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.
I think the implicit argument is that he wants to avoid more canceled contracts, along with other forms of retribution like personal attacks he experienced a few years earlier.
Maybe but I don’t think Bezos is lacking $$. That contract was $1B/yr contract over ten years. They make $600B/yr. Not exactly going to tip the scales of his stock options.
These billionaires usually buy money losing newspapers, or social networks, for personal reasons.
If I was going to bet money on it I’d very much lean on a personal motive beyond money.
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.
> 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.
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.
Regardless of the motive, I do not view favorably his interference in the newspaper. If anything, he should have left editorial decisions to the staff.
We have a potential future president who, putting it very charitably, espouses the ideology of "For my friends — everything, for my enemies — the law", and in the least surprising development ever, billionaires suddenly warm up to this guy. Many such cases.
Yes we have a reason. Trump threatens media companies and individuals he believes have wronged him - loudly and often. If someone came to you and said they aren't going to a party, and you knew someone at that party had specifically threatened to beat them if they attend the party, do you have "no reason" to believe that the threat of a beating is a likely cause of the action (or in these cases, inaction). Especially if that person has a long history of attending that specific party?
> 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.
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.
This has nothing to do with them being unable to support Republicans, it's them choosing not to support a Democratic nominee (which they've done for the past 50 years) because they don't want to anger the possible Republican nominee because the owner is afraid of retribution affecting his other businesses.
The BBC recently wrote a piece on the executives at Harod’s who kept Mo’s pervert behaviour secret. Don’t think they done yet that for the many perverts they have kept secrets for.
The Guardian is a great source of news, and it has a curageous team of reporters, but even it has its biases. I recommend reading multipe news outlets
and being aware what he individual biases might be.
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."
> We cannot deduce Bezos’ motives from Trump’s vengefulness.
Why not?
You personally can refrain from any speculation, if you wish, but it's nonetheless the most obvious explanation. Moreover, your own speculation is implausible:
> perhaps this is a return to more profitable and credible roots.
This last-minute backpedaling makes The Washington Post look much worse than an endorsement. The new non-endorsement "policy" wasn't announced in advance. It came only after the editors had already drafted an endorsement of Harris, and at least one editor resigned as a result. The Post now appears less credible rather than more.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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
But this is past. Each time had its own challenges. For example, i learned so much about how media and partisanship works in the past years. It is so obvious and visible to me now. Maybe others feel the same and thats why an endorsement would feel disingenuous. It has to be reasonable and believable. But maybe it was not.
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? To be fair, I can see the same reason why another right leaning newspaper might not want to endorse trump if they felt the same about him.
For all the comments talking about how there is no such thing as true neutrality, I agree. You can dislike Bezos's decision to not want to endorse her but to call it wrong is insane because its a choice as much as endorsing her is
> 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?
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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 Trumps 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.
Given that Trump keeps a copy of Mein Kampf on his bedside table, has said that he wants generals as loyal to him personally (not to the country/constitution) as Hitler's, has said that Hitler did some good things... Uses language from Hitler such as dehumanizing immigrants as not human, talks about the "enemy within"... It seems that Hitler is in fact exactly who we should be talking about when discussing Trump, and exactly the "danger to the country" that Trump represents that Gen.Miller and Gen.Kelly are concerned about.
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.
Yes. Censoring is an action, the power dynamic at play is not relevant to whether something is or is not censoring. What you’re asking is “is this specific act of censorship somehow immoral or illegal?” And the answer is no, as I expect you already believe.
But it wasn’t censored for no reason, and it’s entirely reasonable to question the motives that led to this specific act of censorship.
If all Bezos cared about was having lower taxes for billionaires he could have simply hired a bunch of people who believed in that and had them be the editorial board, and they would endorse whomever he wanted.
The fact that he had the editorial board he had (1), which wrote up an endorsement of Harris several weeks ago for his approval, and then he suddenly decided it was better not to endorse at all? That fits cowardice much more closely than it does pure economic interest.
This isn't government censorship, obviously, but do remember that the only point of the Editorial Board is to write opinion pieces and have them published in the paper. That is their entire job! They aren't reporters, they don't go out and ferret out news. They have opinions, and they write them out and get published in the paper. And they wrote out an endorsement of Harris, and suddenly it was announced (to the board only slightly before it was announced to the rest of the world, according to published reports) that they weren't going to endorse for President any more. That's a fact pattern that leads one strongly to Jeff Bezos' personal cowardice as the most parsimonious explanation.
1: At least before the resignations come in, I expect the board to be very different in a few weeks.
A newspaper isn't a "regular" business. There's a reason why the press has explicit protection in the Constitution. It is a special entity, and now Bezos has killed a 40 year tradition because he's afraid Trump will come after him if he wins. So this is likely a Hail Mary to try and save himself from potential imprisonment and fines from a Trump administration. I would have preferred they just come and support Trump if that's what Bezos wanted instead of waffling.
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).
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.
> 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 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.
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? [...] 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.
Sure. But the newspaper could be biased towards facts, moderate speech and empathy to all parties. Then - despite being biased - people wouldn't be as worried about bias.
People are misusing the word "unbiased" but I don't think there is much uncertainty about what they actually mean - the call is for less partisan bias and more bias towards, say, enlightenment values. The exact values are a political topic but reporting with any values at all would be a step up for the US corporate media.
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.
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.
By no means. Word choice on its own __is__ a bias. Even if you reported straight facts, the word choice used presents a bias or not. Is it a military action or a terrorist attack? Is it a protest? An occupation? Are they Freedom Fighters?
Choosing __to__ or __not to__ use an organization's given name or a description of them, is having a bias.
Choosing to report on something at all is a presentation of bias.
There is bias in everything and to imagine there isn't is to be even more susceptible to it.
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"
Pretending there exists “unbiased” journalism is silly. All journalism is biased to some degree. The worthwhile categorization is to what degree the bias exists.
Journalistic credibility comes from presenting facts. Which facts you present, which pieces you publish are in themselves opinions, biases.
That's why I see aiming for unbiased reporting to miss the point of journalism. We want opinions, but not random uneducated opinions, we want well argumented, relevant and proof backed opinions.
"Candidate X is a liar" is valid journalism if there's the facts to back the claim and the analysis to make it a thought provoking piece that brought something to the readers. We have whole Pullitzer winning books going into minute details about how some public figures are crooks.
To note, not reporting, not expressing opinions is also a bias so I don't see a middle ground. For instance if a major national journalism would not publish the news of a candidate getting arrested, that in itself is a biased decision. If they'd publish a dry piece just quoting the official police declaration, that would also be tremendous bias and everyone would see it as a refusal to comment on it.
That's a fair point. But in this case it wasn't a principled stand against the idea of opinion journalism[1]. It was an act to kill an in-progress editorial piece days before publication, for quite clearly partisan reasons (though most people believe Bezos did it out of fear and not affinity, he'd presumably prefer Trump loses, but doesn't want to be in the line of fire if he doesn't).
[1] Which, let's be honest, is pervasive and popular. You aren't simultaneously arguing to kick Hannity off the air, right?
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
"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?
It never made it into science class, but only because institutions had (and have) the power to set rules and not be neutral on important issues of the day. It was our choice at the museum that received tax payer funding to not be neutral that kept creationism out. That's picking a side. And that is absolutely essential is my point, because the truth is, unfortunately, not neutral, and we all need to do our best to find that truth. Just saying "be neutral" is abdication of responsibility.
Well said. There's are several sayings, such as "neutrality is the both-sideism fallacy", which is one of the most obvious critical thinking examples that humanities students are taught early on, but it is not so easy to convey this to people without exposure to these ideas.
