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 Bezos is not lacking money. That contract was $1B/yr contract over ten years. They make $600B+ a year. 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 on it I’d very much lean on a personal motive beyond money.
A very easy decision for some, depending on their own strength of conviction. Anybody knows that Harris is not running to retaliate against those who do not agree with every policy that her people can get her party to support, but Trump is and he makes it very clear that if elected he intends to do harm that Harris will not do. Bigly.
So without consideration for upside[0], one of the most emotionless decisions a top executive can make is when there is no downside versus when there is.
[0] After all, further upside is not necessary if you already have experienced enough to where the needle can not move any further.
Are you confusing revenue with profit? Yeah, a lot of money pumps in one end of Amazon retail and out the other, but there is very little margin: the $550+ billion in revenue on the retail side, as I understand, brings in significantly less net than the $90 billion in revenue on the cloud side.
And government contracts, where one might expect support or opposition from a potential cheif executige who has made overt promises of purges and other uses of office to punish enemies and reward friends to make a big difference, are an important part of that (not just that one $1B contract.)
Its a general posture. Amazon is an industrial powerhouse and Trump has signaled that he can and will attack his political opponents no matter how rich they are. If he wants to, Trump may actually nationalize Amazon; the alternative is presumably becoming his toady.
Or Brown vs. Board of Education. The courts can change their minds once in a while. There are no indicia that this court wants to overturn the steel cases.
Where are you getting this? He is down against Harris in most polls, and neither candidate is clearing a majority. There are projections that he has a narrow edge in winning the Presidency due to the electoral college, but that's not the same as being most likely to win a majority (or even plurality) of the votes (e.g., 538 gives Trump currently a 53% chance to win the electoral college, while Harris has a 65% chance to win the popular vote.)
To me the popular vote is irrelevant and in my original post I meant the winner, despite saying the majority which you interpreted to mean “more than 50% of the population of the US”. We have a system in place to counterbalance the fact that large numbers of likeminded people concentrated in one area could otherwise rule over everyone else through tyranny of the majority. To me the majority therefore just means “most of the US”.
If you think betters do not have the odds right, you should start betting right now.
Even the betting sites where Trump is extremely (as in, much more than in the poll-based forecast sites) favored to win the electoral college, like Polymarket, have Harris a strong favorite to win the most votes, just as the poll-based forecasts generally do.
E.g, Polymarket, which gives Trump a 65% chance to win the EC compared to 538s 53%, has Harris at 58% to win the popular vote compared to 538s 65%. (And while it is possible for the popular vote winner to have a mere plurality of votes, it is not possible to get a majority of votes and not be the popular vote winner, so, no, the source of evidence you cite does not support the claim that "by the looks of it, the majority of people" will vote are going to vote for Trump, but instead support that the majority will most likely not do so.)
At the end of the day, you will find this prediction markets to be as successful as sports betters. We would be wise to remove all money from politics.
AFAICT, while he has threatened extreme and unconstitutional retaliation against businesses (e.g., pulling broadcast licenses and jailing journalists for unfavorable coverage) [0] if he wins, he has not specifically threatened nationalization.
He makes arguments that change with the wind. If you haven’t been paying attention to his erratic behavior for the last eight years, that’s not something I can fix for you.
> 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.
That makes no sense at all. If the primary concern was avoiding canceled contracts, it would be in his best interests to ensure that the guy who is threatening to cancel contracts out of spite would not be elected.
Pressuring the Washington Post to not endorse the candidate who does not pose that threat goes exactly against that.
It sure makes sense.
The endorsement is extremely unlikely to decide the election.
On the contrary, the chance that the endorsement will lead to retribution after a lost election is arguably much higher. They think it happened last time around.
You can say it's cowardly to act like this. But it does make sense.
> say it's cowardly to act like this. But it does make sense.
So cowardice has been the greater virtue all along?
Has it come to this, that political cowardice makes sense? That it makes sense when Democracy itself is at risk?
That it makes sense in Journalism?
That it makes sense at the newspaper of Bob Woodward [1] , now run by a billionaire with no guts to stand for Democracy itself?
That other oligarchs are tilting the election towards the obvious insanity of a leader who, in word and deed, will dismantle Democracy to indulge himself and his cronies?
We have sanewashed madness and the end of Democracy.
- "You seem to be implying that he made a decision based on other business interests, against those of the Post, but there is no support for that in the article. Do you have a source which describes this motive?"
There's support in that Trump personally met with Blue Origin's C-suite, on the same day the Washington Post spiked their Harris endorsement—an apparent reward to Bezos, and one that put his business interests in the spotlight.
That is possible if their editorial staff honestly believe two things:
- The rule of law and the republic as a process are superior to anything else.
- One of the candidates does not subscribe to these sufficiently.
In that case, and given the political duopoly, they could still claim to be impartial towards candidates. Their only allegiance/partiality would lie with the rule of law and the republic as a process.
You’re thinking about this too hard. It’s a definitional question. If you have two candidates and you endorse one of them, you’re de facto partial with nothing else playing any role in the definition.
> If you have two candidates and you endorse one of them, you’re de facto partial with nothing else playing any role in the definition.
Endorsing on a specific issue, party, gender, or any specific quality that a large number of individuals share, is not uncommon. The specific individual is not what the endorsement must be partial to. Maybe the choice (since it's inherent to the process), but that's the distinction that was being made.
Thinking that one of the candidates will literally destroy the country is some weird meaning of being "impartial" that I have never encountered before.
There's a difference between the opinion staff and the news staff.
>The Post’s decision has roiled many on the paper’s opinions staff, which operates independently from The Post’s news staff, a long-standing tradition of American journalism designed to separate opinion writing from day-to-day news coverage.
I understand the internal logic of newsroom design, but if it was ever a genuine firewall it's not in modern times. The NY Times opinion editor was famously forced to resign in 2020 when he published an op-ed that the newsroom found unacceptable.
It would take way more for WaPo to not be in a position where mentioning it in one phrase with "impartiality" wouldn't sound like an absurdist joke. They can walk this road, but so far there's absolutely no indication they want to, and Bezos twisting their arms can't be taken as such evidence.
There is direct support in the article. Amazon lost a $10B contract because Trump doesn't like Bezos, which is because he owns the WP, a paper that is generally critical of Trump. By killing this endorsement, he's buying some goodwill from Trump, at the cost of alienating the bulk of WP's readers.
Untrue. At the top, "KEY POINTS: In a 2019 lawsuit, Amazon claimed it lost a $10 billion Pentagon cloud computing contract to Microsoft because Trump used “improper pressure ... to harm his perceived political enemy” Bezos."
> 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.
Bezos was blackmailed by Trump ally and National Enquirer boss David Pecker a few years ago. He resisted then and it led to the most expensive divorce in history.
> not endorsing candidates might be good for the Washington Post's business, by improving its perceived impartiality
You're at the wrong meta level - if the paper's owner is making the editorial decisions, there's no impartiality to perceive in the first place.
I mean, if the question at hand was "should the editors endorse someone?" then what you're saying could stand. But that's out the window if they're being overruled by somebody without even a presumption of impartiality.
I think one could claim that the editorial department was trying to make a decision that could/would be interpreted as a company stance, rather than a department stance, to the average person. Sure, you could blame the average person.
I also can’t comprehend the benefit of a biased editorial department, from a business or quality perspective. A diverse set of views is always more interesting to read, but I’m surely in the minority with that perspective. If someone could explain the benefit, I’m very interested.
I don’t see this is any different than the media black out that nearly all corporate employees enjoy, that exists for one reason: don’t make your opinions appear as those of the whole. Looking at the mixed responses to all of this, across the internet, that does seem to be the case, where people are confusing it all.
1. Publishing an editorial endorsing a candidate is extremely common, both for US papers generally and for this paper specifically. The reasons for that are various but they have nothing to do with what we're discussing here.
2. Moreover, that whole question is irrelevant when the editors aren't even making the decision. If Bezos is willing to override them, then effectively he is the paper's editorial board - so there's no "diversity of views" to talk about, except within the confines of what he's decided to allow.
No, because that's a straw man. What many people want is a balanced, unbiased editorial department that weighs the facts as they see them and then publishes an endorsement.
Please follow hacker news comment guidelines [1], this isn't reddit. It's a genuine question. If you see it as easily answered (as a straw man would be), then answer it easily.
1. I answered you - nobody said they see a benefit to having biased editors, and no reasonable person would, by definition. People see benefit in something else, as I explained - that's the answer to your question.
2. I know some people say "straw man" as a swipe, but it's also a term of art for a rhetorical fallacy and that's how I meant it. The position you asked me to defend (that there's benefit in having a biased editorial board) isn't a position anyone here took, or agrees with. Hence the term.
3. "this isn't reddit" is a swipe - and one that's a bit mysterious to people who are unfamiliar with reddit, like me ;)
(1) might be both common and also wrong. (1) being why I dislike most of these media outlets. (2) the editorial board may be wrong and suffering groupthink, and ultimately slowly killing the paper.
The fact that editorial endorsements are extremely common is relevant because it means that no typical reader would mistake them for being the position of the paper's parent corporation, like GGP suggested. Whether endorsements are right or wrong in the abstract isn't relevant, and I didn't say anything about it.
> I think one could claim that the editorial department was trying to make a decision that could/would be interpreted as a company stance, rather than a department stance, to the average person.
This makes no sense whatsoever. It is the editorial board deciding what candidate is endorsed by the paper. It is a company stance, made by the company's representatives on behalf of the company and based on the company's editorial guidelines.
We can easily bring the meta level down one more step to conclude that given the editorial staff are individuals with different beliefs, this dictates that they’re impartial to the extent of the (weighted) average of their beliefs.
I’d argue impartiality isn’t a thing in any human domain anyway.
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.
And why should we be using cancel brigades' definitions? If freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences for your speech, then freedom of speech automatically exists everywhere and the concept is meaningless.
Obvious there is judgement for when consequences rise to the level of being coercive - someone giving you a dirty look is not, the de jure government sanctioning you is. But trying to define rights binary-axiomatically is really just creating lemmas for cryptofascism when the preconditions have been met but yet the rights are still missing (which is exactly what the cancel brigades are pushing).
True, but said consequences are the possibility of a revenge streak of a petty US president called Trump. That is the real problem and story. And nobody really seems to dispute that possibility.
No public impartial news source, but organisation-internal news sources that work for the reader himself, those probably exist and probably very good. A bank's analysis department can work like one for the traders for short-term things.
Such organisations for the general public are possible. You'd need a group that is interested in correct judgements on some matter and willing to form an organisation to pay for investigations on it.
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 Guardian was a reasonably good source of news under Rubsbridger, under Viner its biases have worsened and its most courageous reporters, opinion writers and even cartoonists have been either sidelined or fired. Avoid.
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.
It's inherently dependent on the government. The viewers don't get together and voluntarily decide to fund it.
Unfortunately I don't think there's a single such organisation in the world-- controlled-by-members newspaper. Even almost-controlled-by-members newspapers here in Sweden aren't fully subject to member control, with this typically being indirect through some board or similar organisation.
A lot of that depends upon the government in question. Some want publicly funded news organizations at arms length. Others want to dismantle them. Some want at least the image of impartiality (and will take some criticism). Others want them to be a mouthpiece. It's not terribly different from the private sector. I would go as far as saying it is no different from the private sector given the consolidation of news organizations over the past few decades.
BBC stopped being impartial shortly after start of Iraq's invasion in 2001. It's not as polarizing as Fox News and CNN, but it's _far_ from being impartial.
Their coverage of international events only impartial if those events have no effect on UK.
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.
What is your definition of fascist? If it includes dictatorial control of the economy, suppression of dissenting opinions, and aggressive persecution of political opposition, Id have an easier time arguing modern progressives are fascists. Off the top of my head.
* Effectively shutting down large swathes of the US economy during COVID, while allowing "essential" business to remain open. Where "essential" is arbitrarily determined based on the state governors political leanings.
* Biden-Harris admin strongly encouraging (ie strong-arming) social media companies to suppress what they deemed "disinformantion".
* Progressive state AGs using legal loopholes and technicalities to prosecute Trump, aka Lawfare. For example, a fraud case for overvaluing real estate properties. A fraud case with no victims that resulted in a $450 million judgment? The textbook definition of excessive fines as defined by the 8th amendment.
* Progressives stated goal to pack the Supreme Court, effectively neutering an entire branch of government. Thereby, consolidating power in the remaining two branches.
You believe people who don't consider Trump a fascist are delusional (close to half the electorate, if we believe the polls)? What actions or policies has Trump implemented that fit under that definition? In short, Trump being a fascist is not self-evident: It is your (and many others) strongly held opinion. One that is rarely backed by more than shallow progressive talking points.
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.
My point is the more corporate the organization, the more they’ll only care about profit rather than what the public needs to know. Nonprofits, and orgs owned by individuals, are more likely to sacrifice revenue for such considerations.
Social media is lambasted for presenting people with the most engaging information rather than what experts think they need to know, and social media companies are largely just maximizing revenue. I think it squares nicely.
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.
So what? That's an incoherent irrelevant response that doesn't address any of the points I raised. Are you just trying to pull off "The Weave" by emulating Trump? You do realize that's just a lame excuse for incompetence and dementia, not an intentional debate strategy, don't you?
I don’t care about the conversation you were having with the previous persons actually
It was a response solely to your first paragraph about what left leaning might be in contrast to, when it’s also true that everyone else is like “or their voting record”
So that's an incoherent irrelevant response that doesn't address any of the points I raised, and you admittedly don't even care about the conversation or have a point to make, you're just incoherently doing "The Weave" to hear yourself talk, not participating in an actual conversation with anyone. Sorry if I interrupted your tangled thread of demented consciousness. Please proceed with your warp and weft unraveling, Sir.
I added to the discussion, when viewed from a differing but valid perspective. after your long, unnecessary exposition and diatribe, I pointed out that the shared concept of “left” people were referring is simply their voting record, schooling and geography.
you are the only one hoping for a fight or debate. you got it from some comments, naively assuming everyone that isnt affirming your feelings is a far right extremist, and somehow you have grouped this comment thread in with that immature pursuit
you sought to define what the “not left” is, as if suddenly it will matter and the senate will pass the filibuster for your party of choice instead of being 50-50 for 10 years straight, and I sought to define what everyone else was talking about: the journalist’s voting records.
but sure, keep trying your approach, its working so well.
Ridiculous is thinking there is no legacy liberal media bias. Take the top 100 political articles from WaPo and the NYT from this year and tell me how many are anti Republican. I’m guessing nearly all of them.
That's simply not likely. 75 million voters went for Trump in 2020. That's almost half the voters. It's unlikely that there's 75 million voters out there that are not Democrats or Trump supporters. If that is the case, Bidens support should either have been higher or there should have been at least that many blank ballots, or alternatively, Bidens 80 million votes is half Democrats and half anti Trump Republicans, in which case, the Democratic party, which historically is the larger party, is all but dead
The USofA has antiquated First-past-the-post system; this is largely how a system founded by people opposed to party politics spiralled into a two party non representative bog hole.
Being opposed to MAGA and simply not supporting MAGA doesn't make a voter pro-Democratic Party nor does it mean they want to waste their vote on a minor Libertarian or other third party with the result that Democrats win.
The US electoral system fosters the stupidity that results .. the still Republican anti-MAGA are (mostly) afraid to vote Democrat, minority parties aren't viable, and popular opinion and public support for various policy is never reflected in legislation.
If the US had a better electoral system it'd see better outcomes.
The fact the you would bring up
Liz Cheney pretty much invalidates any opinion you might have of the Republican Party. There’s a reason that disgusting and vile thing is now “teaching” at a radical left wing training school.
Good for you. Too bad that you don’t have compassion for the majority of the population that have been affected by high food prices, high fuel costs and record crime levels. The tax from your 10% household income will come in handy for paying the living expenses of illegal aliens and the reparations you will owe.
not really my problem the general population is unable to comprehend second and third order effects of a global pandemic and the subsequent money printing that followed
> high fuel costs
gas is 2.39 around me. major metro area with population > 8 million
> record crime levels
where? last i checked crime levels are back to or below 2019
>illegal aliens
yeah? they’re the same ones serving me at the convenience stores, the restaurants, and the ones performing the vast majority of the labor that produces our food. america runs on the labor of illegal aliens, like it or not
Sure, different exit polls get slightly different results. Point is that 1.5:1 is quite different than 10:1. And many college graduates are evangelical; the religion just isn’t Christianity.
Funny in terms of liberal technology is testing Chat GPT of any political biased.
Based off asking it the following 3 questions it might just be...
"Hey GPT, whose your spirit animal between Barrack Obama and Donald Trump?" It provided a neutral answer providing the pros of both dudes.
"Hey GPT, whose your spirit animal between Obama and Hitler?" It clearly chose Obama saying how rightfully so awful Hitler was.
"Hey GPT, whose your spirit animal between Trump and Hitler" It did not choose Trump at all rather just gave the rightfully so negative feedback about Hitler.
No fan of Trump or politics in general but if it happily chose Obama yet avoided Trump that seems odd (Trump is no way close to a genocider).
From Trump's rhetoric and flaming hatred for the 'enemies within' it seems not far fetched to imagine him setting up internment camps. It is a slippery slope as Germans can attest.
The rhetoric has been equally flaming from Trump's self-declared enemies. Just a couple of years ago Democrats were telling pollsters they supported internment camps for their enemies:
> Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Democratic voters would favor a government policy requiring that citizens remain confined to their homes at all times, except for emergencies, if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
> Forty-five percent (45%) of Democrats would favor governments requiring citizens to temporarily live in designated facilities or locations if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Such a policy would be opposed by a strong majority (71%) of all voters.
That's a demand for internment camps. One famous academic went further and said it'd be fine to engage in mass starvation:
The US needs to cool down the rhetoric on both sides, because it's an endless spiral of escalation right now. Trump isn't uniquely bad at this and the "slippery slope" was already slid a long way down, when he wasn't in charge.
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.
JD Vance wrote "I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he's America's Hitler."
You are aware that JD Vance is America's Hitler's running mate, right?
He is the outright (ultimate, through a holding company) owner of The Washington Post.
Therefore there is no conflict of interest. He gets to decide what its interests are.
I think it is worth asking whether it is in the public interest to allow people with other extensive business interests to own influential media businesses, but that is usual these days. Most media is owned by media (and sometimes more) conglomerates with many interests around the world.
My point is that Bezos would likely make a different decision for The Washington Post if he wasn't concerned about retaliation against his other business interests, and in fact he allowed the paper to make political endorsements in the past.
No he doesn't. He can choose to do with it whatever he may like. But whether it's in its interest or not is a property purely derived from the current state of the journal and the market. Whether he likes it or not.
And, yes, the issue stems from business ownership of a so-called "independent" news outlet which has clear conflict of interest. Which is something that we should not accept and continue fighting against, whether it's usual or not.
Independence from ownership isn't really a left/right principle. The Washington Post has their set of guiding principles online - I think from those it's pretty clear why there is discontent.
Independent doesn't mean unopinionated. As long as they're transparent about a set of ideals and principles that they follow through, being opinionated is perfectly fine for journalism.
But "opinion journalism" isn't news, it's editorializing. So you accept news that is effectively propaganda as long as it's "independent" from the outlet ownership?
I don't accept anything that isn't properly cited and sufficient evidence is provided from reliable sources. Neutral news offerings (such as AP or Reuters) are of course a better source of news. It is however useful to subscribe to journals that has some form of basic agreement on fundamental values. For example, it'd be useless for me to follow a news outlet that downplays the importance of democracy.
This is not propaganda, as opinionated journalism's objective is still to transparently cover issues it cares about without distortion or attempt at manipulation, which is very different from propaganda.
> For example, it'd be useless for me to follow a news outlet that downplays the importance of democracy.
You seem to be pretty strident and inflexible in your thinking, so at least you recognize that you're unable to read anything that challenges your rigid precepts and offers an opportunity to expand your mind or engage in a real exchange of ideas.
