzer (yes, that one):
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1888-11-0...A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.
I'd say it's definitely possible to be in business and at the same time have business ethics, to care about the truth. I don't think it's inherently wrong to publish honest opinions, as well as funny comic strips, along with the other news, if it helps sell papers.
The problems occur when business ethics, and the truth, honesty, get tossed out for the sake of profit and/or partisanship.
I don't think it's a bad business decision. I stopped reading the WaPo when I got sick of its partial treatment of everything. And I'm not talking about supporting one candidate or another, I'm talking about sticking to facts and not ideological positions.
This decision by Bezos is a shot across the bow in the right direction, in my opinion. Clear eyed news are needed and aside from FT.com (which these days is also trending toward alarmism) there's precious little left out there. I don't care about a journos' opinion, I really don't. I just want them to report about facts on the ground and not pick sound pieces for clickbaits.
I think you’re reacting to alarmism as though it’s unwarranted. Have you considered it might actually be warranted?
> I just want them to report about facts on the ground and not pick sound pieces for clickbaits.
There's no evidence of an overall change in the newspaper's direction. Bezos did not fire all of the opinion editors, for example. Neither did Bezos announce this "policy" in advance. It was a last-minute retraction after the editors had already drafted an endorsement.
It's the editorial board that has the conflict of interest--between running a newspaper, and using the newspaper as a vehicle to advance their personal political ideologies. I grew up in the D.C. area reading WaPo. It went from being a milquetoast paper to being a vehicle for political radicals. And that's been a disaster for the business. The paper was on pace to lose $100 million last year, and has lost 500,000 subscribers since 2020: https://www.foxnews.com/media/washington-post-lose-100-milli....
WaPo's business is catering to D.C. professionals. The nature of the country's electoral politics is that roughly half of those are going to be batting for each side. It's a good business decision not to seem like you're rooting for one side or the other.
the result of 'business' decisions can be measured in more than just profits. News media routinely make 'bad business decisions' because they are tools of their owners. Hence why they go bankrupt often
Newspapers are supposed to be about news, you can't trust someone who tries to tell you how to think about things. I just want news and I want to figure out how to think about it myself.
Companies (mainly media based) have been moving from giving the customers what the customers want, to giving the customers what the company wants. This is just another one of those.
that’s some mental gymnastics. so newspapers are free to publish opinions, it is in their business interest………………(but only if the opinion is the one I want otherwise it is not good business)
> so newspapers are free to publish opinions
That's a strange way of putting it. Newspapers are free to publish anything, by the first amendment to the Constitution.
> but only if the opinion is the one I want otherwise it is not good business
I didn't say that. I said that people want to read opinions. Sometimes they enjoy reading opinions that they disagree with, and arguing with those opinions.
> Newspapers are a business and have to give their customers what they want.
I really want to challenge this idea. Businesses can have missions quite distinct from what the majority of their prospective customers would want.
If I had practically unlimited money I wouldn't ever think of funding a news organisation and then only have it produce content that customers wanted. I would have a purpose for it, stemming from my own ethics.
I think it quite naive to consider Bezos has not done the same and that this decision is simply in line with his personal political interests.
Neoliberalism is a really poor substitute for personal morality and accountability.
> Businesses can have missions quite distinct from what the majority of their prospective customers would want.
Failing businesses.
> I would have a purpose for it, stemming from my own ethics.
I never said that business is inherently in conflict with ethics, and I, as an entrepreneur myself, believe that ethics are necessary for business: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41951447
> I think it quite naive to consider Bezos has not done the same and that this decision is simply in line with his personal political interests.
I claimed that his decision is simply in line with his personal interests. Whether those are financial interests or political interests is difficult to determine. Nonetheless, the decision was bad for The Washington Post. Compare to Twitter/X: Elon Musk is indisputably using the social network he acquired for his personal political interests, and that has indisputably been bad for the business, driven away users and advertisers, and his creditors have vastly downgraded the value of the investment.
> Neoliberalism is a really poor substitute for personal morality and accountability.
This seems like a nonsequitur. How is "Neoliberalism" relevant? Is that what you believe I proposed? If so, you're wrong.
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You want them to name... readers of newspapers?
Editorials, by an outlet's editorial board or otherwise, have consistently been among the most popular content in news for over a century. That includes endorsements.
Opinion articles aren't about the opinion (well, technical sw dev articles where I'm looking for the standard way to do something are, but not non-industry news stuff) unless the writer is in a position to make their opinion matter, they're about the reasons for the opinion. They're interesting if there are reasons that are interesting, or if the writer's choice of reasons is interesting.
To play Devils Advocate for a moment: Why do we need, or even want, a newspaper to endorse a President? How does it not undermine a paper's journalistic ethics to be neutral and fair?
I actually agree with you, newspapers really shouldn't be doing this. Our major local paper in the Twin Cities basically torched its reputation by endorsing wildly unqualified candidates for city offices (like, one guy they endorsed for Minneapolis city council didn't even live in Minneapolis). They recently decided to stop doing endorsements at all, which I think is the right decision.
But that's not what happened here. The editors did their normal endorsement process, but the owner of the paper stepped in and personally overrode their process for this one particular endorsement. That's a way different story from deciding to stop doing endorsements.
Another point that just occurred to me: Who is the endorsement supposed to influence? I think in America at least, the national media has become so hyper partisan in the eyes of its readers, that an endorsement of a newspaper is really just preaching to the crowd. What difference does that endorsement really make?
At the national level, I don't think it really makes a difference if a newspaper endorses a candidate for President. Those who read and value the opinions of that newspaper are more inclined to vote for the endorsed candidate anyways.
> But that's not what happened here. The editors did their normal endorsement process, but the owner of the paper stepped in and personally overrode their process for this one particular endorsement.
He owns the paper, they just work there.
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Endorsements are published by the editorial section which is specifically separated from the rest of the newspaper so to not undermine the neutrality of the journalism in the other sections.
Opinion and analysis has always been part of news publications, and plays an accepted role in adding layers of interpretation onto the raw "facts" that is crucial in making those facts interpretable by readers who aren't expert in the subject matter.
The idea that editorial team has some kind of expertise, unavailable to general population, that allows them ecxlusive ability to properly understand current events, seems to have no factual support at all. They are professionals in giving their opinions, it doesn't make their opinions be better that anybody else's. Experience suggests they are usually worse.
It seems like the newspaper editorial section really ought to endorse somebody to make their biases clear, if nothing else. What are we to believe, that a bunch of people whose job it is to write opinion pieces don’t have an opinion about the election in their own country? Haha, yeah, sureeee…
>the editorial section which is specifically separated from the rest of the newspaper
It hasn't felt like this to me for many years, for pretty much any outlet.
Layers of interpretation = surfacing the bias of the editorial team so you can look for it in the non-oped sections of the paper
In practice there is little or no distinction. The list of top articles always includes opinion pieces, the choice of “neutral” fact articles to publish (and the headlines used) signals bias, and on a basic common sense level a newspaper isn’t going to publish an opinion piece that goes against the opinions of their workers/owners. Every time an opinion piece is published that goes against this, it’s a huge brouhaha.
Interestingly on another note, opinion writers are often actually less qualified than you’d expect, because the business model of a newspaper doesn’t really work for accumulating expertise vs. a specialized magazine/Substack / etc. The only way to have consistent opinion pieces is to have a generalist, not a specialist.
> crucial in making those facts interpretable by readers who aren't expert in the subject matter.
That's pretty charitable. In my experience most opinion and "analysis" is typically heavily biased and in service of some agenda.
> to not undermine the neutrality of the journalism in the other sections.
There is no neutral publication. Of there is an editorial board there is by definition no neutrality.
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If it were the editor's opinion, how is it any different from the opinion of anybody off the street? Why do the editors get the newspaper platform to publish their opinions?
I guess we need to think about what it means to be “neutral”. If half of Americans believe the earth is flat, is the neutral stance to say it’s unclear? Or is it to figure out what the truth is? In my mind there’s a difference between journalists and pollsters.
Of course with endorsements you can technically bring up the is/aught dichotomy. The facts may be what they are but that doesn’t necessitate any particular action. While this is technically true, I never see anyone complaining about the ethics of testing products and endorsing good ones. Wirecutter is basically doing the same thing with headphones and running shoes. Yet I only ever see pushback on political endorsements.
In short, umpires are neutral and fair but the fact that some teams win a lot more than others doesn’t mean they’re not doing their job.
That’s because if you praise a terrible toaster, life for most Americans is unaffected. If you endorse a political candidate, and nudge the election in one direction or other, roughly 50% of Americans will see that move as hostile.
Politics is simply preference. The shape of the earth is not.
It's not automatically unethical for a journalist to advocate for something.
I guess if they entirely stopped publishing self authored editorials it might be "neutral" to not publish a particular one. But that isn't what is happening.
The main thing for journalists is to strictly separate news reporting from editorial opinion pieces and clearly mark which is which.
A journalist's job is to journal something, nothing more and nothing less.
If a purported journalist wants to influence or otherwise lead his audience somewhere, he is many things (commentator, advocate, activist, influencer, etc.) but he is not a journalist.
> How does it not undermine a paper's journalistic ethics to be neutral and fair?
Where did you get this? Every news source has some bias, journalists, editors and owners of the media house are not some ideal beings. The good ones are honest about their bias.
As to endorsing a candidate, it's absolutely for the paper to decide. Endorsing a candidate might alienate some readers, not endorsing others.
To play Devil's Advocate to the Devil's Advocate... I would posit that journalistic neutrality isn't possible: and if that's the case I'd rather the journalist or publication wear their biases on their sleeve.
I can read a biased story, with values very different to my own, and still draw conclusions that are still meaningful. Mind you, I would expect omissions and couching that is flawed, but understanding the thinking of those I oppose is valuable and allows me to see their blind spots (or my own for that matter).
But a news organization or journalist being clear about their values and politics also disposes of the harmful notion that they've actually achieved some sort of objective reading or that they're being complete and well rounded. There's a deceptiveness in that pretense which some readers (watchers) may actually take for truth and not think more critically about what they're consuming than that.
I think if Bezos had announced this change in policy in, say, Feb 2021, it would have landed differently.
I think this is exactly right.
I'm 100% on board with impartial reporting, with the caveats that a) endorsements are of the Opinion section, and b) the fact of the matter is that only the higher-minded news orgs would attempt impartiality -- so it's really just ceding the argument.
And LATimes and WaPo endorsements almost certainly won't have an effect on this election.
But, this reeks of cowardice. If you wanted to return to the journalistic standard of impartiality, that's a great thing to do when the pressure is low. Feb 2021 would have been perfect.
Less than two weeks before the most contentious election in modern history? And specifically when one candidate has threatened news organizations and their owners with retribution (legal, commercial, extralegal) for stories they don't like?