I was a volunteer at a US science museum that received some taxpayer funding back in the mid-aughts when "Scientific Creationism" was still a thing. Our museum had (and still has) an institutional commitment to the scientific consensus on the age of the universe and earth. If we had caught a volunteer providing visitors with creationism they would have been asked to hand in their badge and not work any more shifts, because that was our institutional position and everyone had to respect that.
Trying to throw that away because of Israel-Palestine is much more threatening to the value of truth than it helps it.
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.
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 don't think neutrality serves the powerful. Neutrality serves the 'truth' otherwise it wouldn't be neutral in the first place. Your point only stands if you assume that the partial source would side with the 'good' side on average.
Neutrality is problematic because in practice it serves the powerful, like every instance of bureaucracy and scientism we can point to through civilized history. Instead you are appealing to some politics-free context-free notion of neutrality which might as well be a made up word then. Humans and institutions are not truth objects, so your incorrect argument is in conflating this with a discussion of access to truth. Universities are human processes, not mathematical theorems for which good and bad are irrelevant, which is a different issue than neutral.
The powerful by definition control us. Otherwise they wouldn't be powerful. I don't see your point. To me the notion of trying to be neutral seem to give the powerful less power than being "political".
I.e. it is better if the puppets think they are living in a fair democracy, since they might act like they do, decreasing the power of the puppet masters. The opposite is concepts like the series "House of cards", that instruct people to play the game and be "political".
I define "neutral" as loosely "trying to not be biased".
Like, for example, pretending until it became way over the top too embarrassing that the president is mentally fit for another 4 year of any work, is a good example of being "political" about it.
I am biased against creationism being treated as science. And that is correct, because one side is true and the other is false and should not be taught or treated equally.
So I think either your definition is wrong or your goal of neutrality is wrong.
I don't see how that is biased in anything but a really litteral way.
I don't think that is your point, but treating creationism as a science would rather quickly disprove it? Like Dowsing rods or whatever.
If God descended from heaven (lets just pretend he did, not a powerful alien or whatever) and showed you how he creationisted everything, then it would be 'biased' to pretend it didn't happen. But I guess you could still believe it is fake, as long as the facts are considered in some way, without being biased.
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.
I don't disagree with some of the things that blog post is saying, but excluding the opinions on the Washington Post home page, where is the is outright bullshit or propaganda? I hear the opinion often but I don't see it when I go to a newspaper.
Now if you were to go to the home page of reddit or twitter there's clearly tons of propaganda.
The current headline on the
Washington post is talking about Israeli strikes in Iran.
Is that the most immediate event pertaining to Israel? Probably. Is that the most important recent event pertaining to Israel? Well, that depends, doesn’t it?
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.
One party wants to end _all_ abortions, _including_ those that might be medically necessary. They are pro-forced-birth, and pro-killing-women.
You’ve got the position of the other party wrong as well, but I’m not going to even bother correcting that because if you don’t find the above completely vile there’s no helping you.
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.
What I mean by "unbalanced" is that the US situation is not about small details and very minute distinctions. People's opinions are divided on very basic and fundamental issues, there are very radical behaviours and really big swings of money.
Trying to keep a "the truth is in the middle" attitude is unethical.
I think the main issue becomes "bad faith", and we're back to the credibility issue. IMHO discourse should be fact based, and arguments should be researched. If you're calling your opponent names, show the receipt and not vague gesturing at what you think reality is.
Blaming the other side should be fine, as long as you can defend that position.
> Trying to keep a "the truth is in the middle" attitude is unethical.
It is illogical too. In a simple question of "little" and "much" the truth could be "even smaller" and "way bigger than much".
> I think the main issue becomes "bad faith"
Ye I think I agree here about it being the main concern. Bad faith accusation, debates etc seem to radicalize the supporters of the accused. I think you make the caricature real at some point when supporters start to believe the misconception.
The concept of neutrality is a mind hack used by those who have already been hacked. It's also used by nefarious actors who know full well what they are doing and think, usually incorrectly, that nobody knows they are doing it.
Once upon a time, I believed that the phrase "all actions are political" was incorrect, and unfairly foisted partisanship onto people. I've learned better than this in retrospect.
So, I believe that Bezos's "being neutral" was in fact a political act, and as such demonstrated where he thinks his bread is buttered. A directive to not endorse Kamala is in-effect a directive to endorse Trump. There is no neutral outcome here.
If you consider the facts of these candidates lives in contrast, there is not a balanced scale here. You have to pick a side, and Bezos's is showing his cowardice by meddling in the news. 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.
When folks like Bezos and Musk and so on buy media properties, you know it's not because they want to support journalism.
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.
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]
It might be vague:
"Bezos and the Washington Post [...] have bent the knee."
I read "bent the knee" as some sort of humiliation? I.e. Bezos don't really want to support Trump, but did anyway. Also on "thedonald" it was used as some sort of "humiliated loser folding in line" meme which is why I namedroped it.
English is not my native tongue so I get such nuances wrong sometimes.
"Bending the knee" is a way to say that someone knelt - going down on one knee, a sign of loyalty and subservience. In this context it implies Bezos acknowledges Trump as an authority he submits to.
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.
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.
It’s one thing to be another voice in the crowd of people all saying the same thing (even a very deep pocketed voice) and another entirely to be the object example everybody discusses by letting it be believed that with all your
billions, you’re scared too. People are more affected by things they decide for themselves than things you tell them, hence show don’t tell.
Were that to be the case, I wouldn’t consider it 4D chess. It seems like a straightforward strategy to me.
The article strongly suggests but doesn't provide concrete evidence that Bezos decided to kill the endorsement for business reasons. There are lots of more reasonable possibilities why Bezos or WaPo's other leadership would feel uncomfortable actively endorsing Kamala though. To be clear I'm voting against Trump. I've looked for good signs from Kamala, but I've found little positive besides her not being Trump. She was asked what the Biden admin did that she would do differently if she were president and refused to give an answer. Her policy plans that I've seen are marketing documents that lack substance and detail. When asked why she'd made massive shifts in policy since she ran in 2019 she had only non-answers. I don't feel like she's actually taken a stand on anything besides abortion and I don't really know what she believes in besides what her party tells her to support to get elected. Problems with her aren't new, she was almost the least popular candidate in her primaries. With a candidate so weak I can see a person not being able to actively endorse her in good conscience and if she is as spineless, unpopular, and poorly communicating as she is now during her presidency it could damage the reputation of publications that endorsed her. They may see the potential disaster coming in her presidency that most of us can't admit to ourselves because the other duopoly choice is so terrible.
Declining to endorse a candidate might help their reputation. As things are now I think of WaPo as Fox News for the left, just unabashed propaganda with no perspectives from the other side. If they repent of their extreme bias and do penance I might give them another chance because their articles are otherwise well written and researched.
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.
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.
A billionaire personally intervening in the endorsement of a major newspaper on the basis of profit motive seems like the sort of thing that would contribute to 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.
We need to do no such thing. All speech, even speech which is vile, must be equally protected under the law or else the protections are meaningless. In your preferred policy regime, it's entirely too easy for the people in charge of government to declare "this is outside the bounds of civilized discourse" about perfectly legitimate speech which they don't like. History has shown us, time and time and time again, that this will happen once you give people the power to censor. It may take 5 years or 100, but it is inevitable. I'm not willing to open that door, and if the price is that I have to deal with some jerks who are Nazis, I call that a bargain.
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.
1) He already has experience with the Trump admin trying to deny AWS from government contracts on the basis of Trump's personal frustration with the Washington Post.
2) It's notable that his other significant enterprise is Blue Origin, whose competitor is Elon Musk, who has by now deeply and publicly ingratiated himself with the Trump campaign.
Maybe Lina Khan is part of the story, but it's silly to act like there aren't more straightforwards reasons.
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?