And please spare me the predictable response, because it's clear that you don't care about democracy exactly, like so many others nowadays, it's an amorphous stand-in that allows you to thoughtlessly discard opposition.
It is a business. It does not have interests of its own. its owners have interests - in this case its the one owner who has that. Its staff may have interests, as may other people, and there is always a public interest.
> the issue stems from business ownership of a so-called "independent" news outlet which has clear conflict of interest. Which is something that we should not accept and continue fighting against
I agree it is a problem, but, as far as traditional media goes, it is a lost cause. Can you see anything that will cause big media businesses to split themselves?
> It is a business. It does not have interests of its own. its owners have interests - in this case its the one owner who has that. Its staff may have interests
You nailed it here: bezos, as the dude who owns the paper has a vested interest in his personal success, whether the paper succeeds or not. If it came down to him or the paper, he would choose himself.
The editorial team, as the people who run the paper and are responsible for its quality, has a vested interest in the success of the paper. They decide what the interests of the paper are.
If bezos goes against the editorial team, that is bezos' interests conflicting with their interests, and thus the paper's interests.
> has a vested interest in the success of the paper
What defines the success of the paper? Why do employees rather than the owner (who ultimately appoints them) get to decide?
It is a business. If it was a non-profit organisation you would have a point (although I do not personally think much of the big non for profit media organisations I can think of). Even if it had a structure designed to promote other values over profits (as Reuters does) you would have a point. In this case, AFAIK, it is simply the property of its owner. People get to decide what to do with their property.
The people who run it, day-in and day-out, are best-equipped to answer this question.
> Why do employees rather than the owner (who ultimately appoints them) get to decide?
Because each employee fits the above criteria, and is thus better-poised to make such a judgement compared to one single person who is not. And when it comes to multiple-such, better-equipped judges, the disparity becomes starker.
> People get to decide what to do with their property.
This is a red herring. Nobody is saying bezos can't decide what to do with his property. He's just not as well equipped as Post employees, to judge whether his decision is good for The Post.
After all, having money obviously doesn't mean you have better info, or have more context, or make superior judgements. In some cases it just means you got a good head-start because your dad owned an apartheid emerald mine, or a portfolio of new york slums.
Well, it is an entity of its own that claims to strive for certain objectives (including the obvious one of being profitable). The owner could decide to change those objectives and make something new of it. The WSJ definitely has a set of interests that managers have a duty to satisfy, until the owner decides to change those interests. If they change their motto to "whatever Bezos needs" then it's problem solved. I don't see that on their about page, though.
> Can you see anything that will cause big media businesses to split themselves?
Who said anything about it needing to be voluntary. Regulation is a thing.
this is absolute BS. Journals are meant to have a split between the editorial board and their owners, because the credibility and ethics of the journal comes first. People don't read, or shouldn't want to read anyways, a paper that is just whatever the fuck Bezos decided was good that week; things should be as unbiased as possible.
> Newspapers publish opinions for the same reason that they publish comic strips: people want to read them. Readers seek them out. Newspapers are a business and have to give their customers what they want.
The customer is predominantly the advertiser. Newspapers publish opinions to have something to fill the empty space surrounding the advertisements.
Calling it a "bad business decision" just reveals your political preference. People who get their opinions from journalists is a constantly shrinking crowd. Today I mostly see only people of age 50+ who still actively think journalists can provide an accurate worldview for them.
> If this is all we expect of journalism in a Democracy
Straw man. I didn't say that.
It's not a maximum, but it is a minimum. Newspapers require money to operate, and they're competing for attention in a capitalist economy. No attention. no money, no newspaper. In a democracy, you can't force-feed newspapers to the population. They voluntarily choose to read or not read.
The "good news" is that many people in a democracy are interested in the hard truth. Nonetheless, it helps to package that along with softer marketing and entertainment.
Having an editorial opinion is not the same thing as having a conflict of interest. In general readers don’t expect newspapers to contain only news, but also opinions and editorial decisions. Candidate endorsements are a typical part of what’s expected.
> Isn't that supposed to be news and not worthless institutional opinions on the presidential office?
That's the goal of Journalism. Newspaper only goals: sell newspapers, sell ads in those newspapers (and since it we live in the age of internet - their website).
> An unconflicted owner wouldn't endorse either candidate. In general, hopefully, but in this election, particularly.
WaPo needed someone to make a difficult decision, conflict of interest or not, to just rip the bandaid off of their imprisonment of endorsing candidates
that's over now. the end. the market is going to forget this was ever a thing.
WaPo takes a hit if they don't endorse, but that's not Bezos's core business. If they endorse Kamala and Trump wins - other businesses of Bezos would suffer. Basically it's safer to not endorse anyone.
> Newspapers are a business and have to give their customers what they want.
This is true, but it shouldn't be viewed as unproblematic. Audience capture is a huge problem, and news organizations telling their audience what they here to the point that people get siloed in their own echo chambers is one of the main reasons why things are such a mess.
I'd say it's definitely possible to be in business and at the same time have business ethics, to care about the truth. I don't think it's inherently wrong to publish honest opinions, as well as funny comic strips, along with the other news, if it helps sell papers.
The problems occur when business ethics, and the truth, honesty, get tossed out for the sake of profit and/or partisanship.
I don't think it's a bad business decision. I stopped reading the WaPo when I got sick of its partial treatment of everything. And I'm not talking about supporting one candidate or another, I'm talking about sticking to facts and not ideological positions.
This decision by Bezos is a shot across the bow in the right direction, in my opinion. Clear eyed news are needed and aside from FT.com (which these days is also trending toward alarmism) there's precious little left out there. I don't care about a journos' opinion, I really don't. I just want them to report about facts on the ground and not pick sound pieces for clickbaits.
I did, and I feel like only long and cold headed analysis brought me out of it. It's easier to believe that alarmism is warranted than to think it isn't.
The entire public sphere is freaking out about everything all the time, and catching sound bites, taking things out of context, lacking empathy for opposing viewpoints and clearheadedness. Alarmism these days is the default state. WaPo is participating in this hysteria campaign. Letting the hysteria come into your brain unchecked is not good, but that's the default situation for most people and it leads to alarmism.
I think things are much more boring than people make them out to be, and that it's much harder to keep this perspective. You can't make good decisions when your brain is conditioned to believe in a reality and near-future that is much worse looking than what the actual current reality and near-future looks like.
All this to say, I used to give into this alarmism. Post-extrication from this disposition, I try to be more self-aware and reticent to give in. It starts by seeking more facts and primary sources, or consuming summarized content from entities that are incentivized to, and with a culture of, sticking to the facts.
> I just want them to report about facts on the ground and not pick sound pieces for clickbaits.
There's no evidence of an overall change in the newspaper's direction. Bezos did not fire all of the opinion editors, for example. Neither did Bezos announce this "policy" in advance. It was a last-minute retraction after the editors had already drafted an endorsement.
It's the editorial board that has the conflict of interest--between running a newspaper, and using the newspaper as a vehicle to advance their personal political ideologies. I grew up in the D.C. area reading WaPo. It went from being a milquetoast paper to being a vehicle for political radicals. And that's been a disaster for the business. The paper was on pace to lose $100 million last year, and has lost 500,000 subscribers since 2020: https://www.foxnews.com/media/washington-post-lose-100-milli....
WaPo's business is catering to D.C. professionals. The nature of the country's electoral politics is that roughly half of those are going to be batting for each side. It's a good business decision not to seem like you're rooting for one side or the other.
the result of 'business' decisions can be measured in more than just profits. News media routinely make 'bad business decisions' because they are tools of their owners. Hence why they go bankrupt often
Newspapers are supposed to be about news, you can't trust someone who tries to tell you how to think about things. I just want news and I want to figure out how to think about it myself.
Companies (mainly media based) have been moving from giving the customers what the customers want, to giving the customers what the company wants. This is just another one of those.
that’s some mental gymnastics. so newspapers are free to publish opinions, it is in their business interest………………(but only if the opinion is the one I want otherwise it is not good business)
That's a strange way of putting it. Newspapers are free to publish anything, by the first amendment to the Constitution.
> but only if the opinion is the one I want otherwise it is not good business
I didn't say that. I said that people want to read opinions. Sometimes they enjoy reading opinions that they disagree with, and arguing with those opinions.
> Newspapers are a business and have to give their customers what they want.
I really want to challenge this idea. Businesses can have missions quite distinct from what the majority of their prospective customers would want.
If I had practically unlimited money I wouldn't ever think of funding a news organisation and then only have it produce content that customers wanted. I would have a purpose for it, stemming from my own ethics.
I think it quite naive to consider Bezos has not done the same and that this decision is simply in line with his personal political interests.
Neoliberalism is a really poor substitute for personal morality and accountability.
> Businesses can have missions quite distinct from what the majority of their prospective customers would want.
Failing businesses.
> I would have a purpose for it, stemming from my own ethics.
I never said that business is inherently in conflict with ethics, and I, as an entrepreneur myself, believe that ethics are necessary for business: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41951447
> I think it quite naive to consider Bezos has not done the same and that this decision is simply in line with his personal political interests.
I claimed that his decision is simply in line with his personal interests. Whether those are financial interests or political interests is difficult to determine. Nonetheless, the decision was bad for The Washington Post. Compare to Twitter/X: Elon Musk is indisputably using the social network he acquired for his personal political interests, and that has indisputably been bad for the business, driven away users and advertisers, and his creditors have vastly downgraded the value of the investment.
> Neoliberalism is a really poor substitute for personal morality and accountability.
This seems like a nonsequitur. How is "Neoliberalism" relevant? Is that what you believe I proposed? If so, you're wrong.
I quoted the bit I wanted to react to, namely the idea that businesses have to give customers what they want. I read that as strongly influenced by an economically driven - rather than morally driven - world view.
Leaving money on the table does not necessarily mean a failing business, except for some extreme definition of 'failing'.
I meant to argue against your first assertion, not your second; I'm not concerned with whether it's a bad financial decision or not.
> I quoted the bit I wanted to react to, namely the idea that businesses have to give customers what they want. I read that as strongly influenced by an economically driven - rather than morally driven - world view.
It's simply practically driven. You can try to give people what they "need" rather than what they want, but in a free country and a free market system, people cannot be force-fed. They can choose whether or not to buy what you're selling. All the good intentions in the world will go nowhere if nobody is listening.
> Leaving money on the table does not necessarily mean a failing business
True, but I wasn't referring to that. Ruthless profit maximization is not the same as giving the majority of prospective customers what they want. The former isn't required, but the latter is usually required to sustain the business.
Imagine if a grocery store stocked only healthy food and got rid of all the junk food. It would go out of business, because people want their junk food and will go elsewhere for it.
Editorials, by an outlet's editorial board or otherwise, have consistently been among the most popular content in news for over a century. That includes endorsements.
Opinion articles aren't about the opinion (well, technical sw dev articles where I'm looking for the standard way to do something are, but not non-industry news stuff) unless the writer is in a position to make their opinion matter, they're about the reasons for the opinion. They're interesting if there are reasons that are interesting, or if the writer's choice of reasons is interesting.
To play Devils Advocate for a moment: Why do we need, or even want, a newspaper to endorse a President? How does it not undermine a paper's journalistic ethics to be neutral and fair?
I actually agree with you, newspapers really shouldn't be doing this. Our major local paper in the Twin Cities basically torched its reputation by endorsing wildly unqualified candidates for city offices (like, one guy they endorsed for Minneapolis city council didn't even live in Minneapolis). They recently decided to stop doing endorsements at all, which I think is the right decision.
But that's not what happened here. The editors did their normal endorsement process, but the owner of the paper stepped in and personally overrode their process for this one particular endorsement. That's a way different story from deciding to stop doing endorsements.
Another point that just occurred to me: Who is the endorsement supposed to influence? I think in America at least, the national media has become so hyper partisan in the eyes of its readers, that an endorsement of a newspaper is really just preaching to the crowd. What difference does that endorsement really make?
At the national level, I don't think it really makes a difference if a newspaper endorses a candidate for President. Those who read and value the opinions of that newspaper are more inclined to vote for the endorsed candidate anyways.
I think it's like wearing a jersey for your favorite sport franchise. It's not meant to influence anyone outside the group but reinforce group cohesion.
Which seems like an even stronger reason for newspapers (or other purportedly unbiased organizations) to not to endorse candidates, no? It seems like it would create (or reinforce) an internal culture inclined to favor one particular side.
A lot of newspapers are/were called the X_location Democrat or the like because historically the newspaper was an arm of the political party. Not as many exist now with the decline of news publishing.
Interesting. So rather than have newspapers that pretend to be neutral, we could instead have explicitly Republican newspapers and explicitly Democratic newspapers? I guess things have sort of been trending in that direction the last few years anyway...
It influences no one, but it sends a pretty loud message to the Democratic party that (now two, LATimes did same thing) normally reliable media orgs have lost confidence in the democrat party’s ability to bring forth a competitive candidate against Donald Trump.
That's a really good point I had not considered. It's signaling, I see that. To be withheld when it always been given would seem to be to be a very loud signal. This will be fascinating to examine after the election in a journalism class. I see a PhD thesis on withholding endorsements in the future..
> it sends a pretty loud message to the Democratic party that normally reliable media orgs have lost confidence in the democrat party’s ability to bring forth a competitive candidate against Donald Trump.
It's not two media organizations. Both wrote endorsements of Harris.
Two self-interested billionaires decided that they and their personal fortunes would be better off if those endorsements were not published.
The message this sends to the Democratic party is: suck up to the rich guys if you want power. It's bad for society.
You don’t think this is a recent lesson? Pretty sure every politician already realized this. Since literally forever. Hell, I worked for a company whose wealthy owner had a steady stream of politicians flowing in and out of our offices promising the world for a handout, support, and help. Seemed like every week there was a tour or two for somebody. I have met literally 3 governors, several senators, US reps, state reps, county commissioners, multiple presidential candidates, sheriffs, mayors, wannabes for all and scores of political support staff who excitedly walked in my office while trying to schmooze the old man.
> It's not two media organizations. Both wrote endorsements of Harris.
> Two self-interested billionaires decided that they and their personal fortunes would be better off if those endorsements were not published.
How is it worse than a small cadre of elitist mono-culture editors using the reputation of WaPo for their chosen candidate?
Bezos didn't force WaPo to endorse another candidate, I think it's actually good they don't endorse anyone at all.
> But that's not what happened here. The editors did their normal endorsement process, but the owner of the paper stepped in and personally overrode their process for this one particular endorsement.
Honestly it’s surprising to me that people really think that the news side of a media company operates with complete autonomy from the business side. They might claim it exists but that’s a fallacy.
I worked at a major daily newspaper 30 years ago and I personally know of two cases in my short tenure there where news stories were killed because they didn’t want to piss off important advertisers. I am also aware of a story involving a family member of one of the executives that was let’s say “barely” reported. Other local media organizations interestingly had much more detail than we carried.
News has always been and will always be first—a business.
The press is free to report on whatever they want. That freedom however is not a mandate that they must report on everything. Newspapers and other media companies have ALWAYS focused on profit. Nothing new there.
Plus in this day and age there is literally no restriction on the flow of public accessible information at least in the US. Even when it was tried recently (twitter, FB, YouTube) during the pandemic the public backlash to that attempts at information control was so great that it might literally sway this election.
like most of the 21st century: Nothing new, just getting more efficient and less subtle with it. 20th century corruption would have had this announced way back in 2023 to make the timing not so obvious at the bare minimium instead of having editorial waste its time on a story that was pulled last minute.
>the public backlash to that attempts at information control was so great that it might literally sway this election.
but nothing much changed. I don't know if public outcry vs output was always this poor, but that certainly seems to have changed over the decades. Too many people uncomfortable enough to complain but not enough to get up and get out.
Two of the three platforms (and the former CEO of one) have publicly admitted what was done at their companies was a mistake and the third has quietly reversed much of the topic controls around pandemic and vaccination content.
Advertisers is one thing, but where's the business sense in not reporting on an executive? That sounds like a little fiefdom, not something that makes "business sense."
Whenever people say stuff like this it reminds me why I'm wary whenever people mention things being business friendly or pro-market because it has a lot to do with protecting certain people who already have a good position over merely following market forces.
Point was that leadership of a media company might make editorial decisions that are in its best interest—whatever that interest might be. Not necessarily profit, but could be personal.
“Had”, not “has”, a long history of not endorsing candidates. They’ve been endorsing since the 80s.
The proper framing is “the owners stepped in to change the policy, to mirror the same policies they had before the 80s”.
Whether that’s right or wrong to do is a separate question. But framing this as though it has been editors going rogue or something is just not what’s happening at all.
> But framing this as though it has been editors going rogue or something is just not what’s happening at all.
Of which I didn't do. Granted, 40 years is a long time. But given that the company has had the policy of not endorsing for over two-thirds of its existence, I believe the "undo" framing is accurate.
I saw that but I'm not sure I see the "long history". From Eisenhower to Carter, then from Carter to now, that's not much of a long history of non-endorsement. The Post is taking a very strong stance here and it will be interesting to see if this stands up in 2028. The LA Times may have left the door open to future endorsements, but not the Post.
Better question: Why now? What changed for them? Was it declining revenue/readers, an overhaul of ethics or process? I can't wait to read the tell all some day about these decisions.
Endorsements are published by the editorial section which is specifically separated from the rest of the newspaper so to not undermine the neutrality of the journalism in the other sections.
Opinion and analysis has always been part of news publications, and plays an accepted role in adding layers of interpretation onto the raw "facts" that is crucial in making those facts interpretable by readers who aren't expert in the subject matter.
The idea that editorial team has some kind of expertise, unavailable to general population, that allows them ecxlusive ability to properly understand current events, seems to have no factual support at all. They are professionals in giving their opinions, it doesn't make their opinions be better that anybody else's. Experience suggests they are usually worse.
> The idea that editorial team has some kind of expertise, unavailable to general population
That doesn't make sense to me - they literally spend all day every day absorbing, summarising and writing about context as their full time job. They are trained formally at assessing, evaluating and questioning facts. You can criticise the end result, but I can't see how it's reasonable to say they aren't far better positioned to have an informed opinion than the average reader who gets up in the morning with no training and tries to understand a slew of facts dumped on them without context.
Except in practice their editorial opinions boil down to value judgments that aren’t amenable to such analysis. They weren’t endorsing Harris because of the nuances of tax policy; it’s because they share her views on abortion, immigration, white liability for past racism, etc. These are the subject of moral and political philosophy, not expert analysis.
That’s why WaPo has consistently endorsed the same party—even when that party’s policies have changed dramatically over time. WaPo would endorse Harris regardless of her policies.
> They weren’t endorsing Harris because of the nuances of tax policy; it’s because they share her views on abortion, immigration, white liability for past racism, etc. These are the subject of moral and political philosophy, not expert analysis.
A candidate's social policies may be more important to some people than their fiscal policies. So an analysis of their social policies would be more useful to those readers than an analysis of their fiscal policies.
You can make an expert analysis of a candidate's previous stances and track record on those subjects. Politicians will routinely lie about their previous stances, so that seems like a useful analysis to me.
There’s little meaningful “analysis” to be done about such policies. Just pledging agreement or disagreement with those philosophical beliefs. And that’s why such endorsements by journalists tend to undermine trust.
This doesn't make any sense. Of course social stuff like abortion and immigration first of all matter to readers, and second can amount to actual, written policy with great detail and nuance, and the consequences of such policies are complicated and meaningful.
On abortion, there's now a national patchwork of policy. You could write a damned book analyzing their implementation and consequences.
We’re talking about endorsements. The nuances of those things don’t materially affect who the paper endorses, or readers’ views of those issues, which are rooted in morality and philosophy, not factual intricacies.