That's capitulation, not impartiality. If you believe in the mission of journalism, the honorable option would be to anti-endorse any candidate who threatens that mission.
If you don't believe in that mission, then what are you doing operating a newspaper?
Bezos is a coward.
100%. Or even January 2024. Shutting down the operation last minute is simply suspect in so many areas.
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The editorial page runs on opinion - I expect them to opine
Spiking an endorsement that's already written is not neutral either. They could have made this decision in January or years ago. They did not.
I think people "need" their publications to do this in the sense that the publication may worry about losing readership for not "doing their part to support the morally correct candidates." But you're right. Ideally a publication would report the objective reality and let its readers decide what to make of it.
Newspapers have several different departments- a news reporting department, which ostensibly attempts to be neutral and fair (but often isn't), and an editorial department, which is neither neutral, nor fair. The endorsement comes from the editorial side.
I can't answer why we would want newspapers to endorse presidents- except that historically, newspapers played a big role in shaping public opinion (now mostly replaced by social media).
I would extend that to all businesses. For the sake of the business & their customers it's usually best to keep politics out of it.
As long as the Post has an editorial page, with people employed to share their opinions, what are they supposed to do?
Opinion and reporting are separate- famously the WSJ reporting is quite strong and their opinion section is ... often wrong- but as long as an opinion section exists that's kinda their job, to share their opinion. If you want to get rid of opinion that might be a reasonable thing (with cable news and the internet no one has a shortage of opinion these days!) but doing it in such a ham-fisted way so close to the election is not a sign of a carefully thought-out business decision, it's a sign of cowardice.
Only in this hyper-partisan world has politics become a liability for business. If a restaurant hosted a candidate it didn't get death threats and calls for boycott 20 years ago. It's hard for some retail businesses to stay out of politics because they get dragged into it. Perhaps another way of looking at it is to not take too seriously when businesses get involved in politics.
“He gets to be lawless while she has to be flawless.”
It’s not biased to call a spade a spade.
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The editorial board is separated from the newsroom and consistently writes persuasive opinions in the editorial page. "We think you should vote for X" is not structurally different from anything else that appears on the editorial page.
My gripe with endorsements is they imply people can't think critically for themselves.
I find endorsements very valuable when voting in down-ballot elections. A good endorsement includes the reasoning behind the decision. I read the endorsements of multiple outlets and find myself agreeing more with one or the other.
What's the alternative, do comprehensive research on the record of 20 candidates? I don't have time for that. Read the blurbs they write about themselves in the voter's guide? Why should I trust that, they can write anything there.
Supposedly some voters are undecided. Perhaps they would be swayed by a persuasive argument; this doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t think critically.
I say supposedly because I find it hard to believe the WaPo endorsement would actually sway anyone.
It wouldn’t be interesting or newsworthy to me personally if they had done that.
Given that editorial boards at newspapers like WaPo traditionally do, I find it notable when the billionaire owner steps in to stop them from publishing the endorsement, due to fear of retaliation from one of the candidates.
To me, that’s worth knowing about.
There's no neutral human being.
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Which is worse, a newspaper expressing an opinion or a newspaper being forbidden from expressing an opinion?
Forbidden by whom? Forbidden by its owner vs forbidden by an external party like the government are two different situations.
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Yes.
The idea is that these people spend their days in the weeds, working over stories and leads, getting to know people personally, absorbing information and insight that doesn't make it to print, seeing the connections and threads between all the things they publish, and are literally professional news people the way many of us here are professional technology people who might have some insight on technology topics.
You can make the case that they might be disingenuous or manipulative in sharing what they claim to be their opinions, or that their opinions reflect cultural indoctrination rather than professional assessment, etc -- and so you don't have to take their endorsements seriously.
But it's not a crazy idea that they have something valuable to share for all the time they spend very close to news and politics, and it's not bad to know what their big picture view of topics and people are as they write and select stories for the rest of the paper as it helps you contextualize them in their subjectivity.
Those people working in mass media are going to have massive biases and blind spots the same way tech people do. That’s because news isn’t an accurate representation of reality, it’s representing the most extreme examples and outliers in society. If you have a group of people reading about outliers all day they aren’t going to be grounded in what ordinary people are actually experiencing.
If you'll pardon me, as a devil's advocate, it could go either way. They have a value but it's difficult to know to whom they owe that value to, the party, the corporations, voters, readers etc. The other is that.. they have value in the act of playback.
One political faction/side knows a publication is favored by one of the two parties. It can use that fact to feed it false information, or truthful, and watch to see how it gets reported, and the reaction of that electorate.
But it’s sold as keeping you informed about the world. When it actually is just about what journalists think.
Like you said, that can be valuable, especially in politics, when one hopes they aid your messaging. But it’s not a moral or even practical imperative to keep up with journalism.
Imagine learning about sports through ESPN commentary and never actually watching a game.
A similar professional blindspot occurred when many engineers thought twitter would collapse when Elon fired all those people. Because they see twitter as a piece of software, not a brand and organization.
This reminds me of when The New Republic had a bunch of staff quit en masse because the new imported editor was blatantly bullshitting them. He didn’t realize that he was talking to a bunch of professional journalists who knew exactly what being bullshit was like.
And it's also bad for business. I think people on either side of the aisle underestimate just how tilted the other side can get when you go against them
I think there's arguments either way, but I also think as a certain point there is an obligation to point out that Trump is basically an anti American who probably takes more notice of a roll of toilet paper than the constitution. I'd argue that maybe it would behoove an institution of trust to make an endorsement only rarely, but it's also long been part of the means of public discourse for papers to put out opinions and endorsements.
More so than that question, I think it's more obvious to ask "if you're going to have that argument, is the year Trump, the nation destroying clown, is running, the year to suddenly make a change after something like > 3 decades? Especially when it seems like your owner might be making the change because he wants to curry favor for contracts?"
It's a pretty pathetic look, but I don't particularly expect any civic virtue from Bezos, so not shocked.
No doubt this will be portrayed as Bezos reigning in "Democrat" conspiracies and used to normalize Trump by the denizens of that delusional universe.
How is this not dead?
Your question is irrelevant. If Bezos or the leadership of the post had an ideological issue with endorsements, they should have decided that 6 months ago or one month from now.
It is blatantly obvious that this decision was done solely for Bezos business interests. Ignoring this and leaning into a theoretical debate to defend the decision is insulting.
Let's do an extreme example. If one candidate were to say, "I will burn down the Washington Post" would you expect the Washington Post to be neutral? Seems fallacious.
Now do Fox News.
It’s a disingenuous question: newspapers endorse presidents. That ship has sailed and it’s sailed a long time ago.
The issue at hand here is what happens to objective news reporting when a rampant vindictive psychopath enters the office of the President.
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It’s a statement of the values of the newspaper. This is what we stand for, and we are endorsing this person because of those values. It tells people about the paper and about the candidate being endorsed.
The issue here is that Trump is a threat to our democratic system of government. It’s not the time to be changing policies and refusing to endorse. It’s a time for taking a stand.
Clearly the values of the newspaper (as determined by the owner) aren’t what the employees, or many of the readers, thought they were.
That’s a bit beside the point in this case. Newspapers are supposed to have a first amendment right to say whatever they want and the key concern is that Bezos spiked the editorial to curry favor with Trump.
Bezos own the paper, so it's _his_ first amendment right, not the editorial board's.
Whatever his reason, this isn't a first amendment issue because it's a private entity constraining its own speech, not the government.
I don't know for sure, but I suspect that this phenomenon of news media endorsing political candidates is almost entirely unique to the US. Please prove me wrong.
The Globe and Mail is a Canadian paper. Here is its history of endorsements since 1984:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/federal-electi...
There is an entire Wikipedia page devoted only to endorsements in the 2024 United Kingdom general election:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endorsements_in_the_2024_Uni...
I am monolingual but here is Le Monde's English edition endorsing an anti-RN (far right party) plan in the recent French Parliamentary elections:
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2024/06/28/french-...
It was done under the name of the Director of Le Monde, rather than as an unsigned editorial as is common in English language newspapers, but it sure looks similar to my American eyes.
Making a big song and dance about the entire business of "endorsements" seems to be a very US thing as far as I know. I am of course not familiar with all democracies of the world, but it doesn't seem common anywhere else I've seen.
It's common practice across the anglosphere (US, Canada, UK, Australia, NZ). I'm not sure about elsewhere.
I can't prove you wrong, but I think political alignment of newspapers come in many flavors. Many countries have more parties than two, and as the choice ls less binary, the endorsements can be more subtle.
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Let’s zoom out from the present election and remember how Bezos took over…
The first thing he said was “The paper’s duty will remain to its readers and not to the private interests of its owners.”
We, the readers, should require an apology from Bezos for breaking his promise to keep this separate from his other concerns.
Until that happens, one must assume that WaPo is permanently compromised in the favor of Bezos’s interests.
It’s not about Kamala, it’s about literally everything.
I don't doubt that, but what company isn't compromised in favor of its owner's interests?
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Does an apology matter? Do we really need one?
How will an apology from Bezos improvement life?
What would improve mymlife are clear concrete actions not measly words.
Honestly, it’s all words unless the paper itself is sold to an independent nonprofit solely devoted to journalism.
So, like Musk with X.
The Venn diagram of those who'd be influenced by a WaPo endorsement and committed Kamala Harris voters is a perfect intersection. For 50 years, WaPo has endorsed the democratic candidate [1] for president. No mystery here. It's a pointless endorsement.
[1] https://noahveltman.com/endorsements/
The endorsement lets them write why they support the candidate. Laying out the reasons is what could be convincing, and is what's also being blocked here.
I think the intuition of the parent comment is right, but you also make a fair point[1]. I just wonder if you genuinely believe that any prospective Trump voter could be convinced by any argument to vote for Harris at this point. I mean after all the things that have already been written and said by so many, even by Trump himself, and have failed to convince ~47% of Americans that he's unfit to be the president.
Honestly, I look at the billions of dollars being poured into political ads, and I can't help but think that it's all a tremendous waste because it's hard to imagine that there's anybody left who didn't already form a strong opinion about Trump at some point over the past ten years.
[1] Like even assuming that prospective Trump voters don't read this newspaper, an especially novel or powerful argument could get picked up and spread by other outlets that do reach prospective Trump voters.
But this change doesn't stop any of the journalists from writing editorials endorsing a candidate, including laying out reasons, correct?
The difference is that the paper as a whole won't endorse a candidate?
On the other hand, Trump is using the L.A. Times non-endorsement to attack Harris. So, it does matter.
Endorsements express the values of the paper and gives people more information about the candidates and what is at stake.