On a serious note, this is an example of what historian Timothy Snyder refers to as "obeying in advance", where people predict what a repressive government will want and then obey before they're in power just to be safe. This creates a positive feedback loop that leads to them seizing power.
Well, he does have a reasonable chance to be elected to presidency, so there's that.
Morality and general spinelessness aside, it's clearly the sensible thing to do. You might anger a few sensible people but that will pass. Trump is not exactly known to be forgiving. Remember when he refused emergency aid to states that weren't supportive enough of him? That's the sort of decrepit small-minded snowflake we're talking about.
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.
No need to speculate. It’s in black and white: last time Trump wanted to spite Bezos, he canceled $10Bn in AWS contracts. This is profit driven, plain and simple.
> 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.
Notably, most presidential candidates aren’t so petty and vindictive as to cancel contracts with political opponents for spite, but we’re talking about Trump here. It would be best if you woke up to this reality.
It's certainly possible, though if he truly felt pressured that way, he could do a lot more than waiting until 11 days before an election to simply withhold an endorsement.
You know all the stuff Musk has been doing with Twitter since buying it? That.
Or, just to throw out a few ideas: insist on more conservative people on their editorial board. Insist on endorsing Trump (rather than simply not endorsing). Insist that more pro-Trump stories be covered, and fewer pro-Harris ones.
Or, if all of that is too far, just sell the paper and get out of the way.
Any of these makes more sense than simply waiting until the last minute to enforce the withholding of an endorsement if the genuine goal is to avoid being targeted in the event Trump wins.
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
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.
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.
All elections ultiamtely come down to undecided swing voters. It's silly every-time, but you need to vastly lower your expectations for that kind of crowd. Yes, a cheesy dance number endorsing a candidate can be all that is needed to swing an entire election.
This is an issue with first past the post, but that's a much larger thing to tackle.
We’re in. Situation wheee one of the candidates routinely criticizes us and praises our enemies, and still pulls at about 42%. Rationality is not in evidence.
If you think that the situation in the US is even remotely close to that of Nazi Germany, please for your own sake unplug from news for a long time until you regain perspective. We are nowhere close to that point. The idea is a lie being told to you by people who stand to profit from your fear, not based in reality in the slightest.
The reason is pretty damned simple: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_the_economy,_stupid Or, as Bertolt Brecht put it, "Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral." The Democrats used to understand this but now they don't and that's why they are struggling.
Silicon Valley is not entirely happy with the economy. They may be mostly Democrats, but there are limits to the current incompetence that people are willing to endure.
Presidents get far too much praise or criticism for the state of the economy. In reality, their effect on it is fairly limited, especially over such a short span like 4 years.
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.)
Could you please stop posting flamewar comments and using HN for political battle? Your account has been doing both. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
Or at least forming your own vision of what you want the world to be like based on your own values, and seeing the world move that way as "personal gain."
I think people nowadays choose some generic and pointlessly bland vision of personal success instead of having their own vision based on their own values out of narcissism. The more generic, the more people will agree that you are successful.
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.
Not really, there was no proof, just speculation with no evidence. In this case there is plenty of evidence that Bezos put his finger on the scale. See the editor resigning and likely there will be others to follow. He said he was hands off when he bought it, but here we are.
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.
> 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.
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.
Best case senario and he's just bluffing about deporting people, removing parts of the judicial system, deploying the military on US soil against US citizens.
None of that is healthy. None of that is part of normal democracy.
In previous years, presidential candidates talked about policies, rather than divining meaning from a demented old guy (you may also point to biden on that one, he is still able to answer a question though.)
He's said he wants to be a dictator on day one, has told his supporters that they won't have to vote again after this election, has said he will prosecute his political opponents, has said that Harris voters should be afraid of saying they support her, etc, etc.
Being that he's stated his desire to be a dictator and has an army of enablers to help him, it's not an unreasonable fear.
Obviously this topic is a third rail here, but I think it's important to say that he upended the political environment and we are in uncharted waters 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.
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.
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?
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.
Yes, and it seems to me equally likely that he likes Trump but is too cowardly to say so. I don't know why others are so certain he's scared of Trump, unless there's a piece of information I'm missing.
what happens behind closed doors is entirely different than what makes the papers. i am positive bezos has spoken to trump, and i am positive trump assured bezos of something that harris did not
A rational person would know that many past promises or reassurances offered by Donald Trump have proved to be empty, worthless and even costly to their recipients, as documented by countless legal actions.
If Bezos believes what Trump has told him behind closed doors, then his companies are in the control of a sucker, not just a coward.
I think people are finally coming around to paying attention to “Putin’s a really great guy” and “imprisoning the enemy within” and realizing Trump’s not joking around about that.
Any sign of strength than can be bought (i.e. fake strength), probably already has been bought by Musk and/or others trying for influence the election. They say the sudden betting market swing for Trump from a few weeks ago comes from overseas money (4 people, maybe all the same), but I'd not be surprised if Musk were behind it given that he's out there trying to buy people's votes.
From my corner of rural Michigan, the relative sentiment shift appears to be massively in favor of Harris.
I don't really trust my opinion, and I have a pretty limited perspective on what people in other areas think, but between 2020 and now, there is much increased support for Harris compared to Biden, and much more muted support for Trump 2024 compared to Trump 2020.
With the polling mildly in favor of Harris in key states (but within the margin of error), I wonder how you've drawn your conclusion.
Clear favourite. It might be a toin coss still at this moment, but the odds are getting ever-so-slightly worse for Kamala for many days in a row now. So it's about the trend.
On top of that, the growth of the blue firewall in PA is losing steam too early...
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?
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.
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.
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.
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'.
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.
This is a story that is going to lead to political passions. Don't want such stories? Just kill them. What kind of useful conversation do you think it will raise that will not ignite passions?
"More specifically, Trump has pledged to toss reporters in jail and strip major television networks of their broadcast licenses as retribution for coverage he didn't like."
But hey, I'm doing political battle? You guys really are in denial.
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.
it is, kamala is super scary right now. her hate of the palestinian people immediately lost my vote but it's so infuriating to see so many other supposed "democrats" refuse to support them
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.
This is probably an unpopular opinion on HN. But if billionaires have a choice between ending democracy and ending capitalism, which do you expect they will pick?
EDIT: I am not saying Kamala is going to "end capitalism" however Lina Khan's actions as chairwoman of the FTC and Joe Biden's historic support for unions, as small as both of these things are, are enough to make liberal billionaires vote for a fascist. That is my point.
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.
> Regardless, only one party is threatening either of your alternatives, your straw man nonsense about ending capitalism not withstanding.
Nobody is threatening either of those things. The idea that democracy is under any sort of threat is a pure lie told to you by those who benefit from keeping you scared.
The means of production are still privately owned. What you described is not Capitalism by strict definition, but the owners of capital are still at the top of the food chain in such a system. It's not like lack of competition somehow precludes private ownership.
Of course not. However they are like 5% more willing to pursue anti-trust action and enforce regulations. Even a small threat like that will be resisted by the ultra wealthy.
The destruction of democracy is a convenient byproduct of their consolidation of power. Fascism in germany was convenient for the wealthy-- even if they weren't the architects of it.
If you think a free market is a requirement for capitalism then by definition sure. If you think it is about the distribution of ownership over capital then the free market doesn't matter. Many political scientists refer to the economic model of the USSR as "State Capitalism" because the state owns the means of production.
Would you rather I use a word like "Cronyism" to specify private ownership of capital without free-market competition?
They are the billionaires. Both get massive donations from billionaires, and just as the last few cycles, the Democrats have likely more than doubled the big donor fundraising of the Republicans.
I'm in total agreement with you on this, including the unpopularity on HN.
However, there is 0% chance that Kamala is going to move anything in the direction of ending capitalism, or even significantly restraining it.