Could you point me to such analysis published in WaPo? I mean seriously, it would be nice to have a list of policies that Harris supported before she was VP, during the time she was VP, and now that she is a presidential candidate. Side by side - is the wall stupid or is it necessary? Do we need higher taxes or tax breaks? Do we need to jail marijuana users or leave them alone? Is Israel a genocidal war criminals or our most important ally? Is our immigration policy broken or are we doing the right thing? Is the free speech the foundation of the democracy or dangerous chaos which needs to be controlled? There are a lot of confusion that may be clarified with proper analysts of the candidate's position on such questions.
An article listing analysis like this, with appropriate quotations and explanations would be great. Does WaPo publish stuff like that, consistently, over the length of the campaign? Or would it rather do another "17 reasons why Trump is exactly like Hitler" level analysis?
> all day every day absorbing, summarising and writing about context as their full time job.
Something the people they are writing to and ostensibly on behalf of do not get to enjoy. Perhaps people with grounded perspectives would be more worthwhile. Guest opinions are logical, an actual editorial opinion department? That's just an early retirement plan for writers who don't have what it takes to produce news anymore.
> they literally spend all day every day absorbing, summarising and writing about context as their full time job.
I have no idea what "absorbing" means and how it's different from any random dude spending his day sitting on a couch glued to CNN/MSNBC screen. But the fact that they are professional writers doesn't give them any special quality in the insightfulness of their writings - you can be a professional writer and a complete doofus, to which we have an ample number of examples.
> They are trained formally at assessing, evaluating and questioning facts.
No they are not. Maybe they used to, somewhere in ancient times, but there's no slightest trace of any of it in most of the content produced by major press outlets. If they can do it - which I very much doubt - they certainly aren't bothering to.
> You can criticise the end result
By their fruits you will know them. The end result is the only criteria worth considering.
> I can't see how it's reasonable to say they aren't far better positioned to have an informed opinion
Some of them - with access to sources unavailable to regular people - may be better position to form an informed opinion, if they wanted to. But as soon as that information has been published, they do not have that better position anymore. And in addition to that, what is frequently happening is that they do not just publish the information available to them - instead they distort it and modify it to fit their pre-conceived opinion, and publish that, in hope that the public doesn't know any better (it usually does). If there is any truth to separation of news and opinion sections that we were told so much about it, then by that mere fact the opinion writers don't have any special informational insights - only the news people, working with confidential sources, might.
> the average reader who gets up in the morning with no training
What is that mythical "training"? I see no evidence of any relevant "training" in anything I read in the press. Most of them know how to handle basic grammar and write somewhat coherent text, but any person with basic education can. Beyond that, I don't see any special "training" there. And certainly there is an ample number of people who undergo much more rigorous training about how to handle facts, e.g. when studying hard sciences. Most press opinion writers do not undergo anything like that.
> tries to understand a slew of facts dumped on them without context.
What is that mythical "context" not available to regular people and where does it come from? Is there some secret "context sources" that are only opening if you work for WaPo? What is stored in those "context" treasuries?
I think their existence is a complete fiction. There's just a bunch of people who are getting paid for publishing their opinions because they have a degree saying "journalism" on it or just because they applied to the job and got hired, but they don't have any special insight or "context". I mean, some of them might be just good at thinking and making conclusions (they usually don't survive in the press long) but that would be just random luck. Given the selection pressure, I'd expect lower chance to find such people among professional press than just in a random selection of people with the same class and education level.
Since I can’t reply to the dead child, the concept that you need training to interpret opinions sounds like a way to force people to believe your opinion without actually convincing them. It’s an extension of the “people are stupid, they need to be told what to do” from some years back that a certain party tried to push.
That would seem to negate the entire point of any editorial column then, right? If we don't care about their opinion, what's the point of reading in the first place?
Well, somebody may care, and by random chance or a strike of luck they may just hire somebody whose opinion is worth hearing... I am just saying we shouldn't assume it upfront just because there's a bunch of guys that is paid for doing it. If there's a blog on the internet and it is interesting, I read it. If not, I ignore it. I don't stand in awe or cower in reverence just because some guy has a blog. Same should be done for opinion pages - it should be afforded reverence only after proving its worth, not upfront.
Well, US is still a somewhat free country, so anybody can publish any opinion they want to publish, anytime they want to. I have nothing against that, in fact, I must admit I am guilty of it myself - I have a blog where I publish my opinions. It would be very hypocritical to me to deny anybody else the vices I enjoy myself. I think just realizing those people aren't better or worse than anybody else and do not deserve any special consideration is enough.
It seems like the newspaper editorial section really ought to endorse somebody to make their biases clear, if nothing else. What are we to believe, that a bunch of people whose job it is to write opinion pieces don’t have an opinion about the election in their own country? Haha, yeah, sureeee…
You can take that way if you want. But you aren't doing it justice if you just view it as purely cynical deliberate manipulation rather than a true effort at enhancing the reader's understanding.
Essentially they offer a framework of reasoning around the facts presented that the reader can use to make their own evaluation. Like if someone reports that 122,211 electric vehicles were sold last year. Is that a lot? Is that not a lot? You would need to start comparing to previous years, what external factors might be influencing sales. There is intrinsically no way to do that without introducing selective bias about what is considered or not. But the reader at least gets that context to enhance their own understanding.
In practice there is little or no distinction. The list of top articles always includes opinion pieces, the choice of “neutral” fact articles to publish (and the headlines used) signals bias, and on a basic common sense level a newspaper isn’t going to publish an opinion piece that goes against the opinions of their workers/owners. Every time an opinion piece is published that goes against this, it’s a huge brouhaha.
Interestingly on another note, opinion writers are often actually less qualified than you’d expect, because the business model of a newspaper doesn’t really work for accumulating expertise vs. a specialized magazine/Substack / etc. The only way to have consistent opinion pieces is to have a generalist, not a specialist.
He says things like "I wish I had general's like Hitler's" or his political opponents are the "enemy within" and he would harness the military against them if he gets in power, and that migrants are criminals.
I really don't know how you can equate something as uncontroversial as "1+1=2" with such controversial and divisive statements.
It is a neutral statement that Trump is objectively terrible. By contrast it is propaganda to defend him when he claims 2+2=5, which he does on a regularly basis.
And this doesn't have anything to do with "the left" a ton of conservative Republicans have admitted that Trump is objectively terrible.
If it were the editor's opinion, how is it any different from the opinion of anybody off the street? Why do the editors get the newspaper platform to publish their opinions?
Opinions aren't meant to be neutral and fair, and it isn't a violation of journalistic ethics to publish them as such.
If they had tried to disguise opinions as journalism by introducing intentional bias and distortion into a story, then that would be a problem. But newspapers have published opinions for ages.
It's rather naive to think that newspapers ought to be neutral (or fair) in everything they produce. What kinds of neutral is desirable? There's neutral tone or neutral political bias -- there are many different ways for a newspaper to be or not be neutral.
Assuming neutrality isn't something that we should expect newspapers to value, then I think transparency is an good alternative. A presidential endorsement can be a good thing in that the newspaper staff are being openly transparent about their political bias.
I guess we need to think about what it means to be “neutral”. If half of Americans believe the earth is flat, is the neutral stance to say it’s unclear? Or is it to figure out what the truth is? In my mind there’s a difference between journalists and pollsters.
Of course with endorsements you can technically bring up the is/aught dichotomy. The facts may be what they are but that doesn’t necessitate any particular action. While this is technically true, I never see anyone complaining about the ethics of testing products and endorsing good ones. Wirecutter is basically doing the same thing with headphones and running shoes. Yet I only ever see pushback on political endorsements.
In short, umpires are neutral and fair but the fact that some teams win a lot more than others doesn’t mean they’re not doing their job.
That’s because if you praise a terrible toaster, life for most Americans is unaffected. If you endorse a political candidate, and nudge the election in one direction or other, roughly 50% of Americans will see that move as hostile.
The principle is the same though, whether you’re recommending candidates or toasters. Just because one has more impact than the other, doesn’t make it less ethical to investigate and recommend.
Your last sentence isn’t grounded in reality. Negatively impacting the lives of millions of people is less ethical than negatively impacting the lives of a few.
It’s a bit more than that in my mind. Political candidates at this point are telling vastly different stories about the reality we live in. The changes they want to make follow from the story they are telling.
It’s not that politicians share a common set of facts and just have differences of opinion about how to best accomplish the same goal. They are telling vastly different stories. In some sense, the more compelling story wins.
So I see a pretty direct connection between facts and political preference.
As do some news organizations; For how long exactly did the news claim that Trump was talking about Nazis when he said there were "Fine people on both sides"?
If I Google "Russian Pee Tape", Business Insider is the 3rd result with claims that the tape most likely exists. 1st being Mashable and 2nd being Buzzfeed.
When he said there were "fine people on both sides", he clarified that he was not speaking about Nazis; however, it is clear (even/especially with his clarification) that he was indeed talking about those on the same side as the Nazis ("both sides"). To many non-Nazi-adjacent folks, simply being on the same side as the Nazis (and not, like, kicking them out of your protest/party/social circle) actually does make you a Nazi too. From that perspective, it's logically impossible for there to be "fine people on both sides", if you admit that one side allows and agrees with Nazis. And are we still debating post-MSG-rally whether Trump believes the Nazis are very fine people?
As for the "Russian Pee Tape", I'll give you that one -- fake news sure exists. (I think if it was real, it would have leaked by now -- no pun intended.)
It's not automatically unethical for a journalist to advocate for something.
I guess if they entirely stopped publishing self authored editorials it might be "neutral" to not publish a particular one. But that isn't what is happening.
"The main thing for journalists is to strictly separate" a journalists personal opinion and political leanings from the news they are reporting. That is possible but it takes a strong editor to say no, you're trying to push your own personal opinion of the facts based on your political beliefs, when it should be up to the reader to decide that.
A journalist's job is to journal something, nothing more and nothing less.
If a purported journalist wants to influence or otherwise lead his audience somewhere, he is many things (commentator, advocate, activist, influencer, etc.) but he is not a journalist.
That’s a pretty low bar for “activism” in my mind. Activism is more about organizing people, organizing events, coordinating action, raising money, protesting, etc. although good journalism enables activism.
The entire point of journalism is holding powerful people/groups accountable. This is why countries like China hate journalists. Big companies like “journalists” who don’t ask tough questions. But the job of journalism isn’t just to reprint a press release with slightly different phrasing.
Journalism and a robust news media are a critical part of democracy. We can’t have a functioning democracy without them, just like we also need an independent judiciary, independent educational institutions and so on. As such, journalists are on the “side” of democracy. It is no accident that fascists and authoritarians attack the news media. They have to in order to gain and keep power.
The correct posture, therefore, of the free press when a charismatic authoritarian is on the cusp of power is opposition. So-called “neutrality” is not just foolish, it betrays their entire reason for being!
These are not journalists, these are the OPINION EDITORS. You know, the op-ed page, the page that contains NO journalism.
It has been a long tradition for the OPINION EDITORS of newspapers to endorse one or more positions of various political races, especially the presidential race.
This is regarding endorsements by the outlet as a whole. If someone wants to go out and publicly endorse a candidate on their own name, nobody's stopping them.
What Bezos did is say, no, you cannot and will never again slap the Washington Post's name onto your personal endorsement. I think that's fair, he owns the brand, and I think it's also good for journalism overall because it's not a journalist's job to push opinions.
When Woodward and Bernstein issued a statement about Bezos's interference, it began, "We respect the traditional independence of the editorial page." Do you know more about journalism at The Washington Post than Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein? Or are they just pedants?
Given general hypocrisy, I expect an R endorsement come 2028. When the "swamp" is cleared and Bezo's Ai can write his opinions ghosting as a "journalist" with a respected brand.
This is a completely wrong and perhaps deliberately misleading impression of journalism and journalists. Healthy journalism absolutely provides critical analysis.
lol....a key tenet of journalism is objective reporting:
Objective Reporting: Journalism aims to report events truthfully, objectively, and fairly, without bias. This involves verifying facts, seeking multiple perspectives, and presenting information clearly.
Activist-journalism is an oxymoron. There are very few journalists anymore.
You can find countless lists describing principles and tenets of journalism that differ from each other.
Accuracy, verification, impartiality, yes, but seeking the truth upsets people, and the usual attack on that is to claim bias, prejudice, activism and “fake news” on the part of the journalist/organization
> How does it not undermine a paper's journalistic ethics to be neutral and fair?
Where did you get this? Every news source has some bias, journalists, editors and owners of the media house are not some ideal beings. The good ones are honest about their bias.
As to endorsing a candidate, it's absolutely for the paper to decide. Endorsing a candidate might alienate some readers, not endorsing others.
To play Devil's Advocate to the Devil's Advocate... I would posit that journalistic neutrality isn't possible: and if that's the case I'd rather the journalist or publication wear their biases on their sleeve.
I can read a biased story, with values very different to my own, and still draw conclusions that are still meaningful. Mind you, I would expect omissions and couching that is flawed, but understanding the thinking of those I oppose is valuable and allows me to see their blind spots (or my own for that matter).
But a news organization or journalist being clear about their values and politics also disposes of the harmful notion that they've actually achieved some sort of objective reading or that they're being complete and well rounded. There's a deceptiveness in that pretense which some readers (watchers) may actually take for truth and not think more critically about what they're consuming than that.
I'm 100% on board with impartial reporting, with the caveats that a) endorsements are of the Opinion section, and b) the fact of the matter is that only the higher-minded news orgs would attempt impartiality -- so it's really just ceding the argument.
And LATimes and WaPo endorsements almost certainly won't have an effect on this election.
But, this reeks of cowardice. If you wanted to return to the journalistic standard of impartiality, that's a great thing to do when the pressure is low. Feb 2021 would have been perfect.
Less than two weeks before the most contentious election in modern history? And specifically when one candidate has threatened news organizations and their owners with retribution (legal, commercial, extralegal) for stories they don't like?
That's capitulation, not impartiality. If you believe in the mission of journalism, the honorable option would be to anti-endorse any candidate who threatens that mission.
If you don't believe in that mission, then what are you doing operating a newspaper?
I think people "need" their publications to do this in the sense that the publication may worry about losing readership for not "doing their part to support the morally correct candidates." But you're right. Ideally a publication would report the objective reality and let its readers decide what to make of it.
Newspapers have several different departments- a news reporting department, which ostensibly attempts to be neutral and fair (but often isn't), and an editorial department, which is neither neutral, nor fair. The endorsement comes from the editorial side.
I can't answer why we would want newspapers to endorse presidents- except that historically, newspapers played a big role in shaping public opinion (now mostly replaced by social media).
As long as the Post has an editorial page, with people employed to share their opinions, what are they supposed to do?
Opinion and reporting are separate- famously the WSJ reporting is quite strong and their opinion section is ... often wrong- but as long as an opinion section exists that's kinda their job, to share their opinion. If you want to get rid of opinion that might be a reasonable thing (with cable news and the internet no one has a shortage of opinion these days!) but doing it in such a ham-fisted way so close to the election is not a sign of a carefully thought-out business decision, it's a sign of cowardice.
They could share their opinions on the policies of each candidate. That could be great at helping people see perspectives other than their own, so that they can weigh it all up and make their own decision. Doing an endorsement is kind of the opposite of that, because it is essentially telling readers "you don't need to decide, we have done it for you."
Counterpoint: the biggest problem facing opinion journalism today is the competition. Actual news reporting is expensive and slow and sometimes doesn't pan out, isn't very profitable and there isn't that much of it. But you can get opinion everywhere these days- cable TV news, internet streamers, internet articles, it's everywhere. That suggests that there is actually a huge demand for highly opinionated work (and also that it is remarkably cheap to produce), but whether it's something like Daily Kos or Free Beacon or Alex Jones or Newsmax, it seems like everyone can find their own personal brand of opinion journalism that both flatters their own pre-existing opinions and at the same time molds them. Lots of narrowband broadcasting in that space, and the daily papers are really struggling with their goal of broad reach- they are getting outcompeted in each specific niche by a specialty player that caters to a much smaller, more specific set of opinions. (They try to have a diverse range of OpEd columnists, hoping that if you don't agree with Paul Krugman maybe you'll like David French, but that's a hard thing to pull off these days when your competition is just people of one specific ideological wedge.)
In theory your idea would be good, except when I look at the market I don't see anyone actually succeeding at that, which suggests to me that it's not actually a very large market of consumers.
Only in this hyper-partisan world has politics become a liability for business. If a restaurant hosted a candidate it didn't get death threats and calls for boycott 20 years ago. It's hard for some retail businesses to stay out of politics because they get dragged into it. Perhaps another way of looking at it is to not take too seriously when businesses get involved in politics.
The editorial board is separated from the newsroom and consistently writes persuasive opinions in the editorial page. "We think you should vote for X" is not structurally different from anything else that appears on the editorial page.
I find endorsements very valuable when voting in down-ballot elections. A good endorsement includes the reasoning behind the decision. I read the endorsements of multiple outlets and find myself agreeing more with one or the other.
What's the alternative, do comprehensive research on the record of 20 candidates? I don't have time for that. Read the blurbs they write about themselves in the voter's guide? Why should I trust that, they can write anything there.
Supposedly some voters are undecided. Perhaps they would be swayed by a persuasive argument; this doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t think critically.
I say supposedly because I find it hard to believe the WaPo endorsement would actually sway anyone.
It wouldn’t be interesting or newsworthy to me personally if they had done that.
Given that editorial boards at newspapers like WaPo traditionally do, I find it notable when the billionaire owner steps in to stop them from publishing the endorsement, due to fear of retaliation from one of the candidates.
I was referring to the context of the comment to which I was replying, and asking a rhetorical question regarding the relationship between the free speech rights of the press and the implication that the press should be prevented from expressing editorial opinions.
The paper is self-censoring. My confusion is around how the free speech rights of the press are being infringed. As I understand it, the paper willingly gave up its own rights. The point I was trying to make (poorly) is that this seems like less of an issue than, for instance, being compelled by a third party.
I disagree that the paper is self-censoring. Editors wrote and intended to publish endorsements of Kamala Harris. They didn't choose to censor themselves, nor willingly give up anything. The decision was made by management.
That may be less of a problem than government goon-squads raiding the Washington Post but I still think it's a problem.
the article says when trump was president , he interfered and caused bezos’ business to lose a government contract due to the newspaper’s coverage of trump.
I can respect that private corporations have the right to "censor" (I put that in quotes because nowadays literally any moderator action is considered censorship) while disagreeing with specific decisions by corporations to do so. I wouldn't say newspapers shouldn't endorse candidates if they endorsed Trump (as some papers have done,) but I would think that was a bad idea given Trump's animosity towards the press.
I can also distinguish between the value of the press and the value of a social media platform. Banning an account on Twitter doesn't carry the same social weight as banning journalists. To me, while both are legal and within the bounds of free speech, one is distinctly worse for society than the other.
The idea is that these people spend their days in the weeds, working over stories and leads, getting to know people personally, absorbing information and insight that doesn't make it to print, seeing the connections and threads between all the things they publish, and are literally professional news people the way many of us here are professional technology people who might have some insight on technology topics.
You can make the case that they might be disingenuous or manipulative in sharing what they claim to be their opinions, or that their opinions reflect cultural indoctrination rather than professional assessment, etc -- and so you don't have to take their endorsements seriously.
But it's not a crazy idea that they have something valuable to share for all the time they spend very close to news and politics, and it's not bad to know what their big picture view of topics and people are as they write and select stories for the rest of the paper as it helps you contextualize them in their subjectivity.
Those people working in mass media are going to have massive biases and blind spots the same way tech people do. That’s because news isn’t an accurate representation of reality, it’s representing the most extreme examples and outliers in society. If you have a group of people reading about outliers all day they aren’t going to be grounded in what ordinary people are actually experiencing.
If you'll pardon me, as a devil's advocate, it could go either way. They have a value but it's difficult to know to whom they owe that value to, the party, the corporations, voters, readers etc. The other is that.. they have value in the act of playback.
One political faction/side knows a publication is favored by one of the two parties. It can use that fact to feed it false information, or truthful, and watch to see how it gets reported, and the reaction of that electorate.