And it opens to them up to retribution from Trump if he wins, which is his entire method of operating. From a game theory perspective it doesn't make sense for them to do an endorsement when a mob boss type character is about to get elected.
Let's be clear who "them" is. It's Bezos. The people at the paper wrote up the whole thing and then were blocked by Bezos and the CEO of the paper.
You can argue it's game-theory sensible, but it certainly tells you that Bezos doesn't care to put any of his vast money at risk for any cause at all.
"Lets not oppose nazis in case they gain power again."
You're morally and humanly bankrupt if you believe and act this way.
1988 isn’t 50 years
They skipped 88 because the editorial board decided they didn't want to endorse.
https://www.semafor.com/article/10/25/2024/editor-resign-sub...
Well, I guess now democracy dies in anticipation of darkness.
Things that go trump in the night.
So many times HN posters have extolled how Bezos hasn't interfered with the WaPo and those of us who expressed concern about his purchase were chicken littles. It has never been true and it's plain as day now. He bought it for the same reason Musk bought Twitter. To have control over a media outlet he values.
Well, it might have been true until now. Certainly there's no previous good evidence for Bezos-directed coverage or editing at the Post.
But regardless: you were right. I was one of the folks who viewed him as a basically benign entity who, sure, had opinions of his own, but clearly would never put his fingers on the editorial scale. And I was wrong, and he isn't.
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If you have that kind of money, why wouldn't you do that?
They're not really saying Bezo or Musk are acting illogically. He's lamenting everyone who has set with their heads buried in the sand and pretended they aren't doing the things they're doing.
Because you believe in something more than personal gain. The US and other countries were built by elites who believed in more; it's the current generation that are failing.
> The newspaper also published an article by two staff reporters saying that editorial page staffers had drafted an endorsement of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris over GOP nominee Donald Trump in the election.
This is a bizarre way to use his control as a owner. If you own a newspaper or tabloid, we know from Trump how you use it effectively: you practice 'catch and kill', or you kill your own inconvenient stories, or you sic your reporters on the enemy disproportionately (while still scrupulously reporting only true things), or you selectively amplify stories from elsewhere.
You don't... kill editorial board endorsements (while still publishing an article on it!). Is there a single person in a swing state who, despite being bombarded by advertising for years, is now going to vote for Trump but would have voted for Harris once they saw the Washington Post endorsed Harris instead? "Ah, well, if WaPo says so, I guess I was wrong about her! I wasn't expecting them to endorse the Democratic candidate!"
I can only read this as Bezos trying to kiss up to Trump, who is narcissistic enough to actually take personally a foregone editorial board endorsement of his opponent.
It's in fact a very powerful endorsement of Trump, IMHO:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41951373
Is anyone really changing their mind based on some newspaper endorsement? I’m pretty sure everyone knows who they’re gonna vote for at this point.
This is extremely similar to the sudden announcement of policies by all the major newspapers that they were not going to publish documents that they thought were stolen by foriegn intelligence services from political campaigns: it is a reasonable position to have, and if announced well before the election season started would be completely unobjectionable. Doing it when they announced it, however, is significantly changing the rules in favor of one candidate.
Doing it after the board had already written up a document endorsing a candidate (demonstrating clearly that it was not a policy of anyone but the owner, who decided to be an utter coward at the last minute) sends a clear message that even one of the richest men in the world is scared of possible backlash against him.
It should also come with a reckoning on their role in the recent history that led to this change and it should be clearly communicated.
And the standard to/not publish should be clearly laid out and justified in their own words.
Now we'll never know who the Washington Post's editorial board would have endorsed.
At least Taylor Swift was able to make her recommendation, so I know I'm all set.
Actually we do, the reporting in WaPo itself said they had already put together the copy for Harris and were ready to run it.
The newsroom basically did all they could to say it without saying it.
Elon hasn't swayed your opinion then?
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It's more about how a presidential candidate has repeatedly made credible threats to go after specific media companies using the power of his office if he wins. That candidate also happens to have a terrifyingly broad idea of what those powers are. That's in the context of a 9-member Supreme Court where 3 are his own appointments and 2 are appointments from a previous president with similarly broad ideas about presidential power.
And no, not everyone knows how they're going to vote, as crazy as that seems, but I agree that newspaper endorsements are a tiny factor, especially in this election.
That’s what an undecided voter is, and that demographic is the one effectively deciding the next president, so yes these endorsements are consequential.
It's east to think that way but if it didn't matter, Bezos wouldn't have squashed it.
It matters to Trump, therefore it matters to Bezos.
Probably not a single voter cares.
The problem is the the billionaire owner of the newspaper is censoring it, not the number of votes that will change.
Is it censorship when your boss forbids you publishing your personal opinion as the official position of his company?
It's funny reading the comments here but has anyone considered that Bezos may in fact support Trump? Bezos is a billionaire and Harris seeks to target them to fix the deficit.
Its just possible Bezos supports Trump and it makes economic sense too, though its terribly unfashionable to come out and say such a thing.
> I’m pretty sure everyone knows who they’re gonna vote for at this point.
I already did (yay early voting), but I was pretty close to just flipping a coin. Not for red vs blue, but for the lesser evil vs one of the more amusing third parties.
I know at least one person who votes based off a publication. As for changing minds, I have no idea if this person even considered who to vote for until the publication releases their endorsements.
> Is anyone really changing their mind based on some newspaper endorsement? I’m pretty sure everyone knows who they’re gonna vote for at this point.
Clearly Bezos thinks they are[1], otherwise he wouldn't have gone through the trouble of killing it 11 days before an election.
People in this thread are badly conflating the idea of "Newspaper Opinion Journalism is Bad" with "It's OK for an owner to arbitrarily influence newspaper coverage in real time". You can agree with the former and still agree the later is a horrifying precedent.
[1] Or, "Bezos thinks that Trump thinks they are" might be closer to the truth.
> "Bezos thinks that Trump thinks they are"
This is the key.
Probably nobody would have changed their mind.
But it exposes the fiction that Bezos allows editorial freedom at the WaPo.
It's relevant on the margins. WaPo not endorsing Harris would be a very negative signal about Harris for fence-sitters and lukewarm voters - this is the paper that hated Trump so much they changed their motto to the apocalyptic "Democracy Dies in Darkness"!
How many fence-sitters and lukewarm voters are following WaPo? It’s the third-most popular newspaper (in the US), but seems to attract people who are either very politically aware, or partisan.
It's mostly relevant to the media class that still clings to the self-perception of soft power to sway culture/politics.
If they had announced in 2022 that the paper would no longer be issuing presidential endorsements because they aren't useful or aren't a good use of resources, I think that would be a reasonable and much less controversial decision. Doing it now, when the paper had already drafted an endorsement of Harris and was about to publish it, is in fact an endorsement of Trump.
That's why this is news, it's not about a paper changing a policy, it's about one billionaire blatantly burying criticism of a fellow billionaire because they are having a personal fight (or they were having a fight and this is how they've resolved it).
This really is an interesting question. You are asking it rhetorically, and it's not like I'm going to argue with the implication, that it "basically doesn't matter", but then one could ask the same about Trump working at McDonald's as a part of his campaign, and pretty much about everything these guys do. Unless it's a major fuckup, it almost doesn't matter, because it doesn't convert anybody but one hypothetical guy who says "you know what, I'll pick a random newspaper right now, and the first guy I'm gonna see, I'll vote for him!"
At some level of approximation it doesn't even matter who the candidate is at all. An established trend in the USA is that the public is divided pretty much 50/50 between 2 colors, and hardly sways no matter what happens. Which makes it all pretty laughable way to make the choice (seeing votes as weights, and God makes a choice using these weights to make a decision) on an important question. If we assume the elections in the USA are "fair", it's pretty much flipping a coin every time. (But then, most people are already settled on the idea that it isn't an important choice, hence the "giant douche and turd sandwich" joke is so relatable.)
So while it largely doesn't matter indeed, at some low enough level any small detail might matter. I don't imagine who is that guy who was going to vote Kamala based on WP endorsement, but, well, maybe there is one. Really, I have no idea.
I think there are some number of people who are trying to decide what's "true" or "real" and while I don't think they'd have even noticed a WaPo editorial, I do think they might hear that Bezos prevented an endorsement and see it as indicative that the endorsement of Harris was somehow dishonest and tally it as a stone on Trump's side of the "reality scale."
I'm sure you're mostly right, but there are no doubt a few still on the fence, which can only either be people who have not been exposed to the truth about Trump (e.g. people who only watch Trump sane-washed sources like Fox), or republicans who are well aware of the danger he poses, but are having a hard time accepting that the responsible thing to do is vote against him.
For the few that are still on the fence, then more straight shooting reporting, from any source, can only help.
To me this is a total cop out, and very irresponsible, for the Washington Post to not want to "take sides" and express an opinion. I guess they would've let Hitler win election too, rather than want to "take sides" and say anything bad about him. It's like not wanting to express an opinion on whether a grizzly bear or a hamster would be a better pet for a 5 year old, because you're afraid of upsetting the grizzly bear.
I haven’t decided myself. My vote doesn’t especially matter because of the state I live in but I do like to vote as an experience.
It’s not that I particularly like Trump as an individual (quite the opposite), but Harris is just very unappealing to me from a policy standpoint.
I do think that the Hitler comparison undermines any point you are trying to make so maybe tone it down a bit.
I like that many people here have speculated that Bezos simply wants to avoid the ire of a possible Trump administration. This is very charitable, so much so that it ignores another reasonable guess a person could make based off of the same objective information that we all have — that this action is an endorsement, and the person that chose to endorse a candidate did so because he wants them to win.
On one hand you can imagine that Bezos somehow wants a Harris presidency but doesn’t want to appear that way out of fear, but that sounds more fantastical and wishful than “The guy whose company is currently trying to wholesale eliminate the National Labor Relations Board(1) likes Trump’s policies and wants him to win”, especially when you think about what’s going on with the other guy(2) that’s trying to destroy the NLRB.
Sometimes when people indicate they want something to happen it is because they want that thing to happen.
1
https://www.reuters.com/technology/amazon-joins-companies-ar...
2
https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-leaps-into-the-meme-history-bo...
This is so obviously the nail on the head. Shocked how far I had to scroll
I think the act of spiking the endorsement sends a stronger signal than the lack of endorsement. He could always make his own endorsement, but he didn't.
I don't know what's in his head. I just know that Trump sources are saying it's because of fear of reprisal [0]
[0]: https://x.com/gabrielsherman/status/1849960615197966648
I think it can be both. In scenario planning it makes sense for billionaires with large business empires to vote for Trump. One, the few details that can be determined from his platform are around lowering taxes on the very rich and making it easier for them make more money. Two, Trump has been pretty clear in his rhetoric he holds a grudge and will use the government to punish anyone who he perceives is against him. Taken together, there is little to no downside in supporting Trump, even if Harris wins. It's not like Harris is threatening to throw people she doesn't like out of the country. Whereas vocally supporting Harris where Trump wins runs the risk of becoming a target.