This is why I, at the other end of the political spectrum from Bozo, also do not endorse Kamala, or the modern Democratic party in general.
When there were a dozen candidates in the last democratic primary, there was a lot of talk of public health care, and other programs to benefit the masses. Now, with Kamala as teh annointed candidate, the DNC has been explicit in it's one platform plank: Shut uo and vote for me, or you get the cheatoo...
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.
Consider the editorial board to be the equivalent of Fox's Opinion shows. They opinion side if the house is nominally independent from the News-gathering operations. If you're arguing purveyors of news should not carey opinion-pieces l, you may be a few centuries too late.
Why do you think what Fox is doing is our standard? Why do we need Editorial Board’s biased opinion. Can we not have a truly unbiased journalism outlet?
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.
Yes but if I was a richer than God billionaire what would I care that POTUS had a grudge. What's he gonna do, audit my taxes? There is something fishy going on.
He'd care about getting government contracts. For example, during the Trump administration the Pentagon chose Microsoft over AWS for JEDI. AWS claimed there was political interference that favoured MS.
Obviously Bezos will be rich with or without these contracts, but he'd prefer to be richer.
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.
> Killing the endorsement is much more notable than just letting it happen
It's only notable because the staff was upset and leaked the backstory in retaliation. A newspaper is a business; it's not the town square. Imagine working for a company and going public every time your boss did something you disagreed with.
Also, do you seriously think any more right wing paper wouldn't have leaked it if their owner had prevented them from endorsing? That if their owner had come in saying he preferred Harris and they couldn't endorse Trump that they'd have just gone home like "Hey, free market, he's rich, that's how it works?" Half of major right wing media is run by people whose whole identity is "a major paper said I couldn't write what I wanted so I quit and wrote what I wanted anyway". Getting "canceled" by a major newspaper is pretty much the #1 way to end up rich on Substack these days. They go around parading how much they're "free speech advocates" because they "won't let the rich elites decide what I can write" but suddenly when the rich elites are suppressing an endorsement of a more left candidate it's "it's bad faith and retaliatory to speak out about the rich deciding what you can publish".
That's ignoring that he's running a business that's literally to report on things that important people like him do. An engineer at Amazon's job isn't to write about Amazon's business dealings to the public. The opinion and editorial board of a newspaper is literally there to write about what people like Bezos do.
It would have been notable even if they hadn't been public about it, just because the Post has endorsed every presidential race for decades. Eventually someone would have noticed and asked about it, and it just would have come out then.
You may as well just say he could silently kill the Kindle line and it wouldn't be a controversy/reported on. He can literally tell Amazon employees to stop making them, but it doesn't mean it's not weird and notable that he's doing it.
Regardless the more likely explanation is that this is a news story regardless of internal leaking. People will notice WaPo didn’t endorse anyone and someone’s going to say something.
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.
> 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.
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...
Updates...
JEDI was cancelled (article also mentions results of investigations into Amazon's claims): https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/06/pentagon-cancels-10-billion-...
The lawsuit got tossed because it didn't matter any more: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-judge-ends-amazo...
The replacement program somehow includes all three of the usual suspects, plus Oracle: https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/323937...
Bezos wants to help elect someone who (his lawyers allege) killed a gov contract favourable to his own business? Or did I misread your comment.
He wants to avoid the wealth and capital gains tax on unrealized assets.
I think the implicit argument is that he wants to avoid more canceled contracts, along with other forms of retribution like personal attacks he experienced a few years earlier.
Maybe but I don’t think Bezos is lacking $$. That contract was $1B/yr contract over ten years. They make $600B/yr. Not exactly going to tip the scales of his stock options.
These billionaires usually buy money losing newspapers, or social networks, for personal reasons.
If I was going to bet money on it I’d very much lean on a personal motive beyond money.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
This is definitely a potential motive, but there are many of those, and we have no reason to believe this is actually what led to Bezos’ decision.
Regardless of the motive, I do not view favorably his interference in the newspaper. If anything, he should have left editorial decisions to the staff.
We have a potential future president who, putting it very charitably, espouses the ideology of "For my friends — everything, for my enemies — the law", and in the least surprising development ever, billionaires suddenly warm up to this guy. Many such cases.
Yes we have a reason. Trump threatens media companies and individuals he believes have wronged him - loudly and often. If someone came to you and said they aren't going to a party, and you knew someone at that party had specifically threatened to beat them if they attend the party, do you have "no reason" to believe that the threat of a beating is a likely cause of the action (or in these cases, inaction). Especially if that person has a long history of attending that specific party?
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.
Maybe this influenced Bezos’ action? Your post contains two unsupported suppositions.
There is support for that reasoning in the article linked.
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.
Not saying the BBC is Fox News or CNN but I wouldn’t really call it impartial.
What the BBC does really well is trash itself in reporting after scandals from within break
"somewhat impartial"
I can not really think of any truly impartial news source. Can you? At least no in the countries I have lived in
This has nothing to do with them being unable to support Republicans, it's them choosing not to support a Democratic nominee (which they've done for the past 50 years) because they don't want to anger the possible Republican nominee because the owner is afraid of retribution affecting his other businesses.
The BBC recently wrote a piece on the executives at Harod’s who kept Mo’s pervert behaviour secret. Don’t think they done yet that for the many perverts they have kept secrets for.
> To be honest only BBC comes into mind when I think about a somewhat impartial medium.
The BBC is pro-UK government, who fund them.
To me only Reuters (disclaimer: I once worked there) and AP come to mind when I think impartial news.
What do others think? https://www.purevpn.com/blog/unbiased-news-sources/
The Guardian is a great source of news, and it has a curageous team of reporters, but even it has its biases. I recommend reading multipe news outlets and being aware what he individual biases might be.
> The BBC is pro-UK government, who fund them.
You are not British, are you :-)
The problem for BBC is that it's government-funded. It can't really take a stance without potentially upsetting the next government.
> 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."
If the capital gains / wealth tax plan goes ahead it would cost Jeff much of his fortune. $10 billion over ten years is peanuts.
Non-sequitor. We cannot deduce Bezos’ motives from Trump’s vengefulness.
> We cannot deduce Bezos’ motives from Trump’s vengefulness.
Why not?
You personally can refrain from any speculation, if you wish, but it's nonetheless the most obvious explanation. Moreover, your own speculation is implausible:
> perhaps this is a return to more profitable and credible roots.
This last-minute backpedaling makes The Washington Post look much worse than an endorsement. The new non-endorsement "policy" wasn't announced in advance. It came only after the editors had already drafted an endorsement of Harris, and at least one editor resigned as a result. The Post now appears less credible rather than more.
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
I disagree. This is the exception rather than the rule. The more corporate, the more likely to give the people what they want.
How do you square that with social media being the source of news for many?
> 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.
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
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.
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.
>> Newspapers publish opinions for the same reason that they publish comic strips: people want to read them. Readers seek them out.
Who seeks them out? I want names. Seriously, give me names of these alleged readers who seek out newspaper opinions.
Do you seek out editorial opinions? I don't. I read news, I ignore news opinions.
What are some of the news opinions that you, or any other human on earth, have sought out?
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.
>> You want them to name... readers of newspapers?
Obviously not.
I want them to name readers who seek out newspaper opinions.
One name to start with.
Do you seek out newspaper opinions?
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
Yes but we know this about him.
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
Honestly too, this seems like the wrong point in history to sit out an election.
But this is past. Each time had its own challenges. For example, i learned so much about how media and partisanship works in the past years. It is so obvious and visible to me now. Maybe others feel the same and thats why an endorsement would feel disingenuous. It has to be reasonable and believable. But maybe it was not.
https://www.semafor.com/article/10/25/2024/editor-resign-sub...