But it’s sold as keeping you informed about the world. When it actually is just about what journalists think.
Like you said, that can be valuable, especially in politics, when one hopes they aid your messaging. But it’s not a moral or even practical imperative to keep up with journalism.
Imagine learning about sports through ESPN commentary and never actually watching a game.
A similar professional blindspot occurred when many engineers thought twitter would collapse when Elon fired all those people. Because they see twitter as a piece of software, not a brand and organization.
I agree with the sentiment, this is just how people work. We aren’t constructing frameworks from first principles, we hear ideas from peers and filter them through our experience. Journalists just insert themselves in that process, using local ethics and archetypes against their audience.
Im sorry you didn’t catch the underlying meaning of my statement. Anybody unable to form an opinion on their own I don’t wish they have the ability to vote.
This reminds me of when The New Republic had a bunch of staff quit en masse because the new imported editor was blatantly bullshitting them. He didn’t realize that he was talking to a bunch of professional journalists who knew exactly what being bullshit was like.
And it's also bad for business. I think people on either side of the aisle underestimate just how tilted the other side can get when you go against them
I think there's arguments either way, but I also think as a certain point there is an obligation to point out that Trump is basically an anti American who probably takes more notice of a roll of toilet paper than the constitution. I'd argue that maybe it would behoove an institution of trust to make an endorsement only rarely, but it's also long been part of the means of public discourse for papers to put out opinions and endorsements.
More so than that question, I think it's more obvious to ask "if you're going to have that argument, is the year Trump, the nation destroying clown, is running, the year to suddenly make a change after something like > 3 decades? Especially when it seems like your owner might be making the change because he wants to curry favor for contracts?"
It's a pretty pathetic look, but I don't particularly expect any civic virtue from Bezos, so not shocked.
No doubt this will be portrayed as Bezos reigning in "Democrat" conspiracies and used to normalize Trump by the denizens of that delusional universe.
Your question is irrelevant. If Bezos or the leadership of the post had an ideological issue with endorsements, they should have decided that 6 months ago or one month from now.
It is blatantly obvious that this decision was done solely for Bezos business interests. Ignoring this and leaning into a theoretical debate to defend the decision is insulting.
Let's do an extreme example. If one candidate were to say, "I will burn down the Washington Post" would you expect the Washington Post to be neutral? Seems fallacious.
It’s a statement of the values of the newspaper. This is what we stand for, and we are endorsing this person because of those values. It tells people about the paper and about the candidate being endorsed.
The issue here is that Trump is a threat to our democratic system of government. It’s not the time to be changing policies and refusing to endorse. It’s a time for taking a stand.
Or.. at the end of the day, the newspaper is a business not a social movement. I have not seen anything about the business aspect of non-endorsement, other than perhaps the cancellations.
That’s a bit beside the point in this case. Newspapers are supposed to have a first amendment right to say whatever they want and the key concern is that Bezos spiked the editorial to curry favor with Trump.
The first amendment issue is that he is doing it because of fear that the government will retaliate against his other companies.
A lot of folks are exhorting him to resist in order to protect the norm, but it his true that _his_ choice is caused by first amendment violations, not causing them.
I think you have the directionality backwards. Trump is not currently in office or in control of the government, therefore he doesn't have the ability to constrain Bezos' first amendment free speech rights.
If Bezos chose to constrain his own speech due to some perceived threat to his companies from a possible Trump administration, that's still a private decision (and an exercise of his first amendment right to non-expresssion).
To be a first amendment violation, the government has to constrain speech (via force or threat).
I don't know for sure, but I suspect that this phenomenon of news media endorsing political candidates is almost entirely unique to the US. Please prove me wrong.
It was done under the name of the Director of Le Monde, rather than as an unsigned editorial as is common in English language newspapers, but it sure looks similar to my American eyes.
Making a big song and dance about the entire business of "endorsements" seems to be a very US thing as far as I know. I am of course not familiar with all democracies of the world, but it doesn't seem common anywhere else I've seen.
I can't prove you wrong, but I think political alignment of newspapers come in many flavors. Many countries have more parties than two, and as the choice ls less binary, the endorsements can be more subtle.
I took the same comment on a different way. To me they're referring to the fact that there are many other media outlets. Not only the big ones that do the same. But the smaller, "independent", that deserve more readers.
granted, they may also have interests or agendas. They point is we need decentralization!
Independent journalism that delves into both/all sides and does not rely on soundbites and extracting things out of context and has no agenda but the truth Like during Covid they would allow vigorous debate about efficacy, lockdowns, deplatforming, etc.
It's a dream but would not last. All sides would attack it for being for whoever the boogeyman they think is.
The Venn diagram of those who'd be influenced by a WaPo endorsement and committed Kamala Harris voters is a perfect intersection. For 50 years, WaPo has endorsed the democratic candidate [1] for president. No mystery here. It's a pointless endorsement.
The endorsement lets them write why they support the candidate. Laying out the reasons is what could be convincing, and is what's also being blocked here.
I think the intuition of the parent comment is right, but you also make a fair point[1]. I just wonder if you genuinely believe that any prospective Trump voter could be convinced by any argument to vote for Harris at this point. I mean after all the things that have already been written and said by so many, even by Trump himself, and have failed to convince ~47% of Americans that he's unfit to be the president.
Honestly, I look at the billions of dollars being poured into political ads, and I can't help but think that it's all a tremendous waste because it's hard to imagine that there's anybody left who didn't already form a strong opinion about Trump at some point over the past ten years.
[1] Like even assuming that prospective Trump voters don't read this newspaper, an especially novel or powerful argument could get picked up and spread by other outlets that do reach prospective Trump voters.
Political ads have many purposes, including convincing people to vote for their candidate, instilling a sense of urgency/motivation/purpose to actually get out and vote, and then second order goals like general PR/familiarity for the party, etc.
I don't really expect that there are Trump voters who could be convinced to vote for Harris by the op-ed, but I do think there could be voters who may have been on the verge of reconsidering Trump who may hear something like this story (of Bezos stopping an endorsement) as something that makes them identify their moment of reconsideration as a mistake because they think Bezo's behavior should be perceived as supporting the concept that Democrats and other anti-Trump parties are the ones off-kilter.
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.
Sure, but let's not pretend the writers at the paper are deciding this is better for their future. And let's not even give Bezos the grace that this is about if the Post succeeds. It's clear this is about if Amazon or Blue Origin gets contracts in the future under Trump and he's willing to burn down the Post to avoid that downside.
> You're morally and humanly bankrupt if you believe and act this way.
Those characteristics are, if not strictly required, at least overrepresented in billionaires. It seems like a reasonable approximation for how Bezos might perceive his situation here.
You don't usually get to be a billionaire by caring very much about morality.
So many times HN posters have extolled how Bezos hasn't interfered with the WaPo and those of us who expressed concern about his purchase were chicken littles. It has never been true and it's plain as day now. He bought it for the same reason Musk bought Twitter. To have control over a media outlet he values.
Well, it might have been true until now. Certainly there's no previous good evidence for Bezos-directed coverage or editing at the Post.
But regardless: you were right. I was one of the folks who viewed him as a basically benign entity who, sure, had opinions of his own, but clearly would never put his fingers on the editorial scale. And I was wrong, and he isn't.
They're not really saying Bezo or Musk are acting illogically. He's lamenting everyone who has set with their heads buried in the sand and pretended they aren't doing the things they're doing.
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.
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.
> The newspaper also published an article by two staff reporters saying that editorial page staffers had drafted an endorsement of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris over GOP nominee Donald Trump in the election.
This is a bizarre way to use his control as a owner. If you own a newspaper or tabloid, we know from Trump how you use it effectively: you practice 'catch and kill', or you kill your own inconvenient stories, or you sic your reporters on the enemy disproportionately (while still scrupulously reporting only true things), or you selectively amplify stories from elsewhere.
You don't... kill editorial board endorsements (while still publishing an article on it!). Is there a single person in a swing state who, despite being bombarded by advertising for years, is now going to vote for Trump but would have voted for Harris once they saw the Washington Post endorsed Harris instead? "Ah, well, if WaPo says so, I guess I was wrong about her! I wasn't expecting them to endorse the Democratic candidate!"
I can only read this as Bezos trying to kiss up to Trump, who is narcissistic enough to actually take personally a foregone editorial board endorsement of his opponent.
This is extremely similar to the sudden announcement of policies by all the major newspapers that they were not going to publish documents that they thought were stolen by foriegn intelligence services from political campaigns: it is a reasonable position to have, and if announced well before the election season started would be completely unobjectionable. Doing it when they announced it, however, is significantly changing the rules in favor of one candidate.
Doing it after the board had already written up a document endorsing a candidate (demonstrating clearly that it was not a policy of anyone but the owner, who decided to be an utter coward at the last minute) sends a clear message that even one of the richest men in the world is scared of possible backlash against him.
It's just remnants of DEI for former slave holding states. Supposedly they are ideologically opposed to it, but as usual it turns out that only applies when convenient. Practically every conservative achieving office does so thanks to DEI giving huge advantages to rural areas over places where people actually live and business actually happens.
It's more about how a presidential candidate has repeatedly made credible threats to go after specific media companies using the power of his office if he wins. That candidate also happens to have a terrifyingly broad idea of what those powers are. That's in the context of a 9-member Supreme Court where 3 are his own appointments and 2 are appointments from a previous president with similarly broad ideas about presidential power.
And no, not everyone knows how they're going to vote, as crazy as that seems, but I agree that newspaper endorsements are a tiny factor, especially in this election.
That’s what an undecided voter is, and that demographic is the one effectively deciding the next president, so yes these endorsements are consequential.
> I’m pretty sure everyone knows who they’re gonna vote for at this point.
I already did (yay early voting), but I was pretty close to just flipping a coin. Not for red vs blue, but for the lesser evil vs one of the more amusing third parties.
I know at least one person who votes based off a publication. As for changing minds, I have no idea if this person even considered who to vote for until the publication releases their endorsements.
> Is anyone really changing their mind based on some newspaper endorsement? I’m pretty sure everyone knows who they’re gonna vote for at this point.
Clearly Bezos thinks they are[1], otherwise he wouldn't have gone through the trouble of killing it 11 days before an election.
People in this thread are badly conflating the idea of "Newspaper Opinion Journalism is Bad" with "It's OK for an owner to arbitrarily influence newspaper coverage in real time". You can agree with the former and still agree the later is a horrifying precedent.
[1] Or, "Bezos thinks that Trump thinks they are" might be closer to the truth.
It's relevant on the margins. WaPo not endorsing Harris would be a very negative signal about Harris for fence-sitters and lukewarm voters - this is the paper that hated Trump so much they changed their motto to the apocalyptic "Democracy Dies in Darkness"!
If they had announced in 2022 that the paper would no longer be issuing presidential endorsements because they aren't useful or aren't a good use of resources, I think that would be a reasonable and much less controversial decision. Doing it now, when the paper had already drafted an endorsement of Harris and was about to publish it, is in fact an endorsement of Trump.
That's why this is news, it's not about a paper changing a policy, it's about one billionaire blatantly burying criticism of a fellow billionaire because they are having a personal fight (or they were having a fight and this is how they've resolved it).
This really is an interesting question. You are asking it rhetorically, and it's not like I'm going to argue with the implication, that it "basically doesn't matter", but then one could ask the same about Trump working at McDonald's as a part of his campaign, and pretty much about everything these guys do. Unless it's a major fuckup, it almost doesn't matter, because it doesn't convert anybody but one hypothetical guy who says "you know what, I'll pick a random newspaper right now, and the first guy I'm gonna see, I'll vote for him!"
At some level of approximation it doesn't even matter who the candidate is at all. An established trend in the USA is that the public is divided pretty much 50/50 between 2 colors, and hardly sways no matter what happens. Which makes it all pretty laughable way to make the choice (seeing votes as weights, and God makes a choice using these weights to make a decision) on an important question. If we assume the elections in the USA are "fair", it's pretty much flipping a coin every time. (But then, most people are already settled on the idea that it isn't an important choice, hence the "giant douche and turd sandwich" joke is so relatable.)
So while it largely doesn't matter indeed, at some low enough level any small detail might matter. I don't imagine who is that guy who was going to vote Kamala based on WP endorsement, but, well, maybe there is one. Really, I have no idea.
I think there are some number of people who are trying to decide what's "true" or "real" and while I don't think they'd have even noticed a WaPo editorial, I do think they might hear that Bezos prevented an endorsement and see it as indicative that the endorsement of Harris was somehow dishonest and tally it as a stone on Trump's side of the "reality scale."
I'm sure you're mostly right, but there are no doubt a few still on the fence, which can only either be people who have not been exposed to the truth about Trump (e.g. people who only watch Trump sane-washed sources like Fox), or republicans who are well aware of the danger he poses, but are having a hard time accepting that the responsible thing to do is vote against him.
For the few that are still on the fence, then more straight shooting reporting, from any source, can only help.
To me this is a total cop out, and very irresponsible, for the Washington Post to not want to "take sides" and express an opinion. I guess they would've let Hitler win election too, rather than want to "take sides" and say anything bad about him. It's like not wanting to express an opinion on whether a grizzly bear or a hamster would be a better pet for a 5 year old, because you're afraid of upsetting the grizzly bear.
I like that many people here have speculated that Bezos simply wants to avoid the ire of a possible Trump administration. This is very charitable, so much so that it ignores another reasonable guess a person could make based off of the same objective information that we all have — that this action is an endorsement, and the person that chose to endorse a candidate did so because he wants them to win.
On one hand you can imagine that Bezos somehow wants a Harris presidency but doesn’t want to appear that way out of fear, but that sounds more fantastical and wishful than “The guy whose company is currently trying to wholesale eliminate the National Labor Relations Board(1) likes Trump’s policies and wants him to win”, especially when you think about what’s going on with the other guy(2) that’s trying to destroy the NLRB.
Sometimes when people indicate they want something to happen it is because they want that thing to happen.
I think the act of spiking the endorsement sends a stronger signal than the lack of endorsement. He could always make his own endorsement, but he didn't.
I don't know what's in his head. I just know that Trump sources are saying it's because of fear of reprisal [0]
I think it can be both. In scenario planning it makes sense for billionaires with large business empires to vote for Trump. One, the few details that can be determined from his platform are around lowering taxes on the very rich and making it easier for them make more money. Two, Trump has been pretty clear in his rhetoric he holds a grudge and will use the government to punish anyone who he perceives is against him. Taken together, there is little to no downside in supporting Trump, even if Harris wins. It's not like Harris is threatening to throw people she doesn't like out of the country. Whereas vocally supporting Harris where Trump wins runs the risk of becoming a target.
By the way, I think Musk did the same math. He likely thinks/knows Trump is an idiot, but it's almost all upside supporting him and little downside. Plus, Musk is likely still upset he was left out of a Whitehouse summit on EVs a few years ago. Regardless of what people think of Musk that was BS, and I wonder if that snub is part of what led him to come out in support of Trump so vocally.
Endorsements have never been without the blessing and influence of the owner of that paper or institution. The extent that an owner lets the editorial team pick an endorsement is the same extent to which they align philosophically. It's an illusion of choice or independence.
If papers were meant to be more neutral, I suppose they would need to be owned as cooperatives by the subscribers themselves, assuming the subscribers were balanced and philosophically diverse.
The key point here is that despite all their biases, the Washington Post and The New York Times were at least perceived as independent, with both of them famously publishing articles that would upset those in power. If their owners feel the need to spike articles unfavorable to the administration, then no more Pentagon Papers etc.
I agree. I was reading about Rupert Murdock's start in Australia. He was able to swing an election there through his ownership of a few newspapers. Newspapers don't have the same pull as they did back then. Now I guess it's the online platforms like Facebook, X, or Reddit. Reddit seems to be captured by the Democratic party.
There used to be a concept of journalistic integrity, to just report the facts, not to put any spin on them. These days that's totally abandoned, it's considered entertainment.
Has an owner ever killed an already-written endorsement 11 days out from an election? You're right that there is an implicit assumption that an owner condones the paper's operation. But to exert control like this so specifically and in such a baldly partisan way is unprecedented, thus the resignations both at the Post and the LA Times.
It's one thing to hire an editorial staff with whom you agree, it's quite another to step in and overrule their attempt to do the job you hired them to do.
It is ironic because Washington Post is the most left leaning of all major news paper. Their endorsement is really a no-op, because there is really only one candidate they could ever consider.
If the Post endorsed Harris but then added an addendum that this was the last election they’d be endorsing, this would make sense and seem a lot more impartial to a now 40-year tradition.
I went to return something to Amazon and though it was clearly their fault for sending the wrong item, the rep said “we’ll make a one time exception here” and I said fine whatever. Seems like there’s a Bezos precedent for this kind of “last time” approach lol
A while ago, the failing/risks of banks that were too exposed to particular sectors (crypto/blockchain) brought some discussion on the merits of diversification of key risks.
In a highly partisan landscape with increasing geopolitical tensions, is ownership a key risk to objective news? Is diversification of ownership of news sources a good way to help mitigate that? If so, any good ideas from the HN crowd?
For me, seeing a person or business consciously claim neutrality this year is reprehensible and impossibly out of touch. Whether Bezos likes it or not the business he is in comes with the assumption of an endorsement, and silence is an implicit endorsement. I’d never hold an individual to that standard but power comes with responsibility and this choice is putting his privilege on full display.
Funnily Bezos has probably made more for Harris by stopping the endorsement then if he let it go through. No one would have cared about the endorsement, now this story is everywhere..
Only if your greed is bigger than your pockets. Which is bound to be true for anyone who accumulates this much money and still exploits workers to the degree Amazon does.
A single man issued an edict and ended decades of precedent/history. All for the sake of the mighty dollar and ensuring his multibillion dollar fortune doesn’t take a tumble by a 5-10B in the _possibility_ the wrong candidate gets elected.
Everything is awful about this. What would it take WaPo away from this horrible person?
I find it strange that people are so upset about the absence of an opinion piece from this newspaper. What is the reason? Either you want to be told what to think, or you want everyone else to be told what to think. I think it is the latter. Would there be any outrage here if Fox news decided not to endorse a candidate? I highly doubt it. Some people may like being challenged on what they believe, which is good, but that's probably the edge case
Perhaps one wants to be told what they - the paper as institution, to include both owners and editorial staff - think. What values do they hold, and why? These inform their reporting content and choices.
Moreover, no one thinks well in isolation. Others’ ideas challenge and inform one’s own. To engage, to converse, to question: this is not being told what to think, but rather a catalyst of unique thought. Else why are you posting here?
That’s not exactly what happened. What happened at both the L.A. Times and the Washington Post is that the editorial staff was prepared to endorse Harris until the owner quashed it. That’s what people are upset about.
Endorsing Harris is a no-brainer. Quashing an endorsement of Harris reeks of cowardice.
It seems like it would be less polarizing if it was the default state for news and information outlets to not endorse any candidate ever and just remain as neutral as possible.
Why would they want to appear neutral? All news reporting, no matter what, is inherently biased in some way. There isn’t some “ideal” where that isn’t the case. There can’t be some magical font of unbiased information because just selecting what stories to put on the front page introduces bias.
News can’t be unbiased and being unbiased was never a goal. News is meant to inform, which includes facts as well as analysis. That seemingly the average American doesn’t understand that is a failure of the education system.
> Why would they want to appear neutral? All news reporting, no matter what, is inherently biased in some way. There isn’t some “ideal” where that isn’t the case. There can’t be some magical font of unbiased information because just selecting what stories to put on the front page introduces bias.
Sure, but just because you can't be perfectly unbiased doesn't mean the only alternative is to become a mouthpiece for a political party.
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.
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.
100%. People upset about this are just upset cause they didn't endorse their candidate. Trust in media/journalism is at an all time low. This is simply a smart move to not alienate 50% of the population. If individual editors/writers/journalists want to endorse someone, take it to your blog or website or twitter.