By the way, I think Musk did the same math. He likely thinks/knows Trump is an idiot, but it's almost all upside supporting him and little downside. Plus, Musk is likely still upset he was left out of a Whitehouse summit on EVs a few years ago. Regardless of what people think of Musk that was BS, and I wonder if that snub is part of what led him to come out in support of Trump so vocally.
> By the way, I think Musk did the same math.
“Elon Musk has been in deep-cover WWE-level kayfabe for the past several years” is an opinion you literally have to make up out of thin air and hopes. There is nothing public indicating that that is true. His enthusiastic and wholehearted embrace of the value set endemic amongst Trump supporters has been and continues to be very much on public display. The dude posts nonstop about culture war bullshit all day when he’s not showing off that he’s carrying around two shields in Elden Ring for some reason.
Billionaires are not aircraft carriers or nation states. They do not have a special type of existence that bestows their opinions or decisions with a deeper complexity or meaning than any other person exercising whatever level of power they have access to. “Jeff Bezos is a guy that has the power to decide what’s printed in a newspaper and exercised it in support of his preferred candidate” as an opinion only sounds outlandish to a non-billionaire because people aren’t comfortable with the idea that for one guy, changing what goes in the newspaper is easier than buying a bumper sticker.
Endorsements have never been without the blessing and influence of the owner of that paper or institution. The extent that an owner lets the editorial team pick an endorsement is the same extent to which they align philosophically. It's an illusion of choice or independence.
If papers were meant to be more neutral, I suppose they would need to be owned as cooperatives by the subscribers themselves, assuming the subscribers were balanced and philosophically diverse.
The key point here is that despite all their biases, the Washington Post and The New York Times were at least perceived as independent, with both of them famously publishing articles that would upset those in power. If their owners feel the need to spike articles unfavorable to the administration, then no more Pentagon Papers etc.
Both publications pretty much only employ far left journalists, and have terrible reputations with Republicans for biased reporting.
I agree. I was reading about Rupert Murdock's start in Australia. He was able to swing an election there through his ownership of a few newspapers. Newspapers don't have the same pull as they did back then. Now I guess it's the online platforms like Facebook, X, or Reddit. Reddit seems to be captured by the Democratic party.
There used to be a concept of journalistic integrity, to just report the facts, not to put any spin on them. These days that's totally abandoned, it's considered entertainment.
Has an owner ever killed an already-written endorsement 11 days out from an election? You're right that there is an implicit assumption that an owner condones the paper's operation. But to exert control like this so specifically and in such a baldly partisan way is unprecedented, thus the resignations both at the Post and the LA Times.
It's one thing to hire an editorial staff with whom you agree, it's quite another to step in and overrule their attempt to do the job you hired them to do.
3 days ago:
https://www.semafor.com/article/10/22/2024/los-angeles-times...
It is ironic because Washington Post is the most left leaning of all major news paper. Their endorsement is really a no-op, because there is really only one candidate they could ever consider.
And yet here we are without an endorsement. Significant by your own admission.
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That doesn't logically follow at all.
We're "here without an endorsement" because the media machine decides to talk about it, not because it's significant.
The most influential power the media has is what they decide to write about and what they don't. They don't report the news, they make the news.
If the Post endorsed Harris but then added an addendum that this was the last election they’d be endorsing, this would make sense and seem a lot more impartial to a now 40-year tradition.
I went to return something to Amazon and though it was clearly their fault for sending the wrong item, the rep said “we’ll make a one time exception here” and I said fine whatever. Seems like there’s a Bezos precedent for this kind of “last time” approach lol
To be fair they always say that. Everybody gets the "one time exception."
A while ago, the failing/risks of banks that were too exposed to particular sectors (crypto/blockchain) brought some discussion on the merits of diversification of key risks.
In a highly partisan landscape with increasing geopolitical tensions, is ownership a key risk to objective news? Is diversification of ownership of news sources a good way to help mitigate that? If so, any good ideas from the HN crowd?
Maybe restore the Celler-Kefauver act (1)?
1: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/the-celler-kefauver-act...
The WaPo is a long, long ways from objective news.
For me, seeing a person or business consciously claim neutrality this year is reprehensible and impossibly out of touch. Whether Bezos likes it or not the business he is in comes with the assumption of an endorsement, and silence is an implicit endorsement. I’d never hold an individual to that standard but power comes with responsibility and this choice is putting his privilege on full display.
Funnily Bezos has probably made more for Harris by stopping the endorsement then if he let it go through. No one would have cared about the endorsement, now this story is everywhere..
I thought that having billions buys you freedom. Turns out you still have to lick the boot.
Only if your greed is bigger than your pockets. Which is bound to be true for anyone who accumulates this much money and still exploits workers to the degree Amazon does.
Politics is the new religion. Everyone is cowed by the power if the zealots.
“Fuck you money” is a myth.
It’s only a myth if your greed is unbounded. Double digit millions USD should be actual FU money almost anywhere.
A single man issued an edict and ended decades of precedent/history. All for the sake of the mighty dollar and ensuring his multibillion dollar fortune doesn’t take a tumble by a 5-10B in the _possibility_ the wrong candidate gets elected.
Everything is awful about this. What would it take WaPo away from this horrible person?
I find it strange that people are so upset about the absence of an opinion piece from this newspaper. What is the reason? Either you want to be told what to think, or you want everyone else to be told what to think. I think it is the latter. Would there be any outrage here if Fox news decided not to endorse a candidate? I highly doubt it. Some people may like being challenged on what they believe, which is good, but that's probably the edge case
Perhaps one wants to be told what they - the paper as institution, to include both owners and editorial staff - think. What values do they hold, and why? These inform their reporting content and choices.
Moreover, no one thinks well in isolation. Others’ ideas challenge and inform one’s own. To engage, to converse, to question: this is not being told what to think, but rather a catalyst of unique thought. Else why are you posting here?
That’s not exactly what happened. What happened at both the L.A. Times and the Washington Post is that the editorial staff was prepared to endorse Harris until the owner quashed it. That’s what people are upset about.
Endorsing Harris is a no-brainer. Quashing an endorsement of Harris reeks of cowardice.
Related:
The Washington Post says it will not endorse a candidate for president
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41948631
It seems like it would be less polarizing if it was the default state for news and information outlets to not endorse any candidate ever and just remain as neutral as possible.
Why would they want to appear neutral? All news reporting, no matter what, is inherently biased in some way. There isn’t some “ideal” where that isn’t the case. There can’t be some magical font of unbiased information because just selecting what stories to put on the front page introduces bias.
News can’t be unbiased and being unbiased was never a goal. News is meant to inform, which includes facts as well as analysis. That seemingly the average American doesn’t understand that is a failure of the education system.
> Why would they want to appear neutral? All news reporting, no matter what, is inherently biased in some way. There isn’t some “ideal” where that isn’t the case. There can’t be some magical font of unbiased information because just selecting what stories to put on the front page introduces bias.
Sure, but just because you can't be perfectly unbiased doesn't mean the only alternative is to become a mouthpiece for a political party.
That just isn't true. It is possible to be unbiased in journalism, and it was a major goal of journalists at various times in history. Obviously not all journalists at all times have striven towards this goal, but some have. Stop making excuses for blatant partisanship, instead hold them to a higher standard.
That pretentious “above the fray” belief some news orgs and reporters have is awful and harmful.
NYT is particularly guilty of that behavior.
How one contextualizes a story and presents the attention grabbing headline puts a massive thumb on the scale of how the topic is perceived.
Because of what the article mentions or doesn’t mention, provides context for or no context for, the exact same core story centerpiece is biased and leading. Any impression the author wants to convey is easy to bring out in the “neutral” writing. This is simply a fact of writing.
And yet some reporters and news orgs, like the NYT, profess they are neutral observers as if from the planet zorg recording a miraculous unbiased story.
No, that is impossible and everyone knows it. Claiming to be neutral is gas lighting.
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> Why would they want to appear neutral? [...] There isn’t some “ideal”
Getting some notion of what USA politics are like on HN, I can understand why you'd have this viewpoint, but I don't think it's true
The news I am used to, I couldn't tell you what political color it has. The selection they make seems based on the perceived severity, which certainly means there is a selection process that must be introducing some sort of bias, but as near as I can tell, this bias is towards a shared humanity and not a party
Perhaps I am just naïve, so I opened the local Wikipedia and it has no mention of them being accused of having a bias, political coloring or selection, notable omissions, or any such thing
I disagree strongly with the party for hate and egocentricity having come out as the biggest one in the most recent election, and to a lesser extent with the rich people be rich party from the previous ~decade, so it's not like all noses are pointed in the same direction where I'm from; but I couldn't tell you how this organization (the default thing if you turn on your TV at prime time) feels about any particular party beyond that I expect they would condemn hate and violence in general -- shared humanity, basically.
You’re suggesting there’s no difference between journalism that attempts objectivity and outright political advocacy which is clearly false. Perfect neutrality doesn’t exist, we can even get into a discussion of what knowledge is, that doesn’t mean news outlets don’t have an obligation to try. They did in decades past which is evident from a review of older journalism.
These are opinion editors. They're expected to have opinions.
maybe biased opinions should be entirely separate from journalistic enterprises if those journalists want a single shred of credibility. people are mad at trump supporters and anti covid and anti vax stuff, and while i agree that's all stupid, i don't blame them at all for falling for it because main stream corporate journalism has destroyed any and all trust with absolutely everyone. maybe if we weren't constantly being lied to and sold something, more people would believe them when they say important things like "trump is taking away reproductive rights" and "covid exists and people are dying"
News outlets by definition can not be neutral. Just look at the insane amount of stuff that the global news agencies like Reuters or AFP push out every minute, and on top of that comes all the state, county and local news.
The very act of filtering what to report to the audience is political in itself. Say, floods or other natural disasters caused or (like wildfires) made worse by climate change. Most of them tend to be ignored outside of the nation they happen, but not reporting on it also means that people don't grasp just how bad climate change already is, and thus the people may not vote for parties or individuals campaigning on climate change.
You learn this by science, and scientific reporting. Not by reporting events usually selected by severity of harm to humans and clickbait factor to enrich the media companies.
First, they are never neutral.
Second: this is what happens in Brazil. Everybody gets angry because each news outlet defends its own conservative candidate.
Are you saying that the largest media complex in Brazil, Globo, supports conservative candidates? Where and how?
While we’re at it, let’s do away with voting. Much less polarizing if we stop asking the demos to endorse a government.
Being neutral in the face of a candidate who has promised to do what Trump has promised to do may not be the virtue you think it is.