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? To be fair, I can see the same reason why another right leaning newspaper might not want to endorse trump if they felt the same about him.
For all the comments talking about how there is no such thing as true neutrality, I agree. You can dislike Bezos's decision to not want to endorse her but to call it wrong is insane because its a choice as much as endorsing her is
> 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?
[delayed]
Because he owns the paper and they don't
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.
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 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
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.
The person you are replying to understands this and was being sarcastic. Everybody already knew who they wanted to endorse well before this came out.
Sarcastically asked or not, the answer is sadly yes. That's why every dang US election comes down to some undecided voters in 10 states.
But that's a societal issue that's only given lip service at most.
Elon hasn't swayed your opinion then?
Probably nobody would have changed their mind.
But it exposes the fiction that Bezos allows editorial freedom at the WaPo.
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.
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.
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'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.
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 Trumps 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.
Given that Trump keeps a copy of Mein Kampf on his bedside table, has said that he wants generals as loyal to him personally (not to the country/constitution) as Hitler's, has said that Hitler did some good things... Uses language from Hitler such as dehumanizing immigrants as not human, talks about the "enemy within"... It seems that Hitler is in fact exactly who we should be talking about when discussing Trump, and exactly the "danger to the country" that Trump represents that Gen.Miller and Gen.Kelly are concerned about.
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.
Yes, that is censorship. It used to be unpopular around here. Maybe you’re fine with it when an anointed shareholder does it, but that’s what it is.
It’s a big deal that a major historic news organization’s editorial board is overruled by the owner, whether or not you agree with the decision.
Yes. Censoring is an action, the power dynamic at play is not relevant to whether something is or is not censoring. What you’re asking is “is this specific act of censorship somehow immoral or illegal?” And the answer is no, as I expect you already believe.
But it wasn’t censored for no reason, and it’s entirely reasonable to question the motives that led to this specific act of censorship.
If all Bezos cared about was having lower taxes for billionaires he could have simply hired a bunch of people who believed in that and had them be the editorial board, and they would endorse whomever he wanted.
The fact that he had the editorial board he had (1), which wrote up an endorsement of Harris several weeks ago for his approval, and then he suddenly decided it was better not to endorse at all? That fits cowardice much more closely than it does pure economic interest.
This isn't government censorship, obviously, but do remember that the only point of the Editorial Board is to write opinion pieces and have them published in the paper. That is their entire job! They aren't reporters, they don't go out and ferret out news. They have opinions, and they write them out and get published in the paper. And they wrote out an endorsement of Harris, and suddenly it was announced (to the board only slightly before it was announced to the rest of the world, according to published reports) that they weren't going to endorse for President any more. That's a fact pattern that leads one strongly to Jeff Bezos' personal cowardice as the most parsimonious explanation.
1: At least before the resignations come in, I expect the board to be very different in a few weeks.
A newspaper isn't a "regular" business. There's a reason why the press has explicit protection in the Constitution. It is a special entity, and now Bezos has killed a 40 year tradition because he's afraid Trump will come after him if he wins. So this is likely a Hail Mary to try and save himself from potential imprisonment and fines from a Trump administration. I would have preferred they just come and support Trump if that's what Bezos wanted instead of waffling.
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).
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.
> 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.
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.
Well, I guess now democracy dies in anticipation of darkness.
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? [...] 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.
Sure. But the newspaper could be biased towards facts, moderate speech and empathy to all parties. Then - despite being biased - people wouldn't be as worried about bias.
People are misusing the word "unbiased" but I don't think there is much uncertainty about what they actually mean - the call is for less partisan bias and more bias towards, say, enlightenment values. The exact values are a political topic but reporting with any values at all would be a step up for the US corporate media.
That’s fair enough, but you should consider that a news source might be biased toward facts and empathy and still might endorse a candidate.
>But the newspaper could be biased towards facts, moderate speech and empathy to all parties.
literally zero semantic meaning to be found in this word salad
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.
What older journalism are you talking about? Cold War era Cronkite? The era of endless red scares and other very obviously biased behavior?
WaPo has been giving out endorsements since the 70s. The era you’re pining for never existed.
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.
> "to be unbiased in journalism"
By no means. Word choice on its own __is__ a bias. Even if you reported straight facts, the word choice used presents a bias or not. Is it a military action or a terrorist attack? Is it a protest? An occupation? Are they Freedom Fighters?
Choosing __to__ or __not to__ use an organization's given name or a description of them, is having a bias.
Choosing to report on something at all is a presentation of bias.
There is bias in everything and to imagine there isn't is to be even more susceptible to it.
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"
Pretending there exists “unbiased” journalism is silly. All journalism is biased to some degree. The worthwhile categorization is to what degree the bias exists.
And how well they use facts to back their bias(es)
Journalistic credibility comes from presenting facts. Which facts you present, which pieces you publish are in themselves opinions, biases.
That's why I see aiming for unbiased reporting to miss the point of journalism. We want opinions, but not random uneducated opinions, we want well argumented, relevant and proof backed opinions.
"Candidate X is a liar" is valid journalism if there's the facts to back the claim and the analysis to make it a thought provoking piece that brought something to the readers. We have whole Pullitzer winning books going into minute details about how some public figures are crooks.
To note, not reporting, not expressing opinions is also a bias so I don't see a middle ground. For instance if a major national journalism would not publish the news of a candidate getting arrested, that in itself is a biased decision. If they'd publish a dry piece just quoting the official police declaration, that would also be tremendous bias and everyone would see it as a refusal to comment on it.
That's a fair point. But in this case it wasn't a principled stand against the idea of opinion journalism[1]. It was an act to kill an in-progress editorial piece days before publication, for quite clearly partisan reasons (though most people believe Bezos did it out of fear and not affinity, he'd presumably prefer Trump loses, but doesn't want to be in the line of fire if he doesn't).
[1] Which, let's be honest, is pervasive and popular. You aren't simultaneously arguing to kick Hannity off the air, right?
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?
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
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.
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.
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
Related:
The Washington Post says it will not endorse a candidate for president
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41948631
I have no idea who to vote for now.
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?
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.
Not significant because WaPo isn’t important at all
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?
What backwater high school did you go to that had you study creationism of all religions? We never covered propaganda in science, in Canada.
It never made it into science class, but only because institutions had (and have) the power to set rules and not be neutral on important issues of the day. It was our choice at the museum that received tax payer funding to not be neutral that kept creationism out. That's picking a side. And that is absolutely essential is my point, because the truth is, unfortunately, not neutral, and we all need to do our best to find that truth. Just saying "be neutral" is abdication of responsibility.
Well said. There's are several sayings, such as "neutrality is the both-sideism fallacy", which is one of the most obvious critical thinking examples that humanities students are taught early on, but it is not so easy to convey this to people without exposure to these ideas.
You are ignoring my point.
I was a volunteer at a US science museum that received some taxpayer funding back in the mid-aughts when "Scientific Creationism" was still a thing. Our museum had (and still has) an institutional commitment to the scientific consensus on the age of the universe and earth. If we had caught a volunteer providing visitors with creationism they would have been asked to hand in their badge and not work any more shifts, because that was our institutional position and everyone had to respect that.
Trying to throw that away because of Israel-Palestine is much more threatening to the value of truth than it helps it.
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.
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 don't think neutrality serves the powerful. Neutrality serves the 'truth' otherwise it wouldn't be neutral in the first place. Your point only stands if you assume that the partial source would side with the 'good' side on average.
And being perfectly neutral is not possible, no.
Neutrality is problematic because in practice it serves the powerful, like every instance of bureaucracy and scientism we can point to through civilized history. Instead you are appealing to some politics-free context-free notion of neutrality which might as well be a made up word then. Humans and institutions are not truth objects, so your incorrect argument is in conflating this with a discussion of access to truth. Universities are human processes, not mathematical theorems for which good and bad are irrelevant, which is a different issue than neutral.