> "Katharine Graham the previous owner of the Washington Post during the Watergate years was threatened by Holden who famously said, and I will leave out a bit of the quote because it's too crude to say out on the stage, but he said you tell Kate Graham if she prints that we'll put here blank through a big fat ringer, and then they actually worked to try get their broadcast license resented, it's completely un-American, so I guess the only thing I say is as Katharine Graham my role model I'm very willing to let any of my body parts go through a big fat ringer if need be." Jeff Bezos in 2016 when asked about Donald Trump. ^1
I don't think he is pro Trump, but I think he just doesn't want to be on his bad side just in case, just like Zuckerberg he tried to patch his relationship with Trump after he publicly threatened him
"What is truth?" asked the powerful Roman governor of Judea, of a man accused of blasphemy two millennia ago, and we still don't know. What is "neutrality" for a university? Is creationism "neutral"? It was a huge political deal in the US for decades (though it seems to have died down recently), but in the 1980's, 1990's, and into the 2000's there were plenty of people who wanted creationism taught in science classes, or at least to "teach the controversy." Was picking sides on that topic in science class "neutral"?
Is the superiority of phonics based literacy approaches "neutral" or criticism of teachers unions? If a economics professors research indicates that, say, supply-side economics doesn't work under current circumstances, is it "neutral" for her to tell her class that? If a law professor thinks that judges only make ad hoc arguments to achieve whatever ends they desire, can they teach their class legal nihilism?
"Neutral" is the sort of thing that someone who has never actually tried to teach or inform can think is reasonable, until you actually try and do it and realize that there are people out there who strongly want to contest whether the earth is round, and that either you throw up your hands and accept epistemological nihilism or you accept that you have to pick sides, and try and do a good job of picking the right sides.
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.
There’s not really any such thing as neutrality. Arguably universities can maybe step away from things (although this is complicated with departments that are inherently political), but “neutral” if you’re writing about politics always reflects some kind of value judgement. By definition one person’s neutrality is someone else’s bias.
Being neutral in an unbalanced situation means you are purposefully ignoring things that should be said and not putting on the table things that should be there. Not publishing relevant opinions pieces is part of that.
To get some distance, imagine being neutral to every candidates during Russia's last elections, and refusing to publish well researched and argumented opinions people have about the leading candidate.
So if quality news outlets no longer provide journalism when we need it most (breaking down candidate platforms, keeping candidates honest, …). Then it shifts to a variety of unverified sources (ie, TikTok, Fb, Telegram, et al) for those that couldn’t find anything credible.
The population already struggles with determining fact from fiction. Taking away the power from journalists because a _billionaire_ wants to ensure his wealth remains high.
Should this not fall under the "private company, do what they want" mantra we were all so fond of wrt (pre-Musk...) Twitter, Facebook, et al? The further advice then was; "make your own social media platform."
Same thing happened at LA times a few days ago, also replete with an editor quitting, when owner Patrick Soon-Shiong blocked the same Kamala endorsement.
You're free to not subscribe, some editor or other is free to quit, and owners are free to do as they please with their private property. Freedom. What a great idea.
You didn't draw that conclusion when WaPo lied about Russians hacking US electrical infrastructure, sabre rattling for war, then retracting the entire story when it was proved they fabricated the story? One of the authors of the faked story is still employed by WaPo, by the way.
It's only bad when they refuse to bend to your political orthodoxy, not when they knowingly print dangerous and false stories about nation state hacks (eerily similar to NYT's lies about WMDs in Iraq) -- something likely to drag the world to war again.
Strangely, the same people who call newspapers "legacy" are all over Twitter calling WP a failure and that people need to cancel their subscriptions.
There's a trend among Tech Oligarchs to diminish the role of journalism. Seems to be all about getting slices of government contracts, if not controlling them.
I'm going to rewrite something verbatim the other candidate posted on his social media network:
CEASE & DESIST: I, together with many Attorneys and Legal Scholars, am watching the Sanctity of the 2024 Presidential Election very closely because I know, better than most, the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential Election. It was a Disgrace to our Nation! Therefore, the 2024 Election, where Votes have just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again. We cannot let our Country further devolve into a Third World Nation, AND WE WON’T! Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.
He's right there saying it. We're in a slow motion train wreck. Bezos is chickening out because of it.
You really might see the end of democracy in America within weeks. Trump is telling you he's going to end it. One of the richest men in the world is listening to him.
I don't think there could be a more powerful endorsement of Trump so far, much more than if Bezos's paper actually printed an endorsement of him (which would have been laughed at):
It's a signal of Trump as extraordinarily powerful, a stronger signal than probably anything else I've seen. That boosts his image among suppoters - remember power is what he sells - and will intimidate many, many more into complying. What journalists and business people, or any elite, will stand up to him now after Bezos and the Washington Post - probably the second most respected news organization in the country - have bent the knee. And it makes a Trump victory look more inevitable, a key selling point for anyone, but especially a populist.
When Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong did the same thing recently, "The Trump campaign swiftly shared the ... story with supporters." [0]
If I didn't have context about the situation, I'd say it makes sense. However I think that in this flawed two-party situation, there is unfairness on both sides, resulting in some sort of balance, and it's bad that one of the richest people on earth could upset the balance in this way, especially at the last moment.
Yeah, I think you’re missing the point a bit here: the fear of endorsing the “wrong” candidate, as it would lead to loss of profit by the owning company, is what led to the axing of the endorsement. Call it what you want: profit and political strongarming silenced a newspaper.
Ok, I actually RTFA and it just seems like a bunch of conjecture over what the reasons might be? Nobody actually knows?
And the editorial board's comments seem a bit dramatic?
"It represents an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love, and for which we have worked a combined 218 years"
How does it represent an abandonment? These editors have been sharing their convictions for the past combined 218 years. I don't think any reader is going to ask "I wonder who the Post is going to endorse"?
WaPo endorsing Harris would have changed exactly 0 minds. Everyone that would have read it already agrees with them. But it would have made them feel good about their existing world view.
Them _not_ endorsing _will_ change minds. There are people that read Washington Post that would take that as a sign that not even their trusted left-leaning paper is 100% comfortable with the candidate they should have endorsed, so maybe there's something there they should have hesitancy about too.
> An endorsement of Harris had been drafted by Post editorial page staffers but had yet to be published, according to two sources briefed on the sequence of events who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The decision not to publish was made by The Post’s owner — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — according to the same sources.
Not antagonizing the likely future POTUS is smart business especially when said future POTUS is known to lash out with retaliatory rhetoric and actions.
More interesting to me is that this is the third tech billionaire to take a decidedly different stance than he did previously. Musk is quite active, but even Zuckerberg took a much more neutral stance for 2024.
Honestly I'm more surprised that Bezos even bothered. Does he really think the endorsement of The Washington Post editorial board is so significant that it's worth intervening? That seems implausible.
It's almost as if coming out in favor of taxing unrealized capital gains right before the election wasn't the stroke of political brilliance that Harris thought it was.
"Hmm, I'm facing a close election. Hey, wait, I know! I'll make enemies of people who buy ink by the trainload and bandwidth by the petabyte-second."
I really wish somebody could have talked her out of that idea, or at least convinced her to wait another couple of months before putting it on the table. It was an incredible faux pas, maybe a history-changing one, whose consequences were trivially foreseeable.
Bezos cares because his businesses have billions of dollars in revenue from the federal government. Trump has already claimed to personally review those contracts and was reported as trying to kill the $10B JEDI contract:
By all accounts, he’s prepared to be more authoritarian and less bound by the law if re-elected and he’s already threatening journalists with rape and talking about yanking broadcast licenses for channels which don’t kowtow to him.
of course it is. endorsements by major entities such as major newspapers… endorsements by celebrities and all these other points form the constellation of how a candidate is perceived. a huge chunk of people will not just vote blindly for whoever seems to be more broadly supported but actually deeply like whoever is put in front of them. and they will also believe it if a bunch of newspapers release the same story at the same time… even if there is no evidence offered to support the main assertion. or even if its obviously false. creation of the appearance of a consensus is an extremely powerful tool
I've yet to see an argument against this not delivered in bad faith.
If the publication in question was the NY Post, Washington Times, or another center-right newspaper, the very same group currently having a collective meltdown on social media would be praising them with an equally melodramatic "saving democracy" or some other manufactured phrase du jour.
I'm really not sure of this. The argument I've mostly seen is that the endorsement was always mostly meaningless. If anything, this is a "coverup worse than the crime" situation. Killing the endorsement is much more notable than just letting it happen because it's what everyone was worried about when Bezos bought the paper - that he'd inject his own consideration into it, something he said he wouldn't do. If some billionaire owned the NY Post and banned them from endorsing Trump, that would absolutely be a story as well.
I don't think anyone thinks it's not clear who the writers at the NY Post or the Washington Post generally want to win. That makes this whole situation so much more stupid on Bezos's part.
It makes sense in so much as "it's a risk to our business to endorse Harris because of the risk of falling afoul of Trump's vindictive nature should he win."
From a fiduciary standpoint, I agree with that assessment. From the standpoint of a citizen, I find the implication alarming.
I do believe that this is the reasoning behind the decision, but it is certainly speculation on my part.
If you own a paper money isn't the point. Just like in a hospital or a law firm or even a bank. You do the right thing because society trusts you and making money comes from that. Do the wrong thing, and your business will vanish.
You are forgetting that the ftc is looking at amazon under biden, one would hope that harris will keep kahn in the post (because she's kicking asses that have been needed to be kicked for 30+ years).
I think he's in a bad place. If he endorses trump he's endorsing a potential fascist dictator. If he endorses harris he's contributing to amazon's anti-trust peril.
This is why we need to repeal and replace the First Amendment with an amendment that guarantees freedom of expression within the bounds of civilized discourse (e.g., open Nazism=crime) and severely punishes government officials who use their power to stifle such expression. The First Amendment, as written, protects speech that oughtn't be protected, and fails to protect speech that ought to be protected, hence the current situation with the Washington Post being cowed into withdrawing their endorsement by the threat of a vindictive Trump.
Countries with no First Amendment, where hate speech is in fact criminalized, routinely score higher on international free-speech indices than the USA because in the USA the government, especially the Republican Party, has the means and the will to intimidate the press into silence or capitulation.
I guess there's no regulatory guidance here, on media ownership interfering with media op-ed operations ? Even when Bezos (probably) swore up and down he would never interfere ?
> Scientific American makes second-ever endorsement, backs Kamala Harris. This is only the second time in the magazine's 179-year history that it has made an endorsement in a presidential race
The first time they ever made an endorsement was (wait for it) 2020! Everything has become political these days.
So we have reached the intimidation phase of this election, where businesses owners fear repercussions from Trump (or standing up against him) and his entourage for not supporting him.
It's fascinating to compare other countries on the brink of authoritarianism with our own. In other countries it happens because of bread lines and complete dysfunction here it happens despite a country out of war and an economy that's humming along at a brisk pace.
It's the equivalent of playing chicken with a train because you're bored.
My first thought is that it's sad that a billionaire owner can override the will and culture of the journalists that compose the paper.
My second thought is that it's really bad that this could have been done in order to help Blue Origin get government contracts.
Think about it, the actions of a news paper are being influenced by what's best for a aerospace company. How did this happen? It happened because more and more companies, across all industries, are owned by fewer and fewer people.
According to the article, Jeff Bezos is presumably afraid that Trump would continue to punish Amazon. If that is the case, this seems like an entirely futile exercise.
Not that corporate PR responses are ever particularly illuminating. I read an article regarding information conveyed per syllable. English was near the top. Languages with less information per syllable like Spanish were spoken faster. In dead last place were PR statements from Fortune 500 companies.
Imagine taking as many steroids as Jeff Bezos has taken, only to end up being afraid of an obese elderly man who cheats at golf. What was the point of all that flexing?
This isn't a normal election, or anything remotely close to it. It'd be lovely if we had TWO relatively normal candidates and could vote for them in our normal partisan ways.
You may have noticed that basically everyone in Trump's first term cabinet has come out and called him things ranging from "moron" to "fascist" to a "danger to the country". This is not normal. It's extremely abnormal. It's a warning to the country.
It's at extraordinary times like these when the country needs some leadership, from the media as well as those in power, to highlight the danger. Many senior republicans have stepped up and announced they are going to vote for Harris. It's a very poor look for a newspaper, faced with a once in a lifetime election like this, to effectively say "we're gonna sit this out out - we have no editorial opinion on who is better for the country". Very sad.
Weird, because in Trump’s last presidency he was pretty anti Jeff Bezos. But I guess however they feel about each other, the assumed business tax benefits of a trump presidency make him want trump
It is one thing to be neutral when one candidate wants more military spending and a lower top income tax bracket and the other is in favor of higher taxes on top and more social spending.
But in this case one candidate literally tried to subvert the last election. Even ignoring all his other issues, that one is enough to say we shouldn't vote for him.
The most kind way to read this is that he is concerned of reprisal, no different than the reprisal he faced from the Saudi government (with likely Trump assistance via David Pecker) in 2019.
Here’s an alternative take. Note, I’m absolutely not a Bezos fan. Maybe he is just chickening out against Trump and/or fighting against the proposed billionaire tax (which IMO will never happen.)
But consider that 1) even with all the damage Trump could do, Bezos will still be richer than god, 2) Bezos did not instruct the Washington Post to endorse Trump, and 3) he doesn’t seem to have asked them to keep things quiet either.
So of course this story breaks and of course there is all this media hullabaloo with the upshot being everyone now:
* knows that the WaPo was about to endorse Harris.
* is reminded that Trump has made official decisions and improperly pressured government matters based on personal feelings.
* is aware that even the 2nd richest man in the world fears the personal ire of a presidential candidate in a democracy, ostensibly with a solid rule of law.
I hate that this comes across as “he’s the billionaire we deserve, but not the one we need right now, and oh, BTW he's also playing 4D chess," but all this seems very expected. So maybe another way to look at this is: Bezos appears to submit to Trump, which in itself serves as a very publicly warning to the world about what will happen under Trump, and indirectly endorses Harris anyway.
I don't think he has to do 4D chess to signal support against Trump. He could always just use his giant megaphone to decry Trump as a wannabe dictator that improperly used his own power when he was President to punish his political enemies - something Trump does not shy away from publicly admitting.
Trump may be handed unprecedented [0] power, is quite openly and plainly motivated by retribution, has repeatedly threatened to use the power of the military and the state against his political enemies, and at least once has used his own media platform to call for the termination of the US constitution.
(Those are facts. Not political claims.)
Putting aside any broader assessments of his character, I think it is rational to be afraid of the consequences of being on the wrong side of such a person.
What is depressing is the number of people in positions of influence who do not feel like modelling the virtuous position of having fear of the consequences of doing what they believe to be the right thing but doing it anyway.
[0] I realise that in principle there is a precedent for him having this power because he had it before. But what any presidential candidate in 2024 now has is the opportunity to run an executive with the clear legal opinion that they are permanently immune from prosecution for most of their actions, and an implicit handbook on how to bury criminal acts in official communications that are covered by absolute immunity. This extended power has no precedent.
Why is everyone in this thread pushing the idea that Bezos is scared of Trump? It seems more plausible to me he is scared of the DoJ breaking up Amazon under Harris.
Because soon it’s very possible Trump will rally the military behind him and start imprisoning billionaires who dared to cross him. He’ll be the only “billionaire” with real muscle to imprison his enemies for life or even summary execution.
About half of American voters are behind Trump. More poor/less educated coming to him compare to past cycles. Why wouldn’t a billionaire scared of him?
There's been so much focus on education as the new fault line in American politics. And though it is huge, and the less educated increasingly do support ultra-conservative policies, I think the even bigger fault line is across genders. And tech workers, though usually well educated, skew dramatically male and those degrees and salaries don't make them immune to the growing culture of male grievance and victimhood.
I think they, like even some on the left, have reasoned that Trump will only be there for four years. That's it. He's gone, or in jail. That's four years they know who their opponent will be and the Democratic Party can prepare. Thinking a long game, it is possible the left has given up and said fine, let's get it over with.
Probably already mentioned in the comments below, but the subtext here is obvious. Bezos thinks Trump is very likely to win and he has killed this endorsement because it might screw his broad business interests in all kinds of ways under the administration of a vengeful Trump. The nature of Amazon makes it much more exposed to regulatory heat inside the U.S than would be the case for a more purely digital tech-driven firm like, say, Meta.
Aside from the likely cynicism of the move, the cliquish criticism of Bezos reeks of moralizing hypocrisy. Is there some exact moral duty among major tech company founders to effusively endorse specifically progressive, liberal elite-endorsed democrat candidates, to show their own kumbaya credentials? Bullshit. Even the ones who vigorously support democrat politicians are no less self interested in doing so. It almost always boils down to money and favorable regulations, whether someone supports the donkey or the elephant.
It's not a novel observation but there's another conclusion you can draw from the same information: it's in bezos's best interest for trump to win and he wants him to.
Comparing the NYT and WaPo, seems to me the latter is more stridently alerting everyone to the dangers of a Trump presidency, this killed endorsement notwithstanding.
Actively making the Democrats chance of winning less likely for your own personal interests is shortsighted.
Jeff still needs customers, he needs a sane society where his businesses can operate from ?
Sorry but the leader of the Republican Party is completely unhinged. Bezos might get away with a tax break or avoid some other legal scrutiny or even Trumps gestapo hit squad,but wow, you’re giving up a lot for a little.
Actions like this completely undermine one of the main reasons people believe Trump should be president. Which is that he is too rich to be bought. Well, look at the rich people being bought by their own greed and shortsightedness now.
Do you vote according to what others tell you to? Or do you believe most other people do so blindly? Dem voters will stay home because they didn't read a papers opinion? Or you believe that others can't tell the stance of a newspaper regarding a candidate from their reporting on them?
Cannot in any way understand why this is an actual issue.
Sheesh If more newspapers would stay out of endorsing political parties we would live in a better world.
Frankly leftist newspaper propaganda has done little but make the rightist ( especially the ones with a racist agenda ) political parties expand massively.
Every election i. almost any european country is showing this trend.
Why on earth are you all flaming this? Because it means its a hidden Trump support? Kamala is immensly unpopular, outside of all the glam endorsements.
She is no Obama thats for sure.
How abour adressing the root cause of that?
Wow I wish every newspaper was properly unbiased.
tldr I think you are all idiots for outrage over lack of proper political bias in a newspaper.
Your comment broke several of the site guidelines, by (1) posting in the flamewar style, including nationalistic flamebait, (2) being snarky, (3) doing political battle, and (4) commenting about getting downvoted. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules? We'd appreciate it because we're trying to avoid hell here.
One candidate has proposed a day of violence and given indications they consider “anyone who disagrees with me” as an “enemy within”. I don’t think they have talked about televised tribunals, and they also have a … tenuous … relationship with the truth or following through on promises (even when baselines against normal “politician lie rate”)
To be clear, the camps never went away, and we’ve been mass deporting for decades now. Support of ICE is a bipartisan effort. Iirc the only change Biden made was to end the policy of family separations. The rhetoric is massively different, but the actual policy is not.
I really wouldn’t hold my breath for a president that doesn’t fearmonger about immigration in the forseeable future.
Which party is ending capitalism? I'm curious, because there's one party saying explicitly that they intend to end the democratic process, one party explicitly stating the goal is the end of the rule of law, and one party saying they want to deploy the military against the supporters of the other political party.
You could make the argument that those positions are fundamentally opposed to capitalism as well, but that's not as explicit.
Regardless, only one party is threatening either of your alternatives, your straw man nonsense about ending capitalism not withstanding.
HN is not a living organism, it’s an abstract entity formed by the people who engage in the site. As it happens within any community, there’s no such thing as consistency. In fact, so diverse is this community that I’d wager that luck and chance explain much of what gains traction or gets flagged here.
What an odd view of history to imagine that newspapers weren't always (and importantly) open about their editor's opinions.
The idea of "objective journalism" is both ahistorical and unsound and mostly just acts as cover for claiming that certain journalism has subjectivity we're not allowed to call out.
