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.
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
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.
> 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.
> 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 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.
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)
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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..
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
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.
> "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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
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.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.
'...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?
> 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 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.
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)
> 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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
The editorial page runs on opinion - I expect them to opine
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.
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/
https://www.semafor.com/article/10/25/2024/editor-resign-sub...
Well, I guess now democracy dies in anticipation of darkness.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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..
I thought that having billions buys you freedom. Turns out you still have to lick the boot.
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
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.
> "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
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.
Good reason not to subscribe to the WP.
'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 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.
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...
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What's even the point of being a billionaire if you're still scared of Trump?
There is definitely a quiet support among the faang owners for Trump.
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.
Does Bezos have uber-intel, and knows Trump is going to win?
Just like their motto:
"Democracy dies in darkness"
Hopefully there are no dark times ahead.
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.
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.
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A cowards way of endorsing Trump, to be honest.
He knows something
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.
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...
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!