The powerful by definition control us. Otherwise they wouldn't be powerful. I don't see your point. To me the notion of trying to be neutral seem to give the powerful less power than being "political".
I.e. it is better if the puppets think they are living in a fair democracy, since they might act like they do, decreasing the power of the puppet masters. The opposite is concepts like the series "House of cards", that instruct people to play the game and be "political".
I define "neutral" as loosely "trying to not be biased".
Like, for example, pretending until it became way over the top too embarrassing that the president is mentally fit for another 4 year of any work, is a good example of being "political" about it.
Gaslighting that backfired badly.
I am biased against creationism being treated as science. And that is correct, because one side is true and the other is false and should not be taught or treated equally.
So I think either your definition is wrong or your goal of neutrality is wrong.
I don't see how that is biased in anything but a really litteral way.
I don't think that is your point, but treating creationism as a science would rather quickly disprove it? Like Dowsing rods or whatever.
If God descended from heaven (lets just pretend he did, not a powerful alien or whatever) and showed you how he creationisted everything, then it would be 'biased' to pretend it didn't happen. But I guess you could still believe it is fake, as long as the facts are considered in some way, without being biased.
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.
Maybe? It’s almost a certainty that the news media outlets are outright bullshit and/or attention sucking propaganda.
https://fs.blog/stop-reading-news/
https://www.washingtonpost.com
I don't disagree with some of the things that blog post is saying, but excluding the opinions on the Washington Post home page, where is the is outright bullshit or propaganda? I hear the opinion often but I don't see it when I go to a newspaper.
Now if you were to go to the home page of reddit or twitter there's clearly tons of propaganda.
1. Immediacy trumps quality.
The current headline on the Washington post is talking about Israeli strikes in Iran.
Is that the most immediate event pertaining to Israel? Probably. Is that the most important recent event pertaining to Israel? Well, that depends, doesn’t it?
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
Counterpoint: But surely you must not understand my ethics.
Well said. Journalists also don’t have to give equal weight to the other side when the other side are whackadoodles
Unfortunately both sides seem to think this of the other side equally.
> 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.
One party wants to end _all_ abortions, _including_ those that might be medically necessary. They are pro-forced-birth, and pro-killing-women.
You’ve got the position of the other party wrong as well, but I’m not going to even bother correcting that because if you don’t find the above completely vile there’s no helping you.
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.
What I mean by "unbalanced" is that the US situation is not about small details and very minute distinctions. People's opinions are divided on very basic and fundamental issues, there are very radical behaviours and really big swings of money.
Trying to keep a "the truth is in the middle" attitude is unethical.
I think the main issue becomes "bad faith", and we're back to the credibility issue. IMHO discourse should be fact based, and arguments should be researched. If you're calling your opponent names, show the receipt and not vague gesturing at what you think reality is.
Blaming the other side should be fine, as long as you can defend that position.
> Trying to keep a "the truth is in the middle" attitude is unethical.
It is illogical too. In a simple question of "little" and "much" the truth could be "even smaller" and "way bigger than much".
> I think the main issue becomes "bad faith"
Ye I think I agree here about it being the main concern. Bad faith accusation, debates etc seem to radicalize the supporters of the accused. I think you make the caricature real at some point when supporters start to believe the misconception.
The concept of neutrality is a mind hack used by those who have already been hacked. It's also used by nefarious actors who know full well what they are doing and think, usually incorrectly, that nobody knows they are doing it.
Once upon a time, I believed that the phrase "all actions are political" was incorrect, and unfairly foisted partisanship onto people. I've learned better than this in retrospect.
So, I believe that Bezos's "being neutral" was in fact a political act, and as such demonstrated where he thinks his bread is buttered. A directive to not endorse Kamala is in-effect a directive to endorse Trump. There is no neutral outcome here.
If you consider the facts of these candidates lives in contrast, there is not a balanced scale here. You have to pick a side, and Bezos's is showing his cowardice by meddling in the news. 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.
When folks like Bezos and Musk and so on buy media properties, you know it's not because they want to support journalism.
> 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?’
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.
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 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.)
It might be vague: "Bezos and the Washington Post [...] have bent the knee."
I read "bent the knee" as some sort of humiliation? I.e. Bezos don't really want to support Trump, but did anyway. Also on "thedonald" it was used as some sort of "humiliated loser folding in line" meme which is why I namedroped it.
English is not my native tongue so I get such nuances wrong sometimes.
"Bending the knee" is a way to say that someone knelt - going down on one knee, a sign of loyalty and subservience. In this context it implies Bezos acknowledges Trump as an authority he submits to.
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.
It’s Amazons, Blue origin, AWS profits he’s fearful for, not WaPo.
Bezos made the call because he was afraid of Trump canceling lucrative Pentagon AWS contracts. WaPo is a loss leader, AWS is his bread and butter.
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.
Yeah, but I wondered about the same thing as GP.
It’s one thing to be another voice in the crowd of people all saying the same thing (even a very deep pocketed voice) and another entirely to be the object example everybody discusses by letting it be believed that with all your billions, you’re scared too. People are more affected by things they decide for themselves than things you tell them, hence show don’t tell.
Were that to be the case, I wouldn’t consider it 4D chess. It seems like a straightforward strategy to me.
The article strongly suggests but doesn't provide concrete evidence that Bezos decided to kill the endorsement for business reasons. There are lots of more reasonable possibilities why Bezos or WaPo's other leadership would feel uncomfortable actively endorsing Kamala though. To be clear I'm voting against Trump. I've looked for good signs from Kamala, but I've found little positive besides her not being Trump. She was asked what the Biden admin did that she would do differently if she were president and refused to give an answer. Her policy plans that I've seen are marketing documents that lack substance and detail. When asked why she'd made massive shifts in policy since she ran in 2019 she had only non-answers. I don't feel like she's actually taken a stand on anything besides abortion and I don't really know what she believes in besides what her party tells her to support to get elected. Problems with her aren't new, she was almost the least popular candidate in her primaries. With a candidate so weak I can see a person not being able to actively endorse her in good conscience and if she is as spineless, unpopular, and poorly communicating as she is now during her presidency it could damage the reputation of publications that endorsed her. They may see the potential disaster coming in her presidency that most of us can't admit to ourselves because the other duopoly choice is so terrible.
Declining to endorse a candidate might help their reputation. As things are now I think of WaPo as Fox News for the left, just unabashed propaganda with no perspectives from the other side. If they repent of their extreme bias and do penance I might give them another chance because their articles are otherwise well written and researched.
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?
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...
Good reason not to subscribe to the WP.
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.
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.
A statement along those lines should appear in the next 10-Q filing, under business risks.
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 billionaire personally intervening in the endorsement of a major newspaper on the basis of profit motive seems like the sort of thing that would contribute to anti-trust peril.
I think abstain is his only real play here, both endorsements are 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.
We need to do no such thing. All speech, even speech which is vile, must be equally protected under the law or else the protections are meaningless. In your preferred policy regime, it's entirely too easy for the people in charge of government to declare "this is outside the bounds of civilized discourse" about perfectly legitimate speech which they don't like. History has shown us, time and time and time again, that this will happen once you give people the power to censor. It may take 5 years or 100, but it is inevitable. I'm not willing to open that door, and if the price is that I have to deal with some jerks who are Nazis, I call that a bargain.
> 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.
1) He already has experience with the Trump admin trying to deny AWS from government contracts on the basis of Trump's personal frustration with the Washington Post.
2) It's notable that his other significant enterprise is Blue Origin, whose competitor is Elon Musk, who has by now deeply and publicly ingratiated himself with the Trump campaign.