It's far better to know how the editors see the world than to falsely pretend that they don't.
What a sad state of affairs when people who consider themselves educated enough to opine about what newspapers should and should not do clearly has no historical understanding or basic familiarity with newspapers.
Every choice of coverage is an opinion about what is important, and shapes the tone of coverage as surely as an editorial. This is actually a very common critique of the News Media, which loves to aggrandize itself by saying that it is neutral.
At least editorials are honest about the views of the institution.
Facts still must be interpreted. It could be a fact that a credible source claimed X and a non-credible source claimed the opposite. A newspaper's job is to also provide this context, not merely the "facts" of what was stated.
Similarly, an endorsement could in countless ways not simply be partisan. For example, based on what is most predicted to help the country with X/Y/Z.
If this was a long-standing policy, or one at least announced well in advance of the election it wouldn't get much attention. That it's coming right before the election for transparently selfish reasons on the part of the paper's owner is not great.
For the past 100 years, literally since WWI, all media organizations have been used to constantly launder opinions into the brains of the American people, disguised as 'fact'.
The traditional ideal is that editors and journalists exercise a freedom of practice that owners don't intefere with, much the same as the academic freedom tenured professors are traditionally given at universities.
In practice, that's of course not the case (in either domain), but it predictably makes front page news when an owner acts too egregiously domineering.
> Couldn't a simple answer here be that he felt Kamala is unqualified and terrible and as a newspaper with a lot of readership and influence, he decided against endorsing her?
Sure, but why should the personal opinion of the owner of the newspaper prevail over the opinion of the editorial staff?
Sure, but then Bezos should be writing something explaining it. Instead, he's silently just using his money to squash opinions he doesn't agree with. The is the exact sort of conspiracy that Trump likes to claim where Soros is the reason anyone doesn't endorse him, except now it literally happened and it's to help him, and he turned around and took a meeting with Blue Origin right after.
I think Biden fell UP stairs more often on camera.
Recent paper came out suggesting that classifying media coverage of major media outlets identified something like a 94% positive take for Kamala and a 98% negative take for Trump. I think the media companies gave up the mask a while ago. James O'keefe had a great undercover journalism piece where one the producer's of MSNBC outright said they are a propaganda arm for the DNC.
Regardless of its impact on the election, this decision ends the Washington Post a serious news organization. Prior to this, you could reasonably trust it as a decent source, if questionable on tech & Amazon stories due to the ownership bias. After this, it's clear that Bezos purchased it with intent to push his own views. It's no longer a reliable source for news, it's just a mouthpiece for Amazon & Bezos's other companies.
Sad to see an important newspaper die in this way. I hope the people that do good work there are able to find new employment.
Yes we can infer. His political leanings are fairly Democrat. His media puppet is very left leaning. He didn’t announce this policy years ago when it would have been a nothing burger, instead just a couple weeks before the election as a splashy egg on face moment.
I can smell fish. His best information is that he was backing the wrong horse and now he is scrambling to contain the damage. Because it’s also quite a slap to the Harris campaign, he must not think much of their chances or sees a very, very asymmetrical risk profile here. Snub versus scorched earth.
We are going to be in for a very interesting four years.
I think the endorsement was just bad journalism or bad writing and Bezos just did not want to risk it. If such an endorsement would come out in such a divided climate, then i would want it to be excellent. Maybe it was just partisan.
They endorsed in 2020 and 2016 and 2012 and 2008 and if they were so serious about adopting national neutrality they should have announced this in January instead of spiking an existing endorsement
So why is it that this is about money and Amazon contracts? Why isn't it about Kamala just being so bad, in Bezos's eyes, that she doesn't deserve an endorsement. I think that's way more likely.
I am not surprised however that the liberal media will look for any problem over admitting it's their own candidate that's the problem.
Bezos owns 9% of Amazon. His personal share of any 10bn contract might be a few hundred million over many years. He doesn't care!
> Bezos owns 9% of Amazon. His personal share of any 10bn contract might be a few hundred million over many years. He doesn't care!
The rest of your comment aside, I think this sentence proves too much. You can use it to prove that Bezos doesn't care about almost anything in Amazon, or that most billionaires don't care much about what happens in their companies, because it only impacts a small part of their already vast fortune.
It's pretty clear that this is not true for many billionaires.
> Why isn't it about Kamala just being so bad, in Bezos's eyes, that she doesn't deserve an endorsement.
Bad for whom? Bezos is a multibillionaire, his problems are not our problems. It’s detached from reality to think a guy that made his fortune exploiting workers and other businesses in any way understands or cares for society’s struggles.
All: when commenting, please stick to this story, and don't do flamewar or generic electoral battle as that's not what the site is for.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Newspapers publish opinions for the same reason that they publish comic strips: people want to read them. Readers seek them out. Newspapers are a business and have to give their customers what they want.
The problematic aspect here is that the current business owner, Jeff Bezos, has a conflict of interest. Bezos is making a bad business decision for The Washington Post, sacrificing it and losing readers for the sake of his other business interests, i.e., government contracts. It's unlikely that an independent owner with no conflict of interest would make the same decision.
You seem to be implying that he made a decision based on other business interests, against those of the Post, but there is no support for that in the article. Do you have a source which describes this motive?
It seems like not endorsing candidates might be good for the Washington Post's business, by improving its perceived impartiality. In addition to this, the WaPo seems to have spent much of its history not endorsing candidates, and it has been doing (financially) poorly recently; perhaps this is a return to more profitable and credible roots.
While you may not take this as proof it affected this exact decision, it's hard to ignore it as a possible reason.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/10/amazon-wants-to-depose-presi...
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.
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 Bezos is not lacking money. That contract was $1B/yr contract over ten years. They make $600B+ a year. 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 on it I’d very much lean on a personal motive beyond money.
Not lacking money does NOT imply not so obsessed with making more money that he will do absolutely anything.
A very easy decision for some, depending on their own strength of conviction. Anybody knows that Harris is not running to retaliate against those who do not agree with every policy that her people can get her party to support, but Trump is and he makes it very clear that if elected he intends to do harm that Harris will not do. Bigly.
So without consideration for upside[0], one of the most emotionless decisions a top executive can make is when there is no downside versus when there is.
[0] After all, further upside is not necessary if you already have experienced enough to where the needle can not move any further.
> They make $600B+ a year.
Are you confusing revenue with profit? Yeah, a lot of money pumps in one end of Amazon retail and out the other, but there is very little margin: the $550+ billion in revenue on the retail side, as I understand, brings in significantly less net than the $90 billion in revenue on the cloud side.
And government contracts, where one might expect support or opposition from a potential cheif executige who has made overt promises of purges and other uses of office to punish enemies and reward friends to make a big difference, are an important part of that (not just that one $1B contract.)
> a lot of money pumps in one end of Amazon retail and out the other, but there is very little margin
Citation needed
I thought they had fabulous margins
Am I wrong
The $1B/yr is revenue too
...probably at a way lower profit range than most corporate contracts given how demanding gov deals are.
I say I make $100k year. That’s my salary, it’s my revenue. To do that I have to do things like paying taxes, rent, electric costs etc.
Its a general posture. Amazon is an industrial powerhouse and Trump has signaled that he can and will attack his political opponents no matter how rich they are. If he wants to, Trump may actually nationalize Amazon; the alternative is presumably becoming his toady.
See "the steel cases". The POTUS cannot unilaterally nationalize any businesses.
The current Supreme Court has been pretty clear that there is no such thing as settled case law anymore
> The current Supreme Court has been pretty clear that there is no such thing as settled case law anymore
It's always been the case. That's how Supreme Court works.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41952951
See Dobbs and Loper Bright, past precedent previously viewed as solid and well-established is no guarantee of future outcomes with this Court.
Or Brown vs. Board of Education. The courts can change their minds once in a while. There are no indicia that this court wants to overturn the steel cases.
More context? A search on Google doesn't bring anything useful to me.
My googling turned up this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youngstown_Sheet_%26_Tube_Co._...
Trump has signaled he will get the military involved against his opponents. And people are still going to vote for him.
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> And by the looks of it, the majority of people.
Where are you getting this? He is down against Harris in most polls, and neither candidate is clearing a majority. There are projections that he has a narrow edge in winning the Presidency due to the electoral college, but that's not the same as being most likely to win a majority (or even plurality) of the votes (e.g., 538 gives Trump currently a 53% chance to win the electoral college, while Harris has a 65% chance to win the popular vote.)
Betting odds.
Betting on winner, or on popular vote? Because even assuming the betters have the odds right, those are not the same thing.
To me the popular vote is irrelevant and in my original post I meant the winner, despite saying the majority which you interpreted to mean “more than 50% of the population of the US”. We have a system in place to counterbalance the fact that large numbers of likeminded people concentrated in one area could otherwise rule over everyone else through tyranny of the majority. To me the majority therefore just means “most of the US”.
If you think betters do not have the odds right, you should start betting right now.
Using "majority of people" to mean anything but something over 50% of people is going to lead to miscommunication. I'd advise against it.
> If you think betters do not have the odds right, you should start betting right now.
Sure, depending on my risk tolerance and existing exposure.
Even the betting sites where Trump is extremely (as in, much more than in the poll-based forecast sites) favored to win the electoral college, like Polymarket, have Harris a strong favorite to win the most votes, just as the poll-based forecasts generally do.
E.g, Polymarket, which gives Trump a 65% chance to win the EC compared to 538s 53%, has Harris at 58% to win the popular vote compared to 538s 65%. (And while it is possible for the popular vote winner to have a mere plurality of votes, it is not possible to get a majority of votes and not be the popular vote winner, so, no, the source of evidence you cite does not support the claim that "by the looks of it, the majority of people" will vote are going to vote for Trump, but instead support that the majority will most likely not do so.)
At the end of the day, you will find this prediction markets to be as successful as sports betters. We would be wise to remove all money from politics.
Rational well managed sports betters are quite successful.
Paddy Power (as one example) has grown in 36 years to now have > £11 billion revenue per annum with a net income of some £1.2 billion.
When did Trump threaten to nationalize any business ? His argument has always been for the opposite.
AFAICT, while he has threatened extreme and unconstitutional retaliation against businesses (e.g., pulling broadcast licenses and jailing journalists for unfavorable coverage) [0] if he wins, he has not specifically threatened nationalization.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2024/10/22/nx-s1-5161480/trump-media-thr...
Fair enough. Though I wouldn't put it past him.
That’s the bar now?
His behavior has been he’ll do whatever he wants; he has almost no consistent political positions.
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He makes arguments that change with the wind. If you haven’t been paying attention to his erratic behavior for the last eight years, that’s not something I can fix for you.
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"Trump has signaled that he can and will attack his political opponents"
You write this, apparently sincerely, as if the other side of politics do not and will not attack their political opponents.
> 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.
That makes no sense at all. If the primary concern was avoiding canceled contracts, it would be in his best interests to ensure that the guy who is threatening to cancel contracts out of spite would not be elected.
Pressuring the Washington Post to not endorse the candidate who does not pose that threat goes exactly against that.
It's something else.
It sure makes sense. The endorsement is extremely unlikely to decide the election. On the contrary, the chance that the endorsement will lead to retribution after a lost election is arguably much higher. They think it happened last time around. You can say it's cowardly to act like this. But it does make sense.
> say it's cowardly to act like this. But it does make sense.
So cowardice has been the greater virtue all along?
Has it come to this, that political cowardice makes sense? That it makes sense when Democracy itself is at risk?
That it makes sense in Journalism?
That it makes sense at the newspaper of Bob Woodward [1] , now run by a billionaire with no guts to stand for Democracy itself?
That other oligarchs are tilting the election towards the obvious insanity of a leader who, in word and deed, will dismantle Democracy to indulge himself and his cronies?
We have sanewashed madness and the end of Democracy.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Dies_in_Darkness
Yes this is the problem of oligarchies
He wants to avoid the wealth and capital gains tax on unrealized assets.
It can be hard to understand something if you wish not to understand it.
It’s pretty simple here: he didn’t endorse Trump. But he doesn’t want to get on his bad side in the case he is elected.
Make sure you take a moment to comb your moral fabric and see if that jibes with how you think the world should work.
The theory is that Bezos is scared of endorsing Harris then seeing Trump elected.
> In addition to this, the WaPo seems to have spent much of its history not endorsing candidates
In recent history, apparently the last time they did not endorse a candidate was the 1980's.
- "You seem to be implying that he made a decision based on other business interests, against those of the Post, but there is no support for that in the article. Do you have a source which describes this motive?"
There's support in that Trump personally met with Blue Origin's C-suite, on the same day the Washington Post spiked their Harris endorsement—an apparent reward to Bezos, and one that put his business interests in the spotlight.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2024/10/25/2024-ele... ("Trump met with Bezos’s Blue Origin executives after The Post’s non-endorsement")
>by improving its perceived impartiality
Can WaPo really be perceived as "impartial" if we know they already were going to endorse Harris?
That is possible if their editorial staff honestly believe two things:
- The rule of law and the republic as a process are superior to anything else.
- One of the candidates does not subscribe to these sufficiently.
In that case, and given the political duopoly, they could still claim to be impartial towards candidates. Their only allegiance/partiality would lie with the rule of law and the republic as a process.
You’re thinking about this too hard. It’s a definitional question. If you have two candidates and you endorse one of them, you’re de facto partial with nothing else playing any role in the definition.
> If you have two candidates and you endorse one of them, you’re de facto partial with nothing else playing any role in the definition.
Endorsing on a specific issue, party, gender, or any specific quality that a large number of individuals share, is not uncommon. The specific individual is not what the endorsement must be partial to. Maybe the choice (since it's inherent to the process), but that's the distinction that was being made.
Thinking that one of the candidates will literally destroy the country is some weird meaning of being "impartial" that I have never encountered before.
There's a difference between the opinion staff and the news staff.
>The Post’s decision has roiled many on the paper’s opinions staff, which operates independently from The Post’s news staff, a long-standing tradition of American journalism designed to separate opinion writing from day-to-day news coverage.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/10/25/washin...
I understand the internal logic of newsroom design, but if it was ever a genuine firewall it's not in modern times. The NY Times opinion editor was famously forced to resign in 2020 when he published an op-ed that the newsroom found unacceptable.
It would take way more for WaPo to not be in a position where mentioning it in one phrase with "impartiality" wouldn't sound like an absurdist joke. They can walk this road, but so far there's absolutely no indication they want to, and Bezos twisting their arms can't be taken as such evidence.
Apparently Blue Origin executives were meeting with Trump yesterday
https://x.com/MerylKornfield/status/1849977796304478327
There is direct support in the article. Amazon lost a $10B contract because Trump doesn't like Bezos, which is because he owns the WP, a paper that is generally critical of Trump. By killing this endorsement, he's buying some goodwill from Trump, at the cost of alienating the bulk of WP's readers.
> there is no support for that in the article.
Untrue. At the top, "KEY POINTS: In a 2019 lawsuit, Amazon claimed it lost a $10 billion Pentagon cloud computing contract to Microsoft because Trump used “improper pressure ... to harm his perceived political enemy” Bezos."
If the capital gains / wealth tax plan goes ahead it would cost Jeff much of his fortune. $10 billion over ten years is peanuts.
But it would also cost his peers proportionally.
Not someone like Bill Gates who moved his wealth into non-profits he controls. Jeff can't just sell Amazon and move out so easily.
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> 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.
What is Trump seeking vengeance for?
Bezos was blackmailed by Trump ally and National Enquirer boss David Pecker a few years ago. He resisted then and it led to the most expensive divorce in history.
Just some context worth adding.
There is support for that reasoning in the article linked.
> not endorsing candidates might be good for the Washington Post's business, by improving its perceived impartiality
You're at the wrong meta level - if the paper's owner is making the editorial decisions, there's no impartiality to perceive in the first place.
I mean, if the question at hand was "should the editors endorse someone?" then what you're saying could stand. But that's out the window if they're being overruled by somebody without even a presumption of impartiality.
I think one could claim that the editorial department was trying to make a decision that could/would be interpreted as a company stance, rather than a department stance, to the average person. Sure, you could blame the average person.
I also can’t comprehend the benefit of a biased editorial department, from a business or quality perspective. A diverse set of views is always more interesting to read, but I’m surely in the minority with that perspective. If someone could explain the benefit, I’m very interested.
I don’t see this is any different than the media black out that nearly all corporate employees enjoy, that exists for one reason: don’t make your opinions appear as those of the whole. Looking at the mixed responses to all of this, across the internet, that does seem to be the case, where people are confusing it all.
1. Publishing an editorial endorsing a candidate is extremely common, both for US papers generally and for this paper specifically. The reasons for that are various but they have nothing to do with what we're discussing here.
2. Moreover, that whole question is irrelevant when the editors aren't even making the decision. If Bezos is willing to override them, then effectively he is the paper's editorial board - so there's no "diversity of views" to talk about, except within the confines of what he's decided to allow.
Could you explain the benefits of having a biased, rather than balanced, editorial department?
No, because that's a straw man. What many people want is a balanced, unbiased editorial department that weighs the facts as they see them and then publishes an endorsement.
Please follow hacker news comment guidelines [1], this isn't reddit. It's a genuine question. If you see it as easily answered (as a straw man would be), then answer it easily.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#:~:text=Don....
1. I answered you - nobody said they see a benefit to having biased editors, and no reasonable person would, by definition. People see benefit in something else, as I explained - that's the answer to your question.
2. I know some people say "straw man" as a swipe, but it's also a term of art for a rhetorical fallacy and that's how I meant it. The position you asked me to defend (that there's benefit in having a biased editorial board) isn't a position anyone here took, or agrees with. Hence the term.
3. "this isn't reddit" is a swipe - and one that's a bit mysterious to people who are unfamiliar with reddit, like me ;)
(1) might be both common and also wrong. (1) being why I dislike most of these media outlets. (2) the editorial board may be wrong and suffering groupthink, and ultimately slowly killing the paper.
The fact that editorial endorsements are extremely common is relevant because it means that no typical reader would mistake them for being the position of the paper's parent corporation, like GGP suggested. Whether endorsements are right or wrong in the abstract isn't relevant, and I didn't say anything about it.
> I think one could claim that the editorial department was trying to make a decision that could/would be interpreted as a company stance, rather than a department stance, to the average person.
This makes no sense whatsoever. It is the editorial board deciding what candidate is endorsed by the paper. It is a company stance, made by the company's representatives on behalf of the company and based on the company's editorial guidelines.
We can easily bring the meta level down one more step to conclude that given the editorial staff are individuals with different beliefs, this dictates that they’re impartial to the extent of the (weighted) average of their beliefs.
I’d argue impartiality isn’t a thing in any human domain anyway.
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.
As the cancel brigade often says: freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences.
And why should we be using cancel brigades' definitions? If freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences for your speech, then freedom of speech automatically exists everywhere and the concept is meaningless.
Obvious there is judgement for when consequences rise to the level of being coercive - someone giving you a dirty look is not, the de jure government sanctioning you is. But trying to define rights binary-axiomatically is really just creating lemmas for cryptofascism when the preconditions have been met but yet the rights are still missing (which is exactly what the cancel brigades are pushing).
True, but said consequences are the possibility of a revenge streak of a petty US president called Trump. That is the real problem and story. And nobody really seems to dispute that possibility.
Trump fans boycotting Amazon is a consequence.
The US government punishing Amazon is not.
The first amendments limits the governemt in its actions, not the people.
Not saying the BBC is Fox News or CNN but I wouldn’t really call it impartial.
"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
No public impartial news source, but organisation-internal news sources that work for the reader himself, those probably exist and probably very good. A bank's analysis department can work like one for the traders for short-term things.
Such organisations for the general public are possible. You'd need a group that is interested in correct judgements on some matter and willing to form an organisation to pay for investigations on it.
I believe many of each countries top news papers aren't 'spinning' news. Murdock/Berlusconi-style news agencies do.
FT does much better.