I would read "neutral" here to mean "factual" rather than endorsing trump as part of being neutral or something. If one party proposes e.g. impossible things or financially stupid things or whatever it may be (general examples from politics anywhere), that can and should be reported on and would not break neutrality
But it is not. They regularly make endorsements and call outs. They recently called for Biden to step down from the ticket, just months ago. It seems like we should not examine situations based on idealistic, non-existent scenarios but the world we actually live in.
no endorsement is an endorsement for the oppressor
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The Washington Post has endorsed a candidate every election cycle since 1976, with the exception of 1988. The New York Times has endorsed a candidate in every presidential election since its founding in 1851.
I definitely remember the 1990s differently.
They still had endorsements, but it just wasn’t spelled out that way.
Instead, just prominent opinions, hit pieces, etc.
100%. People upset about this are just upset cause they didn't endorse their candidate. Trust in media/journalism is at an all time low. This is simply a smart move to not alienate 50% of the population. If individual editors/writers/journalists want to endorse someone, take it to your blog or website or twitter.
> "Katharine Graham the previous owner of the Washington Post during the Watergate years was threatened by Holden who famously said, and I will leave out a bit of the quote because it's too crude to say out on the stage, but he said you tell Kate Graham if she prints that we'll put here blank through a big fat ringer, and then they actually worked to try get their broadcast license resented, it's completely un-American, so I guess the only thing I say is as Katharine Graham my role model I'm very willing to let any of my body parts go through a big fat ringer if need be." Jeff Bezos in 2016 when asked about Donald Trump. ^1
I don't think he is pro Trump, but I think he just doesn't want to be on his bad side just in case, just like Zuckerberg he tried to patch his relationship with Trump after he publicly threatened him
1: source https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guVxubbQQKE 1:01:00
That was Nixon's AG, John Mitchell, who said that and it happened in 1972. Graham died in 2001, well before Eric Holder was ever Attorney General.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Graham
You're right that it was Mitchell, but Bezos wasn't referring to Eric Holder, but to Bob Haldeman, WH CoS under Nixon.
I like this trend of taking neutral positions that seems to be picking up again, although the timing for this doesn't look good.
Just as how universities are starting to adopt neutrality, so should news outlets.
"What is truth?" asked the powerful Roman governor of Judea, of a man accused of blasphemy two millennia ago, and we still don't know. What is "neutrality" for a university? Is creationism "neutral"? It was a huge political deal in the US for decades (though it seems to have died down recently), but in the 1980's, 1990's, and into the 2000's there were plenty of people who wanted creationism taught in science classes, or at least to "teach the controversy." Was picking sides on that topic in science class "neutral"?
Is the superiority of phonics based literacy approaches "neutral" or criticism of teachers unions? If a economics professors research indicates that, say, supply-side economics doesn't work under current circumstances, is it "neutral" for her to tell her class that? If a law professor thinks that judges only make ad hoc arguments to achieve whatever ends they desire, can they teach their class legal nihilism?
"Neutral" is the sort of thing that someone who has never actually tried to teach or inform can think is reasonable, until you actually try and do it and realize that there are people out there who strongly want to contest whether the earth is round, and that either you throw up your hands and accept epistemological nihilism or you accept that you have to pick sides, and try and do a good job of picking the right sides.
It's amazing how motivated reasoning and a poltics poisoned mind can be used to make obvious points out to be unreasonable. Institutional neutrality is simple, the organization does what is ncessary to operate, but doesn't prescribe anything unnecessarily over that.
It does not mean that professors are not allowed to talk about disagreeable things that are required for teaching the subject. If anything, it makes it easier for them to do so, as they can teach whatever is necessary to produce well-functioning members of society.
Eg you don't need to endorse a specific candidate to fulfill your duty of teaching students. You don't need to avoid talking about research that runs counter to the organization's politics. You don't need to openly pick sides on protests besides advocating for enough civilty to allow your institution to keep operating, and so on. I'm fairly certain that a good portion of the neutrality statements from universities have been coming from the difficult ideological situation presented by the flaring up of the Israel-Gaza conflict, where picking sides opens them up to either being islamophobes or antisemites.
I'm not really sure what you're getting at with the tension about creationism as part of science education. In my schooling the early science education often covered the history of the topic, which would inevitably talk about the local religious ideas, working it's way through them, sometimes even with brief readings of some associated stories, through to major discoveries that provided the evidence for the modern consensus. That's just part of providing a comprehensive education and connecting it to the culture kids are exposed to?
Neutrality is a problematic ideology because it serves the powerful and the status quo, the first question to ask back is are they (an authority, an institution) really neutral/impartial?
I think it depends how people interpret neutral. Choosing what to talk about or not in itself has influence. It's impossible to be a newspaper and not in any way help or support one side over another in a conflict, even if you don't intend too, you will be, you might even be helping the side you don't cheer for inadvertently, because it's also hard to predict what direction what you say will influence others.
In that sense, I agree with you.
But you can interpret neutral more as not attempting to influence. In that sense, it does not mean the result will be neutral, but that you tried to be. Neutrality is an effort, like trying to be kind to others, or to be positive. It's an attempt at curbing bias. And I think that's something you'd want journalists to practice. Just like it's beneficial to have people try to be kind and positive, even if it's impossible for them to truly be at all times and to the most extent, it does make the world a better place still when people try.
Now, if you tried to read news, and wanted to form your own opinion, would you rather read the one from someone purposely siding with one side, and specifically choosing their words and what to say in a conscious effort to bring you over to their position? Or would you rather read the one from someone attempting to be impartial, disclosing their bias from the start so you can weigh it in, attempting to show the arguments against theirs, as well as their own, spend some time to discuss the other viewpoint, have quotes from both sides, etc.
There is no neutrality in the face of evil.
Journalism and journalists are not supposed to be neutral, but impartial.
Ethics are pretty universal.
> Ethics are pretty universal
Anyone who has taken a basic philosophy or ethics class or read more than the summary page of their history books knows this is not even remotely true
Well said. Journalists also don’t have to give equal weight to the other side when the other side are whackadoodles
> There is no neutrality in the face of evil.
You are either with us, or against us.
"There is no neutrality in the face of evil"
This is said by both sides, it is equally stupid every time.
If ethics are pretty universal, how is it that one party wants no abortions at all and thinks any abortion that isn't absolutely medically necessary is evil and the other party wants abortions right up until viable birth and thinks that anything less than that is evil?
Especially when considering that most of the world is somewhere in between, where abortions are legal for a few weeks and then illegal unless absolutely necessary.
Endorsements come opinions editors, a special part of the paper where the paper prints opinions, not news.
I agree that it would be nice if news outlets tried to always be neutral, but a lot of TV news channels in the US would have almost nothing to say if you stopped their opinion reporting.
Opinion sections on websites and on TV/video should be segregated from the rest of the organization in some way. On paper having it as a section was fine because it used to be marked relatively clearly and there were serious logistical issues.
However, with video and websites, it is very easy to mix editor opinion with news. People tuning into a news channel mid-report don't necessarily know they're listening to just an opinion, and same goes for people reading the headline from an embed or URL without clicking through to the page.
Another thing I often notice is that opinion pieces get to play more loose with the facts. They can say completely unsubstantiated things or get actual facts wrong, but still say something as if it had the credibility of the organization. Yet if the backlash gets too strong they get to deflect by arguing that it was just an opinion and not meant to reflect on the organization.
The current state of opinion pieces is like running a blog about my research and getting important things wrong there, then expecting people to assume that my actual research publications are accurate.
If they have nothing to say, maybe nobody needs to hear it.
There’s not really any such thing as neutrality. Arguably universities can maybe step away from things (although this is complicated with departments that are inherently political), but “neutral” if you’re writing about politics always reflects some kind of value judgement. By definition one person’s neutrality is someone else’s bias.
Not endorsing a presidential candidate is neutral in this context. Easy.
Being neutral in an unbalanced situation means you are purposefully ignoring things that should be said and not putting on the table things that should be there. Not publishing relevant opinions pieces is part of that.
To get some distance, imagine being neutral to every candidates during Russia's last elections, and refusing to publish well researched and argumented opinions people have about the leading candidate.
What do you mean by 'unbalanced'? "Unstable" or "biased"?
The US seems really unstable right now. It is like a ever growing political cacophony. And blaming the "other side" for a mutual problem seems silly for an external observer.
The bad faith tone is making the caricatures real by moving people further from each other and entrenching distinctive extremes as ingroup markers.
E.g. I feel that during the pandemic supporters of the former president believed the caricatures of his policy on the matter, making it a thing.
So if quality news outlets no longer provide journalism when we need it most (breaking down candidate platforms, keeping candidates honest, …). Then it shifts to a variety of unverified sources (ie, TikTok, Fb, Telegram, et al) for those that couldn’t find anything credible.
The population already struggles with determining fact from fiction. Taking away the power from journalists because a _billionaire_ wants to ensure his wealth remains high.
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> It's hard to think that he doesn't know how lop-sided this election is, so the naive notion of "neutral" should not be applied to his behavior.
I’m not American or in the US, so please keep that in mind when I ask, ‘what’s lopsided?’
Good reason not to subscribe to the WP.
There you are! The correct response.
Should this not fall under the "private company, do what they want" mantra we were all so fond of wrt (pre-Musk...) Twitter, Facebook, et al? The further advice then was; "make your own social media platform."
Same thing happened at LA times a few days ago, also replete with an editor quitting, when owner Patrick Soon-Shiong blocked the same Kamala endorsement.
You're free to not subscribe, some editor or other is free to quit, and owners are free to do as they please with their private property. Freedom. What a great idea.
We also have the freedom to gripe about it. That is also the correct response.
Why?
I don't want to read a newspaper where the owner is suppressing -- well, anything -- because of concerns for how it might affect his fortune. I want the owner walled off.
You didn't draw that conclusion when WaPo lied about Russians hacking US electrical infrastructure, sabre rattling for war, then retracting the entire story when it was proved they fabricated the story? One of the authors of the faked story is still employed by WaPo, by the way.
It's only bad when they refuse to bend to your political orthodoxy, not when they knowingly print dangerous and false stories about nation state hacks (eerily similar to NYT's lies about WMDs in Iraq) -- something likely to drag the world to war again.
Yawn. No newspaper is immune to reporters making stuff up.
'Anticipatory obedience is a political tragedy.' ~Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny
https://smalldeedsdone.com/2024/07/09/do-not-obey-in-advance...
Strangely, the same people who call newspapers "legacy" are all over Twitter calling WP a failure and that people need to cancel their subscriptions.
There's a trend among Tech Oligarchs to diminish the role of journalism. Seems to be all about getting slices of government contracts, if not controlling them.