Maybe Lina Khan is part of the story, but it's silly to act like there aren't more straightforwards reasons.
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?
On a serious note, this is an example of what historian Timothy Snyder refers to as "obeying in advance", where people predict what a repressive government will want and then obey before they're in power just to be safe. This creates a positive feedback loop that leads to them seizing power.
I read that book but didn’t connect the dots here. That is terrifying.
I am serious! But yes.
Maybe he's afraid Kamala Harris will champion an unrealized capital gains tax.
Well, he does have a reasonable chance to be elected to presidency, so there's that.
Morality and general spinelessness aside, it's clearly the sensible thing to do. You might anger a few sensible people but that will pass. Trump is not exactly known to be forgiving. Remember when he refused emergency aid to states that weren't supportive enough of him? That's the sort of decrepit small-minded snowflake we're talking about.
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 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.
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.
No need to speculate. It’s in black and white: last time Trump wanted to spite Bezos, he canceled $10Bn in AWS contracts. This is profit driven, plain and simple.
> 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.
Notably, most presidential candidates aren’t so petty and vindictive as to cancel contracts with political opponents for spite, but we’re talking about Trump here. It would be best if you woke up to this reality.
It's certainly possible, though if he truly felt pressured that way, he could do a lot more than waiting until 11 days before an election to simply withhold an endorsement.
Like what?
Jumping up and down like a lunatic.
You know all the stuff Musk has been doing with Twitter since buying it? That.
Or, just to throw out a few ideas: insist on more conservative people on their editorial board. Insist on endorsing Trump (rather than simply not endorsing). Insist that more pro-Trump stories be covered, and fewer pro-Harris ones.
Or, if all of that is too far, just sell the paper and get out of the way.
Any of these makes more sense than simply waiting until the last minute to enforce the withholding of an endorsement if the genuine goal is to avoid being targeted in the event Trump wins.
All the more reason to endorse his opponent!
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
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.
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.
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.
All elections ultiamtely come down to undecided swing voters. It's silly every-time, but you need to vastly lower your expectations for that kind of crowd. Yes, a cheesy dance number endorsing a candidate can be all that is needed to swing an entire election.
This is an issue with first past the post, but that's a much larger thing to tackle.
We’re in. Situation wheee one of the candidates routinely criticizes us and praises our enemies, and still pulls at about 42%. Rationality is not in evidence.
If this race is right, then whatever I thought about people was wrong.
Then again, I always wonder what the hell actually went through peoples minds in Nazi Germany.
Looks like you’re getting a firsthand view now.
If you think that the situation in the US is even remotely close to that of Nazi Germany, please for your own sake unplug from news for a long time until you regain perspective. We are nowhere close to that point. The idea is a lie being told to you by people who stand to profit from your fear, not based in reality in the slightest.
The reason is pretty damned simple: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_the_economy,_stupid Or, as Bertolt Brecht put it, "Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral." The Democrats used to understand this but now they don't and that's why they are struggling.
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.
If this is true, it’s beyond bad. It may be the beginning of the end of the free world.
Zuckerberg has never been not right wing though.
Silicon Valley is not entirely happy with the economy. They may be mostly Democrats, but there are limits to the current incompetence that people are willing to endure.
Presidents get far too much praise or criticism for the state of the economy. In reality, their effect on it is fairly limited, especially over such a short span like 4 years.
So you're suggesting the fresh incompetence will improve things?
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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Could you please stop posting flamewar comments and using HN for political battle? Your account has been doing both. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
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.
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.
> 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-...
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 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.
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.
If you have that kind of money, why wouldn't you do that?
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.
Or at least forming your own vision of what you want the world to be like based on your own values, and seeing the world move that way as "personal gain."
I think people nowadays choose some generic and pointlessly bland vision of personal success instead of having their own vision based on their own values out of narcissism. The more generic, the more people will agree that you are successful.
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.
Not really, there was no proof, just speculation with no evidence. In this case there is plenty of evidence that Bezos put his finger on the scale. See the editor resigning and likely there will be others to follow. He said he was hands off when he bought it, but here we are.
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.
> 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
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.
"Democracy dies in darkness"
and silence, apparently.
i am tired of people conflating a trump presidency with the end of american democracy
Best case senario and he's just bluffing about deporting people, removing parts of the judicial system, deploying the military on US soil against US citizens.
None of that is healthy. None of that is part of normal democracy.
In previous years, presidential candidates talked about policies, rather than divining meaning from a demented old guy (you may also point to biden on that one, he is still able to answer a question though.)
He's said he wants to be a dictator on day one, has told his supporters that they won't have to vote again after this election, has said he will prosecute his political opponents, has said that Harris voters should be afraid of saying they support her, etc, etc.
What more do you need?!
As a user, I want to be able to uninstall sth after it was installed by previous users. This applies to so called democracy too.
Isn't the capitulation of the free press to his will a threat to democracy?
and I'm tired of Trump explicitly stating his intent to end democracy.
But just because we're tired doesn't mean we don't have to face things.
link to the video where he says that. like the full video with context, not a news bite
Being that he's stated his desire to be a dictator and has an army of enablers to help him, it's not an unreasonable fear.
Obviously this topic is a third rail here, but I think it's important to say that he upended the political environment and we are in uncharted waters now.
What is project 2025?
the liberal version of Q anon?
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.
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.
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.
The hedonic treadmill comes for everyone. Even the billionaires want more.
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?
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.
Yes, and it seems to me equally likely that he likes Trump but is too cowardly to say so. I don't know why others are so certain he's scared of Trump, unless there's a piece of information I'm missing.
Has anyone brought that up? In the current administration? In the campaign?
what happens behind closed doors is entirely different than what makes the papers. i am positive bezos has spoken to trump, and i am positive trump assured bezos of something that harris did not
A rational person would know that many past promises or reassurances offered by Donald Trump have proved to be empty, worthless and even costly to their recipients, as documented by countless legal actions.
If Bezos believes what Trump has told him behind closed doors, then his companies are in the control of a sucker, not just a coward.
I think people are finally coming around to paying attention to “Putin’s a really great guy” and “imprisoning the enemy within” and realizing Trump’s not joking around about that.
Because talking about how Trump is evil is more entertaining than talking about Harris
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...)
Any sign of strength than can be bought (i.e. fake strength), probably already has been bought by Musk and/or others trying for influence the election. They say the sudden betting market swing for Trump from a few weeks ago comes from overseas money (4 people, maybe all the same), but I'd not be surprised if Musk were behind it given that he's out there trying to buy people's votes.
He is, unfortunately, a clear favourite to win. You don't have to have uber-intel to know that.
From my corner of rural Michigan, the relative sentiment shift appears to be massively in favor of Harris.
I don't really trust my opinion, and I have a pretty limited perspective on what people in other areas think, but between 2020 and now, there is much increased support for Harris compared to Biden, and much more muted support for Trump 2024 compared to Trump 2020.
With the polling mildly in favor of Harris in key states (but within the margin of error), I wonder how you've drawn your conclusion.
clear favorite or coin toss.
Clear favourite. It might be a toin coss still at this moment, but the odds are getting ever-so-slightly worse for Kamala for many days in a row now. So it's about the trend.
On top of that, the growth of the blue firewall in PA is losing steam too early...
What data brings you to this conclusion? PA firewall is slowing, but it’s not terrible.
Seems like in the language I speak "ever so slightly" and "clear" are in opposition. You can be a clear favorite or a slight favorite. Which is it?
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.
What a sad state of affairs where people want newspapers to actively push opinions, instead of only report facts.
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 does that mean? That it's good, that it's bad? Should we just keep doing things because that's what we've always done?
It's called an editorial. Newpapers have them.
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.
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.
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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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.