What the BBC does really well is trash itself in reporting after scandals from within break
> 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 :-)
I'm not sure the BBC is even pro-BBC.
The Guardian was a reasonably good source of news under Rubsbridger, under Viner its biases have worsened and its most courageous reporters, opinion writers and even cartoonists have been either sidelined or fired. Avoid.
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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 problem for BBC is that it's government-funded. It can't really take a stance without potentially upsetting the next government.
> The problem for BBC is that it's government-funded.
That's not factually accurate. The BBC is principally funded through the licence fee (i.e. directly by the viewers).
It's inherently dependent on the government. The viewers don't get together and voluntarily decide to fund it.
Unfortunately I don't think there's a single such organisation in the world-- controlled-by-members newspaper. Even almost-controlled-by-members newspapers here in Sweden aren't fully subject to member control, with this typically being indirect through some board or similar organisation.
Guardian comes to mind.
The Guardian seems to be seeking money from the foundations of very rich people.
This is the precise opposite of what would be required.
> Guardian comes to mind.
The Guardian's ownership is independent
The Guardian's views are very much not. Very predictable
A lot of that depends upon the government in question. Some want publicly funded news organizations at arms length. Others want to dismantle them. Some want at least the image of impartiality (and will take some criticism). Others want them to be a mouthpiece. It's not terribly different from the private sector. I would go as far as saying it is no different from the private sector given the consolidation of news organizations over the past few decades.
Why is that a problem?
BBC stopped being impartial shortly after start of Iraq's invasion in 2001. It's not as polarizing as Fox News and CNN, but it's _far_ from being impartial.
Their coverage of international events only impartial if those events have no effect on UK.
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.
Media companies that stitch sentences together to make an interview coherent might be misleading.
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?
https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-this-the-reason-jeff-bezos-...
From the article
> In a 2019 lawsuit, Amazon claimed it had lost a $10 billion cloud computing contract with the Pentagon to Microsoft because Trump had used “improper pressure ... to harm his perceived political enemy” Bezos.
The implication being that endorsing Harris might cause Amazon to lose out on government contracts in case Trump wins the presidency.
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Ignoring the objective fact that Trump is a fascist is not "objective", it's delusional.
What is your definition of fascist? If it includes dictatorial control of the economy, suppression of dissenting opinions, and aggressive persecution of political opposition, Id have an easier time arguing modern progressives are fascists. Off the top of my head.
* Effectively shutting down large swathes of the US economy during COVID, while allowing "essential" business to remain open. Where "essential" is arbitrarily determined based on the state governors political leanings.
* Biden-Harris admin strongly encouraging (ie strong-arming) social media companies to suppress what they deemed "disinformantion".
* Progressive state AGs using legal loopholes and technicalities to prosecute Trump, aka Lawfare. For example, a fraud case for overvaluing real estate properties. A fraud case with no victims that resulted in a $450 million judgment? The textbook definition of excessive fines as defined by the 8th amendment.
* Progressives stated goal to pack the Supreme Court, effectively neutering an entire branch of government. Thereby, consolidating power in the remaining two branches.
You believe people who don't consider Trump a fascist are delusional (close to half the electorate, if we believe the polls)? What actions or policies has Trump implemented that fit under that definition? In short, Trump being a fascist is not self-evident: It is your (and many others) strongly held opinion. One that is rarely backed by more than shallow progressive talking points.
> A fraud case with no victims
Really?
Can you offer a substantial rebuttal? Or are you in the same camp as the OP whose opinions are axioms that are above questioning or debate?
I think the duty of evidence is on the accuser
Fraud is not a victimless crime
Agreed
Really this is a lesson in why the corporate news model is doomed to fail. Upping my contributions to serious investigative journalist organizations like ProPublica
One of ProPublica's greatest recent victories (in my opinion) was the FOIA lawsuit to secure public release of PPP loan information, along with other COVID relief loans like EIDL. Aside from the sheer scale ($1 trillion) and the rampant fraud [1], there were politicians from both sides of the aisle who took these forgivable business loans while delaying other forms of government relief.
1. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3906395
Pro publica doesn't endorse
I disagree. This is the exception rather than the rule. The more corporate, the more likely to give the people what they want.
Isn't that contrary to the purpose of news organizations? They should give the people what they need to know, not what they want.
My point is the more corporate the organization, the more they’ll only care about profit rather than what the public needs to know. Nonprofits, and orgs owned by individuals, are more likely to sacrifice revenue for such considerations.
Who’s to be the judge of what people need to know?
How do you square that with social media being the source of news for many?
Social media is lambasted for presenting people with the most engaging information rather than what experts think they need to know, and social media companies are largely just maximizing revenue. I think it squares nicely.
I agree. I had interpreted "what people want" as actual investigative journalism to the earlier commenters point.
I just hope this will finally put to bed any ridiculous mentions of "liberal media bias", or that the tech sector has some liberal bias.
I think new-tech/mass-consumer-facing tech is always going to have a liberal bias - that just plays well with the dynamics of getting new users to use your procuct. It's only once a company/organization establishes itself as a mega Corp will we see the conservative idealogy exerting it's want to sustain/conserve the accumulated power.
Why would it put it to bed? It’s worth people knowing that the media leans over 90% left from all the stats that exist.
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and the profession is also populated by people that went to specific universities, in specific cities and have a specific voting record
that's the standard people are using and can be corroborated
So what? That's an incoherent irrelevant response that doesn't address any of the points I raised. Are you just trying to pull off "The Weave" by emulating Trump? You do realize that's just a lame excuse for incompetence and dementia, not an intentional debate strategy, don't you?
I don’t care about the conversation you were having with the previous persons actually
It was a response solely to your first paragraph about what left leaning might be in contrast to, when it’s also true that everyone else is like “or their voting record”
So that's an incoherent irrelevant response that doesn't address any of the points I raised, and you admittedly don't even care about the conversation or have a point to make, you're just incoherently doing "The Weave" to hear yourself talk, not participating in an actual conversation with anyone. Sorry if I interrupted your tangled thread of demented consciousness. Please proceed with your warp and weft unraveling, Sir.
I added to the discussion, when viewed from a differing but valid perspective. after your long, unnecessary exposition and diatribe, I pointed out that the shared concept of “left” people were referring is simply their voting record, schooling and geography.
you are the only one hoping for a fight or debate. you got it from some comments, naively assuming everyone that isnt affirming your feelings is a far right extremist, and somehow you have grouped this comment thread in with that immature pursuit
you sought to define what the “not left” is, as if suddenly it will matter and the senate will pass the filibuster for your party of choice instead of being 50-50 for 10 years straight, and I sought to define what everyone else was talking about: the journalist’s voting records.
but sure, keep trying your approach, its working so well.
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Ridiculous is thinking there is no legacy liberal media bias. Take the top 100 political articles from WaPo and the NYT from this year and tell me how many are anti Republican. I’m guessing nearly all of them.
it’s true that reporting the facts about what the 2024 incarnation of the GOP does makes them look bad
That's why fifty percent of the country disagrees with you! When will the beam come out of the eye?
Not really. The liberal legacy media are just democrat shills that will do anything to get their party over the line.
Many express fondness for Reagan era Republicans and lament their absence.
There's support for Liz Cheney, a former chair of the House Republican Conference, coming out against Trump et al.
Are you sure "anti-Republican" is what you're seeing and not just calling out the MAGA faction for their behaviour?
The maga faction is... Based on polls and 2020s results... Bigger than the 'real' republican party you're supposing exists
Thank you for supporting my point.
are not "anti Republican", they are "anti MAGA", just as many non MAGA Republicans also are.That's simply not likely. 75 million voters went for Trump in 2020. That's almost half the voters. It's unlikely that there's 75 million voters out there that are not Democrats or Trump supporters. If that is the case, Bidens support should either have been higher or there should have been at least that many blank ballots, or alternatively, Bidens 80 million votes is half Democrats and half anti Trump Republicans, in which case, the Democratic party, which historically is the larger party, is all but dead
The USofA has antiquated First-past-the-post system; this is largely how a system founded by people opposed to party politics spiralled into a two party non representative bog hole.
Being opposed to MAGA and simply not supporting MAGA doesn't make a voter pro-Democratic Party nor does it mean they want to waste their vote on a minor Libertarian or other third party with the result that Democrats win.
The US electoral system fosters the stupidity that results .. the still Republican anti-MAGA are (mostly) afraid to vote Democrat, minority parties aren't viable, and popular opinion and public support for various policy is never reflected in legislation.
If the US had a better electoral system it'd see better outcomes.
The fact the you would bring up Liz Cheney pretty much invalidates any opinion you might have of the Republican Party. There’s a reason that disgusting and vile thing is now “teaching” at a radical left wing training school.
I heard she speaks of the enemy within, wants Hitler's Generals on staff and is keen to remove the licences from media outlets that talk about that.
At least you and I can agree how vile and disgusting that behaviour is.
why don’t you take a look at the republican party’s policies and think about why that is?
Why don’t you take a look at the past 4 years and reflect upon the train wreck the democrats have caused?
train wreck? i’m in the top 10% household income bracket in the country and life is better than ever.
Good for you. Too bad that you don’t have compassion for the majority of the population that have been affected by high food prices, high fuel costs and record crime levels. The tax from your 10% household income will come in handy for paying the living expenses of illegal aliens and the reparations you will owe.
> high food prices
not really my problem the general population is unable to comprehend second and third order effects of a global pandemic and the subsequent money printing that followed
> high fuel costs
gas is 2.39 around me. major metro area with population > 8 million
> record crime levels
where? last i checked crime levels are back to or below 2019
>illegal aliens
yeah? they’re the same ones serving me at the convenience stores, the restaurants, and the ones performing the vast majority of the labor that produces our food. america runs on the labor of illegal aliens, like it or not
>tax
my taxes are fairly low
sorry the formatting is messed up
The media isn't even just liberal. It's off the charts liberal even among liberals. Among journalists, Democrats outnumber Republicans 10 to 1: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/dec/30/only-34-us-....
This is reflected in news coverage. Consider how they cover things like Voter ID or proving citizenship to vote, which 80% of people support: https://news.gallup.com/poll/652523/americans-endorse-early-...
Or consider how papers coverage policies like affirmative action that supermajorities of Americans oppose: https://www.forbes.com/sites/vinaybhaskara/2023/07/10/americ...
> Among journalists, Democrats outnumber Republicans 10 to 1
This seems to be a general observation when looking at college educated people that they lean more towards the Democratic party.
Hard to combat such a bias.
White college graduates voted for Biden only by 55-45.
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/06/30/behind-...
Pew says 57 to 42.
Evangelicals factor into this I guess.
Sure, different exit polls get slightly different results. Point is that 1.5:1 is quite different than 10:1. And many college graduates are evangelical; the religion just isn’t Christianity.
Funny in terms of liberal technology is testing Chat GPT of any political biased.
Based off asking it the following 3 questions it might just be...
"Hey GPT, whose your spirit animal between Barrack Obama and Donald Trump?" It provided a neutral answer providing the pros of both dudes.
"Hey GPT, whose your spirit animal between Obama and Hitler?" It clearly chose Obama saying how rightfully so awful Hitler was.
"Hey GPT, whose your spirit animal between Trump and Hitler" It did not choose Trump at all rather just gave the rightfully so negative feedback about Hitler.
No fan of Trump or politics in general but if it happily chose Obama yet avoided Trump that seems odd (Trump is no way close to a genocider).
From Trump's rhetoric and flaming hatred for the 'enemies within' it seems not far fetched to imagine him setting up internment camps. It is a slippery slope as Germans can attest.
The rhetoric has been equally flaming from Trump's self-declared enemies. Just a couple of years ago Democrats were telling pollsters they supported internment camps for their enemies:
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/par...
> Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Democratic voters would favor a government policy requiring that citizens remain confined to their homes at all times, except for emergencies, if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
> Forty-five percent (45%) of Democrats would favor governments requiring citizens to temporarily live in designated facilities or locations if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Such a policy would be opposed by a strong majority (71%) of all voters.
That's a demand for internment camps. One famous academic went further and said it'd be fine to engage in mass starvation:
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/noam-chomsky-says-the-un...
The US needs to cool down the rhetoric on both sides, because it's an endless spiral of escalation right now. Trump isn't uniquely bad at this and the "slippery slope" was already slid a long way down, when he wasn't in charge.
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.
Trump just spoke with Rogan for three hours unscripted and showed none of the obvious cognitive decline that Joe did.
That's fine... For some, age does not really slow them down. For others it does. People just need to be real about it.
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https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/trump-said-hitler-...
maybe take a look in the fucking mirror if you want to stop being called hitler LMFAO
JD Vance wrote "I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he's America's Hitler."
You are aware that JD Vance is America's Hitler's running mate, right?
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> Jeff Bezos, has a conflict of interest
He is the outright (ultimate, through a holding company) owner of The Washington Post.
Therefore there is no conflict of interest. He gets to decide what its interests are.
I think it is worth asking whether it is in the public interest to allow people with other extensive business interests to own influential media businesses, but that is usual these days. Most media is owned by media (and sometimes more) conglomerates with many interests around the world.
This is unhelpfully pedantic.
My point is that Bezos would likely make a different decision for The Washington Post if he wasn't concerned about retaliation against his other business interests, and in fact he allowed the paper to make political endorsements in the past.
Jokes on bezos though because he's never going to be able to redeem himself to the GOP after the banning of parler.
> He gets to decide what its interests are.
No he doesn't. He can choose to do with it whatever he may like. But whether it's in its interest or not is a property purely derived from the current state of the journal and the market. Whether he likes it or not.
And, yes, the issue stems from business ownership of a so-called "independent" news outlet which has clear conflict of interest. Which is something that we should not accept and continue fighting against, whether it's usual or not.
> so-called "independent" news outlet which has clear conflict of interest
If a majority of staff at a news outlet are liberal/progressive isn't that clearly a bias and hard to call independent?
I just notice that people tend to only call out institutional bias in one direction
Independence from ownership isn't really a left/right principle. The Washington Post has their set of guiding principles online - I think from those it's pretty clear why there is discontent.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/about-the-post
Independent doesn't mean unopinionated. As long as they're transparent about a set of ideals and principles that they follow through, being opinionated is perfectly fine for journalism.
But "opinion journalism" isn't news, it's editorializing. So you accept news that is effectively propaganda as long as it's "independent" from the outlet ownership?
I don't accept anything that isn't properly cited and sufficient evidence is provided from reliable sources. Neutral news offerings (such as AP or Reuters) are of course a better source of news. It is however useful to subscribe to journals that has some form of basic agreement on fundamental values. For example, it'd be useless for me to follow a news outlet that downplays the importance of democracy.
This is not propaganda, as opinionated journalism's objective is still to transparently cover issues it cares about without distortion or attempt at manipulation, which is very different from propaganda.
> For example, it'd be useless for me to follow a news outlet that downplays the importance of democracy.
You seem to be pretty strident and inflexible in your thinking, so at least you recognize that you're unable to read anything that challenges your rigid precepts and offers an opportunity to expand your mind or engage in a real exchange of ideas.
And please spare me the predictable response, because it's clear that you don't care about democracy exactly, like so many others nowadays, it's an amorphous stand-in that allows you to thoughtlessly discard opposition.
I said I wouldn't follow a news outlet. That doesn't mean I wouldn't entertain any opinions or arguments that challenge my own.
> And please spare me the predictable response, because it's clear that you don't care about democracy exactly.
I will save myself writing your own words for you:
> You seem to be pretty strident and inflexible in your thinking,
"But whether it's in its interest"
How do you define "its interest"?
It is a business. It does not have interests of its own. its owners have interests - in this case its the one owner who has that. Its staff may have interests, as may other people, and there is always a public interest.
> the issue stems from business ownership of a so-called "independent" news outlet which has clear conflict of interest. Which is something that we should not accept and continue fighting against
I agree it is a problem, but, as far as traditional media goes, it is a lost cause. Can you see anything that will cause big media businesses to split themselves?
> It is a business. It does not have interests of its own. its owners have interests - in this case its the one owner who has that. Its staff may have interests
You nailed it here: bezos, as the dude who owns the paper has a vested interest in his personal success, whether the paper succeeds or not. If it came down to him or the paper, he would choose himself.
The editorial team, as the people who run the paper and are responsible for its quality, has a vested interest in the success of the paper. They decide what the interests of the paper are.
If bezos goes against the editorial team, that is bezos' interests conflicting with their interests, and thus the paper's interests.
> has a vested interest in the success of the paper
What defines the success of the paper? Why do employees rather than the owner (who ultimately appoints them) get to decide?
It is a business. If it was a non-profit organisation you would have a point (although I do not personally think much of the big non for profit media organisations I can think of). Even if it had a structure designed to promote other values over profits (as Reuters does) you would have a point. In this case, AFAIK, it is simply the property of its owner. People get to decide what to do with their property.
> What defines the success of the paper?
The people who run it, day-in and day-out, are best-equipped to answer this question.
> Why do employees rather than the owner (who ultimately appoints them) get to decide?
Because each employee fits the above criteria, and is thus better-poised to make such a judgement compared to one single person who is not. And when it comes to multiple-such, better-equipped judges, the disparity becomes starker.
> People get to decide what to do with their property.
This is a red herring. Nobody is saying bezos can't decide what to do with his property. He's just not as well equipped as Post employees, to judge whether his decision is good for The Post.
After all, having money obviously doesn't mean you have better info, or have more context, or make superior judgements. In some cases it just means you got a good head-start because your dad owned an apartheid emerald mine, or a portfolio of new york slums.
Well, it is an entity of its own that claims to strive for certain objectives (including the obvious one of being profitable). The owner could decide to change those objectives and make something new of it. The WSJ definitely has a set of interests that managers have a duty to satisfy, until the owner decides to change those interests. If they change their motto to "whatever Bezos needs" then it's problem solved. I don't see that on their about page, though.
> Can you see anything that will cause big media businesses to split themselves?
Who said anything about it needing to be voluntary. Regulation is a thing.
this is absolute BS. Journals are meant to have a split between the editorial board and their owners, because the credibility and ethics of the journal comes first. People don't read, or shouldn't want to read anyways, a paper that is just whatever the fuck Bezos decided was good that week; things should be as unbiased as possible.
> Newspapers publish opinions for the same reason that they publish comic strips: people want to read them. Readers seek them out. Newspapers are a business and have to give their customers what they want.
The customer is predominantly the advertiser. Newspapers publish opinions to have something to fill the empty space surrounding the advertisements.
Indeed, I'd assumed paper use opinion columns because they're cheaper than news.
Calling it a "bad business decision" just reveals your political preference. People who get their opinions from journalists is a constantly shrinking crowd. Today I mostly see only people of age 50+ who still actively think journalists can provide an accurate worldview for them.
> Calling it a "bad business decision" just reveals your political preference.
It absolutely does not. You have no idea what my political preferences are, and I'm quite confident that your guesses are wrong.
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> Given people now have a choice of exactly 2 different political positions
False, and ridiculous.
let me know when you catch up with the real world
Your previous comment was flagged dead by other readers. I would advise you to take that as a cue for some self-reflection.
Kneejerk hissy fits like that just prove im right lol
> Newspapers are a business and have to give their customers what they want.
If this is all we expect of journalism in a Democracy, then the current state of the "business" of "news" in the US should be satisfactory to all.
> If this is all we expect of journalism in a Democracy
Straw man. I didn't say that.
It's not a maximum, but it is a minimum. Newspapers require money to operate, and they're competing for attention in a capitalist economy. No attention. no money, no newspaper. In a democracy, you can't force-feed newspapers to the population. They voluntarily choose to read or not read.
The "good news" is that many people in a democracy are interested in the hard truth. Nonetheless, it helps to package that along with softer marketing and entertainment.
> Newspapers are a business and have to give their customers what they want.
Isn't that supposed to be news and not worthless institutional opinions on the presidential office?
> It's unlikely that an independent owner with no conflict of interest would make the same decision.
An unconflicted owner wouldn't endorse either candidate. In general, hopefully, but in this election, particularly.