We love to objectify the press and pretend they do a service to mankind, but they're just another business.
Democracy dies in darkness was a promise, not a warning.
I'm sick of this absurd FUD. You surely must realize that the claims that if Trump wins, democracy is going to end are just fearmongering, don't you?
He literally tried an autogolpe. I saw it, live, on TV with my own eyes and ears. He's currently promising to pardon the people that participated in it that have been prosecuted while pardoning himself due to his own immune status.
That's how a Banana Republic functions.
Do I need to trot out the list of dictators who were democratically elected?
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/25/us/politics/trump-officia...
These aren't nobodies, they aren't the only ones close to him saying this, and that's before his public statements. The bulk of Project 2025 is a how-to guide for rooting out administrative disloyalty. I don't think he'll be successful but I don't want to deal with the shit he's going to cause in the attempt.
It would be really really easy to make everyone feel better by nominating literally anyone else, preferably a Moderate Republican. I'll personally go door to door campaigning for them if it means not Trump.
It’s… really not? The dude tried to overturn the previous election, and repeatedly threatens to throw his enemies in jail. Senior members of his own staff have flat out said he’s a fascist and he’s literally running on a promise to round up millions of people and put them in camps.
Like probably we’ll still have elections but you know, so do Hungary and Russia.
They really think it's true.
People as diverse and mutually antagonistic as George Orwell, Noam Chomsky and C.S. Lewis said that the outer elites -- the exact kind of people that inhabit HN -- were far more thoroughly propagandized than the working class and the poor. It's on full display here.
They shouldn’t have downvoted you.
How is it FUD? The last time Trump was elected Democracy died... didn't it? /s
I'm going to rewrite something verbatim the other candidate posted on his social media network:
CEASE & DESIST: I, together with many Attorneys and Legal Scholars, am watching the Sanctity of the 2024 Presidential Election very closely because I know, better than most, the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential Election. It was a Disgrace to our Nation! Therefore, the 2024 Election, where Votes have just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again. We cannot let our Country further devolve into a Third World Nation, AND WE WON’T! Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.
It is right here https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1133692554916...
He's right there saying it. We're in a slow motion train wreck. Bezos is chickening out because of it.
You really might see the end of democracy in America within weeks. Trump is telling you he's going to end it. One of the richest men in the world is listening to him.
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I have no idea who to vote for now.
it's all disagree and commit until the big boss comes and says to "just commit". didn't success and scale bring responsibility ?
i guess Bezos can bend the leadership principles back and forth the way it best fits his current needs.
I don't think there could be a more powerful endorsement of Trump so far, much more than if Bezos's paper actually printed an endorsement of him (which would have been laughed at):
It's a signal of Trump as extraordinarily powerful, a stronger signal than probably anything else I've seen. That boosts his image among suppoters - remember power is what he sells - and will intimidate many, many more into complying. What journalists and business people, or any elite, will stand up to him now after Bezos and the Washington Post - probably the second most respected news organization in the country - have bent the knee. And it makes a Trump victory look more inevitable, a key selling point for anyone, but especially a populist.
When Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong did the same thing recently, "The Trump campaign swiftly shared the ... story with supporters." [0]
[0] https://www.npr.org/2024/10/24/nx-s1-5163293/la-times-editor...
I don't get why there is this assumption that Bezos would not just be supporting him.
> have bent the knee
This sounds a bit like "thedonald" nomenclature?
> assumption that Bezos would not just be supporting him.
Where is that assumption in my GP comment? I said Bezos gave Trump the most powerful endorsement possible.
(The rest of the parent is a distraction.)
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So they aren't going to endorse either candidate.
If I didn't have context about the situation, I'd say it makes sense. However I think that in this flawed two-party situation, there is unfairness on both sides, resulting in some sort of balance, and it's bad that one of the richest people on earth could upset the balance in this way, especially at the last moment.
Article from 2020: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/09/28/editorial...
Yeah, I think you’re missing the point a bit here: the fear of endorsing the “wrong” candidate, as it would lead to loss of profit by the owning company, is what led to the axing of the endorsement. Call it what you want: profit and political strongarming silenced a newspaper.
You could have created a top-level comment instead of replying to mine. I don't see how your reply is about my take on it and isn't just your completely different take on the issue.
It's just political strongarming. The Washington Post is not profitable.
Ok, I actually RTFA and it just seems like a bunch of conjecture over what the reasons might be? Nobody actually knows?
And the editorial board's comments seem a bit dramatic?
"It represents an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love, and for which we have worked a combined 218 years"
How does it represent an abandonment? These editors have been sharing their convictions for the past combined 218 years. I don't think any reader is going to ask "I wonder who the Post is going to endorse"?
WaPo endorsing Harris would have changed exactly 0 minds. Everyone that would have read it already agrees with them. But it would have made them feel good about their existing world view.
Them _not_ endorsing _will_ change minds. There are people that read Washington Post that would take that as a sign that not even their trusted left-leaning paper is 100% comfortable with the candidate they should have endorsed, so maybe there's something there they should have hesitancy about too.
There's an irony here, the WaPo news room has become quite political in the last decade. But the editorial board has decided to be apolitical.
Everything is backwards.
Did they?
> An endorsement of Harris had been drafted by Post editorial page staffers but had yet to be published, according to two sources briefed on the sequence of events who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The decision not to publish was made by The Post’s owner — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — according to the same sources.
Seems it’s just Bezos
You didn't read the article. The board had written an endorsement of Harris. But it was killed at the demand of Bezos.
Not antagonizing the likely future POTUS is smart business especially when said future POTUS is known to lash out with retaliatory rhetoric and actions.
More interesting to me is that this is the third tech billionaire to take a decidedly different stance than he did previously. Musk is quite active, but even Zuckerberg took a much more neutral stance for 2024.
Honestly I'm more surprised that Bezos even bothered. Does he really think the endorsement of The Washington Post editorial board is so significant that it's worth intervening? That seems implausible.
Given he was the one who made the call, what other conclusion would you draw?
Well I mean the most generous take would be that he's come around about Trump and has decided that the editorial board making an explicit endorsement for Harris isn't in his own (or the country's) interests.
On X they're floating the theory that he knew this would cause a lot of them to resign, and wanted that for other reasons. All we can do is speculate, I guess.
I would say Zuck went as far right as reasonably possible, and his timing was good. Kind of cowardly, but also impressive foresight on his part.
That's absurd. His political donations are very blue.
It's almost as if coming out in favor of taxing unrealized capital gains right before the election wasn't the stroke of political brilliance that Harris thought it was.
"Hmm, I'm facing a close election. Hey, wait, I know! I'll make enemies of people who buy ink by the trainload and bandwidth by the petabyte-second."
I really wish somebody could have talked her out of that idea, or at least convinced her to wait another couple of months before putting it on the table. It was an incredible faux pas, maybe a history-changing one, whose consequences were trivially foreseeable.
Bezos cares because his businesses have billions of dollars in revenue from the federal government. Trump has already claimed to personally review those contracts and was reported as trying to kill the $10B JEDI contract:
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/10/26/trump-mattis-screw-amazo...
By all accounts, he’s prepared to be more authoritarian and less bound by the law if re-elected and he’s already threatening journalists with rape and talking about yanking broadcast licenses for channels which don’t kowtow to him.
Probably the opposite. He doesn’t think it’s significant, but the risk of petty retaliation IS significant.
of course it is. endorsements by major entities such as major newspapers… endorsements by celebrities and all these other points form the constellation of how a candidate is perceived. a huge chunk of people will not just vote blindly for whoever seems to be more broadly supported but actually deeply like whoever is put in front of them. and they will also believe it if a bunch of newspapers release the same story at the same time… even if there is no evidence offered to support the main assertion. or even if its obviously false. creation of the appearance of a consensus is an extremely powerful tool
All signs point to this being an extraordinarily tight election. 5 or 10k votes in the right state could swing the whole thing.
I'd be incredibly surprised if there are even 100 people who:
- Don't know who The Washington Post editorial board would endorse
- Would change who they are voting for based on this lack of endorsement
But I could be wrong.
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Thats because of the calculation:
- Endorse Harris and Trump wins, Trump will seek revenge on Bezos and Amazon (he tried this in the first term)
- Endorse Trump and Harris wins, Harris will not act outside the bounds of a normal government official
This is capitulation to the perceived threats of a Trump presidency and is very bad.
This sounds like "obeying in advance", a phenomenon that Timothy Snyder wrote about in On Tyranny, 20 lessons from the 20th Century.
https://timothysnyder.org/on-tyranny
Helpfully, the relevant quote I was thinking of is directly on the books website:
> Do not obey in advance.
> Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.
(The quote on the website goes on with several pages of examples.)
> Harris will not act outside the bounds of a normal government official
California has even blocked SpaceX because they don't like the politics of Musk (https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-10-11/la-me-sp...) so I would say is risky to expect any of the two (or its followers) not seeking revenge.
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Musk is a true believer, but Zuck and Bezos probably fear retribution from Trump if he wins and they endorsed Harris.
Isn’t this like Russia’s oligarchy?
I’m not enamored with Democrats, but Trump doesn’t share Constitutional values and I’m very much for independent journalism.
This is bad.
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Zuckerberg has never been not right wing though.
Did people really think that billionaires wanted to buy major press outlets for profit expectations?
Controlling the narrative was always the plan. Unless it's private equity. They just strip it bare and put it out of business.
People did warn about it at the time too.
I fail to see why being upset about the bad thing actually happening means people didn’t think that was the plan.
I've yet to see an argument against this not delivered in bad faith.
If the publication in question was the NY Post, Washington Times, or another center-right newspaper, the very same group currently having a collective meltdown on social media would be praising them with an equally melodramatic "saving democracy" or some other manufactured phrase du jour.
I'm really not sure of this. The argument I've mostly seen is that the endorsement was always mostly meaningless. If anything, this is a "coverup worse than the crime" situation. Killing the endorsement is much more notable than just letting it happen because it's what everyone was worried about when Bezos bought the paper - that he'd inject his own consideration into it, something he said he wouldn't do. If some billionaire owned the NY Post and banned them from endorsing Trump, that would absolutely be a story as well.
I don't think anyone thinks it's not clear who the writers at the NY Post or the Washington Post generally want to win. That makes this whole situation so much more stupid on Bezos's part.
Describing NY Post as center-right is insane. It's genuinely not up to interpretation, that's about as hard right as it gets.
From Jacob Heilbrunn on the National Interest:
# The Capitulation of The Washington Post
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/jacob-heilbrunn/capitulati...
Lots of press are declining to endorse. This is a trend.
It’s generally harmless for high-visibility elections. But these endorsements are both powerful and essential for lower-visibility elections.
It makes sense in so much as "it's a risk to our business to endorse Harris because of the risk of falling afoul of Trump's vindictive nature should he win."