This is a story that is going to lead to political passions. Don't want such stories? Just kill them. What kind of useful conversation do you think it will raise that will not ignite passions?
Sometimes your guidelines are stupid.
It's good for HN commenters to learn to tolerate the passions without venting them unfiltered.
https://www.npr.org/2024/10/22/nx-s1-5161480/trump-media-thr...
"More specifically, Trump has pledged to toss reporters in jail and strip major television networks of their broadcast licenses as retribution for coverage he didn't like."
But hey, I'm doing political battle? You guys really are in denial.
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, and kamala just flat out isn't taking any non-scripted interviews - how are we supposed to know what she's really thinking at all?
the genocide doesn't give you any form of perspective?
What genocide?
The genocide in Gaza?
I honestly have no idea what you are insinuating. Can you be more specific and less clever?
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.
Yeah, it's really scary right now. Trump with power is not going to end well for anyone, especially trans minorities
it is, kamala is super scary right now. her hate of the palestinian people immediately lost my vote but it's so infuriating to see so many other supposed "democrats" refuse to support them
the genocide doesn't give you some form of perspective?
Yeah, we really are in denial.
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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.
This is probably an unpopular opinion on HN. But if billionaires have a choice between ending democracy and ending capitalism, which do you expect they will pick?
EDIT: I am not saying Kamala is going to "end capitalism" however Lina Khan's actions as chairwoman of the FTC and Joe Biden's historic support for unions, as small as both of these things are, are enough to make liberal billionaires vote for a fascist. That is my point.
don’t ask german companies what they were doing during 1933-1945
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.
Mostly I agree. Billionaires chose long ago to prioritize wealth.
Which is why we need to legislate away the billionaire.
Not all billionaires - Bill Gates endorsed Harris.
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.
Please read my edited comment for clarity.
> Regardless, only one party is threatening either of your alternatives, your straw man nonsense about ending capitalism not withstanding.
Nobody is threatening either of those things. The idea that democracy is under any sort of threat is a pure lie told to you by those who benefit from keeping you scared.
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.
The means of production are still privately owned. What you described is not Capitalism by strict definition, but the owners of capital are still at the top of the food chain in such a system. It's not like lack of competition somehow precludes private ownership.
Do you really think Harris and co are able or willing to end capitalism? They have nearly as much to lose as the billionaires.
Of course not. However they are like 5% more willing to pursue anti-trust action and enforce regulations. Even a small threat like that will be resisted by the ultra wealthy.
Agreed, but that's just them voting for their interests, not voting to end democracy.
The destruction of democracy is a convenient byproduct of their consolidation of power. Fascism in germany was convenient for the wealthy-- even if they weren't the architects of it.
In the long term was it a good thing for the wealthy though ?
So there isn’t democracy as we thought there was anymore…it’s really becoming an oligarchy.
Look at musk jumping around on stage and handing out money for votes.
It’s really disturbing.
You understand that anti-trust and regulations exist to support capitalism right? You understand that that is why those things exist right?
Because absent those comments you don't get capitalism, because absent those things you don't have a free market
If you think a free market is a requirement for capitalism then by definition sure. If you think it is about the distribution of ownership over capital then the free market doesn't matter. Many political scientists refer to the economic model of the USSR as "State Capitalism" because the state owns the means of production.
Would you rather I use a word like "Cronyism" to specify private ownership of capital without free-market competition?
Yeah, that's reasonable lets go for that, so given statements to the effect of
A) Ending democracy
vs
B) Ending cronyism
Regardless of how effective you may think they would be at that goal, would you pick (A) over (B)?
They are the billionaires. Both get massive donations from billionaires, and just as the last few cycles, the Democrats have likely more than doubled the big donor fundraising of the Republicans.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2024/10/25/trump-v...
I'm in total agreement with you on this, including the unpopularity on HN.
However, there is 0% chance that Kamala is going to move anything in the direction of ending capitalism, or even significantly restraining it.
This is why I, at the other end of the political spectrum from Bozo, also do not endorse Kamala, or the modern Democratic party in general.
When there were a dozen candidates in the last democratic primary, there was a lot of talk of public health care, and other programs to benefit the masses. Now, with Kamala as teh annointed candidate, the DNC has been explicit in it's one platform plank: Shut uo and vote for me, or you get the cheatoo...
>Shut uo and vote for me, or you get the cheatoo...
That's not the DNC platform, that's the reality of US elections. First past the post in a race against a proto-fascist.
I edited my comment for clarity
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.
> But in this case one candidate literally tried to subvert the last election.
No, he did not. That is an absolutely outrageous claim.
He did. There was the fake electors plot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_fake_electors_plot
He tried to pressure Raffensperger into finding him 11,780 votes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Raffensperger_ph...
He pressured Michigan election offcials not to certify Biden's victory in Michigan: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-pressured-michigan-of...
Then he rallied his supporters to go to the Capitol, where they tried to stop the Congressmen from counting the votes.
This is probably the most important topic here. It reveals their bias/partisonship and turns the whole newspaper into an opinion piece
> turns the whole newspaper into an opinion piece
The Editorial Board pens endorsements. It is literally an opinion piece, in the section of the paper reserved for opinion pieces.
Consider the editorial board to be the equivalent of Fox's Opinion shows. They opinion side if the house is nominally independent from the News-gathering operations. If you're arguing purveyors of news should not carey opinion-pieces l, you may be a few centuries too late.
Why do you think what Fox is doing is our standard? Why do we need Editorial Board’s biased opinion. Can we not have a truly unbiased journalism outlet?
He knows something
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 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 Trump will hold it against him, and his probability of becoming president is nonzero.
Yes but if I was a richer than God billionaire what would I care that POTUS had a grudge. What's he gonna do, audit my taxes? There is something fishy going on.
He'd care about getting government contracts. For example, during the Trump administration the Pentagon chose Microsoft over AWS for JEDI. AWS claimed there was political interference that favoured MS.
Obviously Bezos will be rich with or without these contracts, but he'd prefer to be richer.
More importantly, he knows that Harris administration will not seek retribution. So he sees nothing to lose here.
He knows that one of the key pillars of fascism is the strengthening of corporate power.
Billionaires are not your friends.
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.
> Killing the endorsement is much more notable than just letting it happen
It's only notable because the staff was upset and leaked the backstory in retaliation. A newspaper is a business; it's not the town square. Imagine working for a company and going public every time your boss did something you disagreed with.
Also, do you seriously think any more right wing paper wouldn't have leaked it if their owner had prevented them from endorsing? That if their owner had come in saying he preferred Harris and they couldn't endorse Trump that they'd have just gone home like "Hey, free market, he's rich, that's how it works?" Half of major right wing media is run by people whose whole identity is "a major paper said I couldn't write what I wanted so I quit and wrote what I wanted anyway". Getting "canceled" by a major newspaper is pretty much the #1 way to end up rich on Substack these days. They go around parading how much they're "free speech advocates" because they "won't let the rich elites decide what I can write" but suddenly when the rich elites are suppressing an endorsement of a more left candidate it's "it's bad faith and retaliatory to speak out about the rich deciding what you can publish".
That's ignoring that he's running a business that's literally to report on things that important people like him do. An engineer at Amazon's job isn't to write about Amazon's business dealings to the public. The opinion and editorial board of a newspaper is literally there to write about what people like Bezos do.
It would have been notable even if they hadn't been public about it, just because the Post has endorsed every presidential race for decades. Eventually someone would have noticed and asked about it, and it just would have come out then.
You may as well just say he could silently kill the Kindle line and it wouldn't be a controversy/reported on. He can literally tell Amazon employees to stop making them, but it doesn't mean it's not weird and notable that he's doing it.
Regardless the more likely explanation is that this is a news story regardless of internal leaking. People will notice WaPo didn’t endorse anyone and someone’s going to say something.