From a fiduciary standpoint, I agree with that assessment. From the standpoint of a citizen, I find the implication alarming.
I do believe that this is the reasoning behind the decision, but it is certainly speculation on my part.
A newspaper that succumbs to fear of reprisal fails completely in its principal duty and becomes little more than a propaganda rag.
If you own a paper money isn't the point. Just like in a hospital or a law firm or even a bank. You do the right thing because society trusts you and making money comes from that. Do the wrong thing, and your business will vanish.
You are forgetting that the ftc is looking at amazon under biden, one would hope that harris will keep kahn in the post (because she's kicking asses that have been needed to be kicked for 30+ years).
I think he's in a bad place. If he endorses trump he's endorsing a potential fascist dictator. If he endorses harris he's contributing to amazon's anti-trust peril.
A statement along those lines should appear in the next 10-Q filing, under business risks.
This is why we need to repeal and replace the First Amendment with an amendment that guarantees freedom of expression within the bounds of civilized discourse (e.g., open Nazism=crime) and severely punishes government officials who use their power to stifle such expression. The First Amendment, as written, protects speech that oughtn't be protected, and fails to protect speech that ought to be protected, hence the current situation with the Washington Post being cowed into withdrawing their endorsement by the threat of a vindictive Trump.
Countries with no First Amendment, where hate speech is in fact criminalized, routinely score higher on international free-speech indices than the USA because in the USA the government, especially the Republican Party, has the means and the will to intimidate the press into silence or capitulation.
I guess there's no regulatory guidance here, on media ownership interfering with media op-ed operations ? Even when Bezos (probably) swore up and down he would never interfere ?
> Scientific American makes second-ever endorsement, backs Kamala Harris. This is only the second time in the magazine's 179-year history that it has made an endorsement in a presidential race
The first time they ever made an endorsement was (wait for it) 2020! Everything has become political these days.
https://www.axios.com/2024/09/16/scientific-american-kamala-...
Bezos utilizing unorthodox reverse psychology techniques to delegitimize trump and bolster support for harris
This is great. Now if they could also stop pretending there are only 2 options maybe we could one day have peace in the world.
Remember when 10,000 papers endorsed Hillary?
So we have reached the intimidation phase of this election, where businesses owners fear repercussions from Trump (or standing up against him) and his entourage for not supporting him.
Reminds me of a certain time in history.
It's fascinating to compare other countries on the brink of authoritarianism with our own. In other countries it happens because of bread lines and complete dysfunction here it happens despite a country out of war and an economy that's humming along at a brisk pace.
It's the equivalent of playing chicken with a train because you're bored.
My first thought is that it's sad that a billionaire owner can override the will and culture of the journalists that compose the paper.
My second thought is that it's really bad that this could have been done in order to help Blue Origin get government contracts.
Think about it, the actions of a news paper are being influenced by what's best for a aerospace company. How did this happen? It happened because more and more companies, across all industries, are owned by fewer and fewer people.
> CNBC has requested comment from Amazon.
According to the article, Jeff Bezos is presumably afraid that Trump would continue to punish Amazon. If that is the case, this seems like an entirely futile exercise.
Not that corporate PR responses are ever particularly illuminating. I read an article regarding information conveyed per syllable. English was near the top. Languages with less information per syllable like Spanish were spoken faster. In dead last place were PR statements from Fortune 500 companies.
No, he's fucking terrified of lina khan. He won't endorse trump and poke the bear and he won't endorse harris because he's embittered.
He's a cowardly monopolist.
He's afraid of Vance. Trump is an egoist but Vance has an ideological dislike of amazon.
Imagine taking as many steroids as Jeff Bezos has taken, only to end up being afraid of an obese elderly man who cheats at golf. What was the point of all that flexing?
This isn't a normal election, or anything remotely close to it. It'd be lovely if we had TWO relatively normal candidates and could vote for them in our normal partisan ways.
You may have noticed that basically everyone in Trump's first term cabinet has come out and called him things ranging from "moron" to "fascist" to a "danger to the country". This is not normal. It's extremely abnormal. It's a warning to the country.
It's at extraordinary times like these when the country needs some leadership, from the media as well as those in power, to highlight the danger. Many senior republicans have stepped up and announced they are going to vote for Harris. It's a very poor look for a newspaper, faced with a once in a lifetime election like this, to effectively say "we're gonna sit this out out - we have no editorial opinion on who is better for the country". Very sad.
Surely the prospect of a nice little multi billion dollar defense contract from Trump would have nothing to do with it
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4954591-trump-meets-bl...
Weird, because in Trump’s last presidency he was pretty anti Jeff Bezos. But I guess however they feel about each other, the assumed business tax benefits of a trump presidency make him want trump
"Democracy dies in darkness"
and silence, apparently.
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clearly bezos is concerned about the present administration's policy regarding weapons exports
What a title. I read the first 3 words, and just had to keep reading the rest of it.
Good because newspapers should not be endorsing candidates.
It is one thing to be neutral when one candidate wants more military spending and a lower top income tax bracket and the other is in favor of higher taxes on top and more social spending.
But in this case one candidate literally tried to subvert the last election. Even ignoring all his other issues, that one is enough to say we shouldn't vote for him.
This is probably the most important topic here. It reveals their bias/partisonship and turns the whole newspaper into an opinion piece
Newspapers should do whatever they want. The 1st amendment is kind of a big deal.
The most kind way to read this is that he is concerned of reprisal, no different than the reprisal he faced from the Saudi government (with likely Trump assistance via David Pecker) in 2019.
Here’s an alternative take. Note, I’m absolutely not a Bezos fan. Maybe he is just chickening out against Trump and/or fighting against the proposed billionaire tax (which IMO will never happen.)
But consider that 1) even with all the damage Trump could do, Bezos will still be richer than god, 2) Bezos did not instruct the Washington Post to endorse Trump, and 3) he doesn’t seem to have asked them to keep things quiet either.
So of course this story breaks and of course there is all this media hullabaloo with the upshot being everyone now:
* knows that the WaPo was about to endorse Harris.
* is reminded that Trump has made official decisions and improperly pressured government matters based on personal feelings.
* is aware that even the 2nd richest man in the world fears the personal ire of a presidential candidate in a democracy, ostensibly with a solid rule of law.
I hate that this comes across as “he’s the billionaire we deserve, but not the one we need right now, and oh, BTW he's also playing 4D chess," but all this seems very expected. So maybe another way to look at this is: Bezos appears to submit to Trump, which in itself serves as a very publicly warning to the world about what will happen under Trump, and indirectly endorses Harris anyway.
I don't think he has to do 4D chess to signal support against Trump. He could always just use his giant megaphone to decry Trump as a wannabe dictator that improperly used his own power when he was President to punish his political enemies - something Trump does not shy away from publicly admitting.
What's even the point of being a billionaire if you're still scared of Trump?
Trump may be handed unprecedented [0] power, is quite openly and plainly motivated by retribution, has repeatedly threatened to use the power of the military and the state against his political enemies, and at least once has used his own media platform to call for the termination of the US constitution.
(Those are facts. Not political claims.)
Putting aside any broader assessments of his character, I think it is rational to be afraid of the consequences of being on the wrong side of such a person.
What is depressing is the number of people in positions of influence who do not feel like modelling the virtuous position of having fear of the consequences of doing what they believe to be the right thing but doing it anyway.
[0] I realise that in principle there is a precedent for him having this power because he had it before. But what any presidential candidate in 2024 now has is the opportunity to run an executive with the clear legal opinion that they are permanently immune from prosecution for most of their actions, and an implicit handbook on how to bury criminal acts in official communications that are covered by absolute immunity. This extended power has no precedent.
The Washington Post, of all papers, knows the answer: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Jamal_Khash...
Why is everyone in this thread pushing the idea that Bezos is scared of Trump? It seems more plausible to me he is scared of the DoJ breaking up Amazon under Harris.
The hedonic treadmill comes for everyone. Even the billionaires want more.
No one is safe from a nation state that is weaponized against you.
Just look at what happened in Saudi Arabia and the billionaires there.
Because soon it’s very possible Trump will rally the military behind him and start imprisoning billionaires who dared to cross him. He’ll be the only “billionaire” with real muscle to imprison his enemies for life or even summary execution.
About half of American voters are behind Trump. More poor/less educated coming to him compare to past cycles. Why wouldn’t a billionaire scared of him?
There is definitely a quiet support among the faang owners for Trump.
There's been so much focus on education as the new fault line in American politics. And though it is huge, and the less educated increasingly do support ultra-conservative policies, I think the even bigger fault line is across genders. And tech workers, though usually well educated, skew dramatically male and those degrees and salaries don't make them immune to the growing culture of male grievance and victimhood.
How quiet is it, if you and all of HN knows?
I think you can remove one of those A's from FAANG supporting Trump, and it's not Bezos' A...
I think they, like even some on the left, have reasoned that Trump will only be there for four years. That's it. He's gone, or in jail. That's four years they know who their opponent will be and the Democratic Party can prepare. Thinking a long game, it is possible the left has given up and said fine, let's get it over with.
Probably already mentioned in the comments below, but the subtext here is obvious. Bezos thinks Trump is very likely to win and he has killed this endorsement because it might screw his broad business interests in all kinds of ways under the administration of a vengeful Trump. The nature of Amazon makes it much more exposed to regulatory heat inside the U.S than would be the case for a more purely digital tech-driven firm like, say, Meta.
Aside from the likely cynicism of the move, the cliquish criticism of Bezos reeks of moralizing hypocrisy. Is there some exact moral duty among major tech company founders to effusively endorse specifically progressive, liberal elite-endorsed democrat candidates, to show their own kumbaya credentials? Bullshit. Even the ones who vigorously support democrat politicians are no less self interested in doing so. It almost always boils down to money and favorable regulations, whether someone supports the donkey or the elephant.
It's not a novel observation but there's another conclusion you can draw from the same information: it's in bezos's best interest for trump to win and he wants him to.
Does Bezos have uber-intel, and knows Trump is going to win?
Nobody does. It's a tossup, and he's hedging his bets.
lol... maybe he does? Number of trump signs vs. harris signs bought on Amazon?
(yes i know Jeff doesn't work there, but y'know...)
He is, unfortunately, a clear favourite to win. You don't have to have uber-intel to know that.
Just like their motto:
"Democracy dies in darkness"
Hopefully there are no dark times ahead.
Comparing the NYT and WaPo, seems to me the latter is more stridently alerting everyone to the dangers of a Trump presidency, this killed endorsement notwithstanding.
Actively making the Democrats chance of winning less likely for your own personal interests is shortsighted.
Jeff still needs customers, he needs a sane society where his businesses can operate from ?
Sorry but the leader of the Republican Party is completely unhinged. Bezos might get away with a tax break or avoid some other legal scrutiny or even Trumps gestapo hit squad,but wow, you’re giving up a lot for a little.
Actions like this completely undermine one of the main reasons people believe Trump should be president. Which is that he is too rich to be bought. Well, look at the rich people being bought by their own greed and shortsightedness now.
> making Democrats chance of winning less likely
Do you vote according to what others tell you to? Or do you believe most other people do so blindly? Dem voters will stay home because they didn't read a papers opinion? Or you believe that others can't tell the stance of a newspaper regarding a candidate from their reporting on them?
> he needs a sane society where his businesses can operate from ?
As someone from Eastern Europe I do not think that any oligarch really needs this.
Cannot in any way understand why this is an actual issue. Sheesh If more newspapers would stay out of endorsing political parties we would live in a better world.
Frankly leftist newspaper propaganda has done little but make the rightist ( especially the ones with a racist agenda ) political parties expand massively.
Every election i. almost any european country is showing this trend.
Why on earth are you all flaming this? Because it means its a hidden Trump support? Kamala is immensly unpopular, outside of all the glam endorsements. She is no Obama thats for sure. How abour adressing the root cause of that?
Wow I wish every newspaper was properly unbiased.
tldr I think you are all idiots for outrage over lack of proper political bias in a newspaper.
“Left wing publications caused right wing movements to be popular” is such a lazy trope and terrible “anti-anti-Trump” argument.
Thinking that newspapers should stay out of publishing opinions about political parties is basically the most authoritarian position you can take.
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Your comment broke several of the site guidelines, by (1) posting in the flamewar style, including nationalistic flamebait, (2) being snarky, (3) doing political battle, and (4) commenting about getting downvoted. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules? We'd appreciate it because we're trying to avoid hell here.
One candidate has proposed a day of violence and given indications they consider “anyone who disagrees with me” as an “enemy within”. I don’t think they have talked about televised tribunals, and they also have a … tenuous … relationship with the truth or following through on promises (even when baselines against normal “politician lie rate”)
Yeah, it's really scary right now. Trump with power is not going to end well for anyone, especially trans minorities
To be clear, the camps never went away, and we’ve been mass deporting for decades now. Support of ICE is a bipartisan effort. Iirc the only change Biden made was to end the policy of family separations. The rhetoric is massively different, but the actual policy is not.
I really wouldn’t hold my breath for a president that doesn’t fearmonger about immigration in the forseeable future.
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Yeah, we really are in denial.
the genocide doesn't give you some form of perspective?
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don’t ask german companies what they were doing during 1933-1945
Which party is ending capitalism? I'm curious, because there's one party saying explicitly that they intend to end the democratic process, one party explicitly stating the goal is the end of the rule of law, and one party saying they want to deploy the military against the supporters of the other political party.
You could make the argument that those positions are fundamentally opposed to capitalism as well, but that's not as explicit.
Regardless, only one party is threatening either of your alternatives, your straw man nonsense about ending capitalism not withstanding.
Democracy is largely driven by preferences of the super rich. So your statement is a little like choosing between the church* and the pope.
* I’m aware not all Christian religions are governed by the pope. But I hope you still get the symbolism I’m making.
Not all billionaires - Bill Gates endorsed Harris.
Mostly I agree. Billionaires chose long ago to prioritize wealth.
Capitalism. They own companies that are established. It’s in their interest to prevent competition.
Almost all established companies eventually support rules that enshrine themselves as monopolies in exchange to much tougher regulation.
Tariffs force governments to pick and choose industries to receive state protection. As do subsidies.
Even creating tons of paperwork for startups helps a lot.
Plenty of democracies function this way. Italy and Belgium come to mind.
Which is why we need to legislate away the billionaire.
Do you really think Harris and co are able or willing to end capitalism? They have nearly as much to lose as the billionaires.
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HN is not a living organism, it’s an abstract entity formed by the people who engage in the site. As it happens within any community, there’s no such thing as consistency. In fact, so diverse is this community that I’d wager that luck and chance explain much of what gains traction or gets flagged here.
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What an odd view of history to imagine that newspapers weren't always (and importantly) open about their editor's opinions.
The idea of "objective journalism" is both ahistorical and unsound and mostly just acts as cover for claiming that certain journalism has subjectivity we're not allowed to call out.
It's far better to know how the editors see the world than to falsely pretend that they don't.
That's basically the entire history of publishing.
What a sad state of affairs when people who consider themselves educated enough to opine about what newspapers should and should not do clearly has no historical understanding or basic familiarity with newspapers.
It's called an editorial. Newpapers have them.
Every choice of coverage is an opinion about what is important, and shapes the tone of coverage as surely as an editorial. This is actually a very common critique of the News Media, which loves to aggrandize itself by saying that it is neutral.
At least editorials are honest about the views of the institution.
Facts still must be interpreted. It could be a fact that a credible source claimed X and a non-credible source claimed the opposite. A newspaper's job is to also provide this context, not merely the "facts" of what was stated.
Similarly, an endorsement could in countless ways not simply be partisan. For example, based on what is most predicted to help the country with X/Y/Z.
If this was a long-standing policy, or one at least announced well in advance of the election it wouldn't get much attention. That it's coming right before the election for transparently selfish reasons on the part of the paper's owner is not great.
For the past 100 years, literally since WWI, all media organizations have been used to constantly launder opinions into the brains of the American people, disguised as 'fact'.
If the Washington Post only reported facts, it would be the most left wing newspaper in the US by a country mile.
Wait until they tell this guy about Fox News.
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If you flag, please don't also comment that you did. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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Even if one is Bozo and the other is Pennywise?
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The traditional ideal is that editors and journalists exercise a freedom of practice that owners don't intefere with, much the same as the academic freedom tenured professors are traditionally given at universities.
In practice, that's of course not the case (in either domain), but it predictably makes front page news when an owner acts too egregiously domineering.
> Couldn't a simple answer here be that he felt Kamala is unqualified and terrible and as a newspaper with a lot of readership and influence, he decided against endorsing her?
Sure, but why should the personal opinion of the owner of the newspaper prevail over the opinion of the editorial staff?
It's not his endorsement, it's an endorsement written by the editorial board that he told them not to run. Notably, he didn't endorse either.
He's entitled to do so as owner of the paper. But it reeks of cowardice.
The worry is 100% that this is happening to please Trump. The evidence is that he hasn’t had a hand in editorials until now all of a sudden.
It’s his choice I suppose but I don’t think it’s crazy to be worried about the precedent of a formerly very independent institution caving so readily.
True neutrality is endorsing Harris. Because it's not like Trump is a real choice. He's objectively terrible.
Harris isn't terrible or unqualified. She has plenty of experience and unlike Trump cares and wants to learn the details of policy.
The two sides are not remotely similar. And yes Bezos decision to let himself be blackmailed is insane
Sure, but then Bezos should be writing something explaining it. Instead, he's silently just using his money to squash opinions he doesn't agree with. The is the exact sort of conspiracy that Trump likes to claim where Soros is the reason anyone doesn't endorse him, except now it literally happened and it's to help him, and he turned around and took a meeting with Blue Origin right after.
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Could you please stop posting in the flamewar style? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, and we've already had to warn you about this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41790409). If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
On this particular topic please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41950993 also.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endorsements_in_the_2024_Unite...
???
>after he fell down the stairs
I think Biden fell UP stairs more often on camera.
Recent paper came out suggesting that classifying media coverage of major media outlets identified something like a 94% positive take for Kamala and a 98% negative take for Trump. I think the media companies gave up the mask a while ago. James O'keefe had a great undercover journalism piece where one the producer's of MSNBC outright said they are a propaganda arm for the DNC.
A cowards way of endorsing Trump, to be honest.
Regardless of its impact on the election, this decision ends the Washington Post a serious news organization. Prior to this, you could reasonably trust it as a decent source, if questionable on tech & Amazon stories due to the ownership bias. After this, it's clear that Bezos purchased it with intent to push his own views. It's no longer a reliable source for news, it's just a mouthpiece for Amazon & Bezos's other companies.
Sad to see an important newspaper die in this way. I hope the people that do good work there are able to find new employment.
At this point it's just tax optimization...
He knows something
I mean not really
Its just a hedge.
If HArris wins, she's unlikley to actually take petty revenge. If trump wins, he has past form.
He knows that one of the key pillars of fascism is the strengthening of corporate power.
Billionaires are not your friends.
Yes we can infer. His political leanings are fairly Democrat. His media puppet is very left leaning. He didn’t announce this policy years ago when it would have been a nothing burger, instead just a couple weeks before the election as a splashy egg on face moment.
I can smell fish. His best information is that he was backing the wrong horse and now he is scrambling to contain the damage. Because it’s also quite a slap to the Harris campaign, he must not think much of their chances or sees a very, very asymmetrical risk profile here. Snub versus scorched earth.
We are going to be in for a very interesting four years.
He knows Trump will hold it against him, and his probability of becoming president is nonzero.
The irony I see is that all of the "reporters" who resign(ed) will soon be pitching their Substacks on Twitter.
I think the endorsement was just bad journalism or bad writing and Bezos just did not want to risk it. If such an endorsement would come out in such a divided climate, then i would want it to be excellent. Maybe it was just partisan.
Who knows.
They endorsed in 2020 and 2016 and 2012 and 2008 and if they were so serious about adopting national neutrality they should have announced this in January instead of spiking an existing endorsement
Evidence that Bezos might have had good reasons to nix his paper's endorsement: the Nation withdrew its earlier endorsement of Haris:
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/kamala-harris-cou...
A piece written by the interns is absolutely not a withdrawal of the endorsement by the Nation. Please don’t mislead people.
So why is it that this is about money and Amazon contracts? Why isn't it about Kamala just being so bad, in Bezos's eyes, that she doesn't deserve an endorsement. I think that's way more likely.
I am not surprised however that the liberal media will look for any problem over admitting it's their own candidate that's the problem.
Bezos owns 9% of Amazon. His personal share of any 10bn contract might be a few hundred million over many years. He doesn't care!
> Bezos owns 9% of Amazon. His personal share of any 10bn contract might be a few hundred million over many years. He doesn't care!
The rest of your comment aside, I think this sentence proves too much. You can use it to prove that Bezos doesn't care about almost anything in Amazon, or that most billionaires don't care much about what happens in their companies, because it only impacts a small part of their already vast fortune.
It's pretty clear that this is not true for many billionaires.
> Why isn't it about Kamala just being so bad, in Bezos's eyes, that she doesn't deserve an endorsement.
Bad for whom? Bezos is a multibillionaire, his problems are not our problems. It’s detached from reality to think a guy that made his fortune exploiting workers and other businesses in any way understands or cares for society’s struggles.