Having an editorial opinion is not the same thing as having a conflict of interest. In general readers don’t expect newspapers to contain only news, but also opinions and editorial decisions. Candidate endorsements are a typical part of what’s expected.
> Isn't that supposed to be news and not worthless institutional opinions on the presidential office?
That's the goal of Journalism. Newspaper only goals: sell newspapers, sell ads in those newspapers (and since it we live in the age of internet - their website).
> An unconflicted owner wouldn't endorse either candidate. In general, hopefully, but in this election, particularly.
unconflicted owner's opinion shouldn't effect editorial staff opinions.
that's my stance as well
WaPo needed someone to make a difficult decision, conflict of interest or not, to just rip the bandaid off of their imprisonment of endorsing candidates
that's over now. the end. the market is going to forget this was ever a thing.
'...sacrificing it and losing readers for the sake of his other business interests, i.e., government contracts.'
Sound point unless you figure Bezos is accepting government may be about to change?
WaPo takes a hit if they don't endorse, but that's not Bezos's core business. If they endorse Kamala and Trump wins - other businesses of Bezos would suffer. Basically it's safer to not endorse anyone.
> Newspapers are a business and have to give their customers what they want.
This is true, but it shouldn't be viewed as unproblematic. Audience capture is a huge problem, and news organizations telling their audience what they here to the point that people get siloed in their own echo chambers is one of the main reasons why things are such a mess.
Newspapers have always been like this.
Here's a front page title from the Nov. 5 1888 edition of the New York World, run by Pulitzer (yes, that one):
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030193/1888-11-0...A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.
I'd say it's definitely possible to be in business and at the same time have business ethics, to care about the truth. I don't think it's inherently wrong to publish honest opinions, as well as funny comic strips, along with the other news, if it helps sell papers.
The problems occur when business ethics, and the truth, honesty, get tossed out for the sake of profit and/or partisanship.
I don't think it's a bad business decision. I stopped reading the WaPo when I got sick of its partial treatment of everything. And I'm not talking about supporting one candidate or another, I'm talking about sticking to facts and not ideological positions.
This decision by Bezos is a shot across the bow in the right direction, in my opinion. Clear eyed news are needed and aside from FT.com (which these days is also trending toward alarmism) there's precious little left out there. I don't care about a journos' opinion, I really don't. I just want them to report about facts on the ground and not pick sound pieces for clickbaits.
I think you’re reacting to alarmism as though it’s unwarranted. Have you considered it might actually be warranted?
I did, and I feel like only long and cold headed analysis brought me out of it. It's easier to believe that alarmism is warranted than to think it isn't.
The entire public sphere is freaking out about everything all the time, and catching sound bites, taking things out of context, lacking empathy for opposing viewpoints and clearheadedness. Alarmism these days is the default state. WaPo is participating in this hysteria campaign. Letting the hysteria come into your brain unchecked is not good, but that's the default situation for most people and it leads to alarmism.
I think things are much more boring than people make them out to be, and that it's much harder to keep this perspective. You can't make good decisions when your brain is conditioned to believe in a reality and near-future that is much worse looking than what the actual current reality and near-future looks like.
All this to say, I used to give into this alarmism. Post-extrication from this disposition, I try to be more self-aware and reticent to give in. It starts by seeking more facts and primary sources, or consuming summarized content from entities that are incentivized to, and with a culture of, sticking to the facts.
> I just want them to report about facts on the ground and not pick sound pieces for clickbaits.
There's no evidence of an overall change in the newspaper's direction. Bezos did not fire all of the opinion editors, for example. Neither did Bezos announce this "policy" in advance. It was a last-minute retraction after the editors had already drafted an endorsement.
It's the editorial board that has the conflict of interest--between running a newspaper, and using the newspaper as a vehicle to advance their personal political ideologies. I grew up in the D.C. area reading WaPo. It went from being a milquetoast paper to being a vehicle for political radicals. And that's been a disaster for the business. The paper was on pace to lose $100 million last year, and has lost 500,000 subscribers since 2020: https://www.foxnews.com/media/washington-post-lose-100-milli....
WaPo's business is catering to D.C. professionals. The nature of the country's electoral politics is that roughly half of those are going to be batting for each side. It's a good business decision not to seem like you're rooting for one side or the other.
the result of 'business' decisions can be measured in more than just profits. News media routinely make 'bad business decisions' because they are tools of their owners. Hence why they go bankrupt often
Newspapers are supposed to be about news, you can't trust someone who tries to tell you how to think about things. I just want news and I want to figure out how to think about it myself.
Companies (mainly media based) have been moving from giving the customers what the customers want, to giving the customers what the company wants. This is just another one of those.
that’s some mental gymnastics. so newspapers are free to publish opinions, it is in their business interest………………(but only if the opinion is the one I want otherwise it is not good business)
> so newspapers are free to publish opinions
That's a strange way of putting it. Newspapers are free to publish anything, by the first amendment to the Constitution.
> but only if the opinion is the one I want otherwise it is not good business
I didn't say that. I said that people want to read opinions. Sometimes they enjoy reading opinions that they disagree with, and arguing with those opinions.
> Newspapers are a business and have to give their customers what they want.
I really want to challenge this idea. Businesses can have missions quite distinct from what the majority of their prospective customers would want.
If I had practically unlimited money I wouldn't ever think of funding a news organisation and then only have it produce content that customers wanted. I would have a purpose for it, stemming from my own ethics.
I think it quite naive to consider Bezos has not done the same and that this decision is simply in line with his personal political interests.
Neoliberalism is a really poor substitute for personal morality and accountability.
> Businesses can have missions quite distinct from what the majority of their prospective customers would want.
Failing businesses.
> I would have a purpose for it, stemming from my own ethics.
I never said that business is inherently in conflict with ethics, and I, as an entrepreneur myself, believe that ethics are necessary for business: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41951447
> I think it quite naive to consider Bezos has not done the same and that this decision is simply in line with his personal political interests.
I claimed that his decision is simply in line with his personal interests. Whether those are financial interests or political interests is difficult to determine. Nonetheless, the decision was bad for The Washington Post. Compare to Twitter/X: Elon Musk is indisputably using the social network he acquired for his personal political interests, and that has indisputably been bad for the business, driven away users and advertisers, and his creditors have vastly downgraded the value of the investment.
> Neoliberalism is a really poor substitute for personal morality and accountability.
This seems like a nonsequitur. How is "Neoliberalism" relevant? Is that what you believe I proposed? If so, you're wrong.
I quoted the bit I wanted to react to, namely the idea that businesses have to give customers what they want. I read that as strongly influenced by an economically driven - rather than morally driven - world view.
Leaving money on the table does not necessarily mean a failing business, except for some extreme definition of 'failing'.
I meant to argue against your first assertion, not your second; I'm not concerned with whether it's a bad financial decision or not.
> I quoted the bit I wanted to react to, namely the idea that businesses have to give customers what they want. I read that as strongly influenced by an economically driven - rather than morally driven - world view.
It's simply practically driven. You can try to give people what they "need" rather than what they want, but in a free country and a free market system, people cannot be force-fed. They can choose whether or not to buy what you're selling. All the good intentions in the world will go nowhere if nobody is listening.
> Leaving money on the table does not necessarily mean a failing business
True, but I wasn't referring to that. Ruthless profit maximization is not the same as giving the majority of prospective customers what they want. The former isn't required, but the latter is usually required to sustain the business.
Imagine if a grocery store stocked only healthy food and got rid of all the junk food. It would go out of business, because people want their junk food and will go elsewhere for it.
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You want them to name... readers of newspapers?
Editorials, by an outlet's editorial board or otherwise, have consistently been among the most popular content in news for over a century. That includes endorsements.
>> 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?
Yes. I read the opinion sections on all 4 of the major newspapers I subscribe to. Why wouldn’t I?
Reading is not seeking out.
> Do you seek out newspaper opinions?
I do.
Opinion articles aren't about the opinion (well, technical sw dev articles where I'm looking for the standard way to do something are, but not non-industry news stuff) unless the writer is in a position to make their opinion matter, they're about the reasons for the opinion. They're interesting if there are reasons that are interesting, or if the writer's choice of reasons is interesting.
To play Devils Advocate for a moment: Why do we need, or even want, a newspaper to endorse a President? How does it not undermine a paper's journalistic ethics to be neutral and fair?
I actually agree with you, newspapers really shouldn't be doing this. Our major local paper in the Twin Cities basically torched its reputation by endorsing wildly unqualified candidates for city offices (like, one guy they endorsed for Minneapolis city council didn't even live in Minneapolis). They recently decided to stop doing endorsements at all, which I think is the right decision.
But that's not what happened here. The editors did their normal endorsement process, but the owner of the paper stepped in and personally overrode their process for this one particular endorsement. That's a way different story from deciding to stop doing endorsements.
Another point that just occurred to me: Who is the endorsement supposed to influence? I think in America at least, the national media has become so hyper partisan in the eyes of its readers, that an endorsement of a newspaper is really just preaching to the crowd. What difference does that endorsement really make?
At the national level, I don't think it really makes a difference if a newspaper endorses a candidate for President. Those who read and value the opinions of that newspaper are more inclined to vote for the endorsed candidate anyways.
I think it's like wearing a jersey for your favorite sport franchise. It's not meant to influence anyone outside the group but reinforce group cohesion.
Which seems like an even stronger reason for newspapers (or other purportedly unbiased organizations) to not to endorse candidates, no? It seems like it would create (or reinforce) an internal culture inclined to favor one particular side.
A lot of newspapers are/were called the X_location Democrat or the like because historically the newspaper was an arm of the political party. Not as many exist now with the decline of news publishing.
Incomplete list. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Democratic_newspape...
Interesting. So rather than have newspapers that pretend to be neutral, we could instead have explicitly Republican newspapers and explicitly Democratic newspapers? I guess things have sort of been trending in that direction the last few years anyway...
It influences no one, but it sends a pretty loud message to the Democratic party that (now two, LATimes did same thing) normally reliable media orgs have lost confidence in the democrat party’s ability to bring forth a competitive candidate against Donald Trump.
That's a really good point I had not considered. It's signaling, I see that. To be withheld when it always been given would seem to be to be a very loud signal. This will be fascinating to examine after the election in a journalism class. I see a PhD thesis on withholding endorsements in the future..
> it sends a pretty loud message to the Democratic party that normally reliable media orgs have lost confidence in the democrat party’s ability to bring forth a competitive candidate against Donald Trump.
It's not two media organizations. Both wrote endorsements of Harris.
Two self-interested billionaires decided that they and their personal fortunes would be better off if those endorsements were not published.
The message this sends to the Democratic party is: suck up to the rich guys if you want power. It's bad for society.
> suck up to the rich guys if you want power
You don’t think this is a recent lesson? Pretty sure every politician already realized this. Since literally forever. Hell, I worked for a company whose wealthy owner had a steady stream of politicians flowing in and out of our offices promising the world for a handout, support, and help. Seemed like every week there was a tour or two for somebody. I have met literally 3 governors, several senators, US reps, state reps, county commissioners, multiple presidential candidates, sheriffs, mayors, wannabes for all and scores of political support staff who excitedly walked in my office while trying to schmooze the old man.
> It's not two media organizations. Both wrote endorsements of Harris. > Two self-interested billionaires decided that they and their personal fortunes would be better off if those endorsements were not published.
How is it worse than a small cadre of elitist mono-culture editors using the reputation of WaPo for their chosen candidate?
Bezos didn't force WaPo to endorse another candidate, I think it's actually good they don't endorse anyone at all.
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> But that's not what happened here. The editors did their normal endorsement process, but the owner of the paper stepped in and personally overrode their process for this one particular endorsement.
He owns the paper, they just work there.
Honestly it’s surprising to me that people really think that the news side of a media company operates with complete autonomy from the business side. They might claim it exists but that’s a fallacy.
I worked at a major daily newspaper 30 years ago and I personally know of two cases in my short tenure there where news stories were killed because they didn’t want to piss off important advertisers. I am also aware of a story involving a family member of one of the executives that was let’s say “barely” reported. Other local media organizations interestingly had much more detail than we carried.
News has always been and will always be first—a business.
Then I'd suggest their tagline of "Democracy dies in darkness" is pretty self-important and misleading.
Walk should rebrand as ‘Darkness’
We didn't give freedom of the press to protect businesses from government scrutiny. We did it to keep free information flowing.
There's definitely some very hard and frank questions we need to ask if free information decides to focus on profits over communication.
The press is free to report on whatever they want. That freedom however is not a mandate that they must report on everything. Newspapers and other media companies have ALWAYS focused on profit. Nothing new there.
Plus in this day and age there is literally no restriction on the flow of public accessible information at least in the US. Even when it was tried recently (twitter, FB, YouTube) during the pandemic the public backlash to that attempts at information control was so great that it might literally sway this election.
> Nothing new there.
like most of the 21st century: Nothing new, just getting more efficient and less subtle with it. 20th century corruption would have had this announced way back in 2023 to make the timing not so obvious at the bare minimium instead of having editorial waste its time on a story that was pulled last minute.
>the public backlash to that attempts at information control was so great that it might literally sway this election.
but nothing much changed. I don't know if public outcry vs output was always this poor, but that certainly seems to have changed over the decades. Too many people uncomfortable enough to complain but not enough to get up and get out.
> but nothing much changed
Two of the three platforms (and the former CEO of one) have publicly admitted what was done at their companies was a mistake and the third has quietly reversed much of the topic controls around pandemic and vaccination content.
I’d say that is something.
(correction: no one "gave" press freedom. instead it is protected against government overreach. just like any other free speech. thank you.)
Advertisers is one thing, but where's the business sense in not reporting on an executive? That sounds like a little fiefdom, not something that makes "business sense."
Whenever people say stuff like this it reminds me why I'm wary whenever people mention things being business friendly or pro-market because it has a lot to do with protecting certain people who already have a good position over merely following market forces.
Point was that leadership of a media company might make editorial decisions that are in its best interest—whatever that interest might be. Not necessarily profit, but could be personal.
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I would argue that endorsement while currently normalised, is not normal.
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“Had”, not “has”, a long history of not endorsing candidates. They’ve been endorsing since the 80s.
The proper framing is “the owners stepped in to change the policy, to mirror the same policies they had before the 80s”.
Whether that’s right or wrong to do is a separate question. But framing this as though it has been editors going rogue or something is just not what’s happening at all.
> But framing this as though it has been editors going rogue or something is just not what’s happening at all.
Of which I didn't do. Granted, 40 years is a long time. But given that the company has had the policy of not endorsing for over two-thirds of its existence, I believe the "undo" framing is accurate.
I saw that but I'm not sure I see the "long history". From Eisenhower to Carter, then from Carter to now, that's not much of a long history of non-endorsement. The Post is taking a very strong stance here and it will be interesting to see if this stands up in 2028. The LA Times may have left the door open to future endorsements, but not the Post.
Better question: Why now? What changed for them? Was it declining revenue/readers, an overhaul of ethics or process? I can't wait to read the tell all some day about these decisions.
* 1877 to Eisenhower
Yes, Thank you. Interesting.
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you see how incedisive so many people are and sadly realize that yes: an endorsement from a big newspaper can mean a lot.
Endorsements are published by the editorial section which is specifically separated from the rest of the newspaper so to not undermine the neutrality of the journalism in the other sections.
Opinion and analysis has always been part of news publications, and plays an accepted role in adding layers of interpretation onto the raw "facts" that is crucial in making those facts interpretable by readers who aren't expert in the subject matter.
The idea that editorial team has some kind of expertise, unavailable to general population, that allows them ecxlusive ability to properly understand current events, seems to have no factual support at all. They are professionals in giving their opinions, it doesn't make their opinions be better that anybody else's. Experience suggests they are usually worse.
> The idea that editorial team has some kind of expertise, unavailable to general population
That doesn't make sense to me - they literally spend all day every day absorbing, summarising and writing about context as their full time job. They are trained formally at assessing, evaluating and questioning facts. You can criticise the end result, but I can't see how it's reasonable to say they aren't far better positioned to have an informed opinion than the average reader who gets up in the morning with no training and tries to understand a slew of facts dumped on them without context.
Except in practice their editorial opinions boil down to value judgments that aren’t amenable to such analysis. They weren’t endorsing Harris because of the nuances of tax policy; it’s because they share her views on abortion, immigration, white liability for past racism, etc. These are the subject of moral and political philosophy, not expert analysis.
That’s why WaPo has consistently endorsed the same party—even when that party’s policies have changed dramatically over time. WaPo would endorse Harris regardless of her policies.
> They weren’t endorsing Harris because of the nuances of tax policy; it’s because they share her views on abortion, immigration, white liability for past racism, etc. These are the subject of moral and political philosophy, not expert analysis.
A candidate's social policies may be more important to some people than their fiscal policies. So an analysis of their social policies would be more useful to those readers than an analysis of their fiscal policies.
You can make an expert analysis of a candidate's previous stances and track record on those subjects. Politicians will routinely lie about their previous stances, so that seems like a useful analysis to me.
There’s little meaningful “analysis” to be done about such policies. Just pledging agreement or disagreement with those philosophical beliefs. And that’s why such endorsements by journalists tend to undermine trust.
This doesn't make any sense. Of course social stuff like abortion and immigration first of all matter to readers, and second can amount to actual, written policy with great detail and nuance, and the consequences of such policies are complicated and meaningful.
On abortion, there's now a national patchwork of policy. You could write a damned book analyzing their implementation and consequences.
We’re talking about endorsements. The nuances of those things don’t materially affect who the paper endorses, or readers’ views of those issues, which are rooted in morality and philosophy, not factual intricacies.
Could you point me to such analysis published in WaPo? I mean seriously, it would be nice to have a list of policies that Harris supported before she was VP, during the time she was VP, and now that she is a presidential candidate. Side by side - is the wall stupid or is it necessary? Do we need higher taxes or tax breaks? Do we need to jail marijuana users or leave them alone? Is Israel a genocidal war criminals or our most important ally? Is our immigration policy broken or are we doing the right thing? Is the free speech the foundation of the democracy or dangerous chaos which needs to be controlled? There are a lot of confusion that may be clarified with proper analysts of the candidate's position on such questions.
An article listing analysis like this, with appropriate quotations and explanations would be great. Does WaPo publish stuff like that, consistently, over the length of the campaign? Or would it rather do another "17 reasons why Trump is exactly like Hitler" level analysis?
> all day every day absorbing, summarising and writing about context as their full time job.
Something the people they are writing to and ostensibly on behalf of do not get to enjoy. Perhaps people with grounded perspectives would be more worthwhile. Guest opinions are logical, an actual editorial opinion department? That's just an early retirement plan for writers who don't have what it takes to produce news anymore.
> they literally spend all day every day absorbing, summarising and writing about context as their full time job.
I have no idea what "absorbing" means and how it's different from any random dude spending his day sitting on a couch glued to CNN/MSNBC screen. But the fact that they are professional writers doesn't give them any special quality in the insightfulness of their writings - you can be a professional writer and a complete doofus, to which we have an ample number of examples.
> They are trained formally at assessing, evaluating and questioning facts.
No they are not. Maybe they used to, somewhere in ancient times, but there's no slightest trace of any of it in most of the content produced by major press outlets. If they can do it - which I very much doubt - they certainly aren't bothering to.
> You can criticise the end result
By their fruits you will know them. The end result is the only criteria worth considering.
> I can't see how it's reasonable to say they aren't far better positioned to have an informed opinion
Some of them - with access to sources unavailable to regular people - may be better position to form an informed opinion, if they wanted to. But as soon as that information has been published, they do not have that better position anymore. And in addition to that, what is frequently happening is that they do not just publish the information available to them - instead they distort it and modify it to fit their pre-conceived opinion, and publish that, in hope that the public doesn't know any better (it usually does). If there is any truth to separation of news and opinion sections that we were told so much about it, then by that mere fact the opinion writers don't have any special informational insights - only the news people, working with confidential sources, might.
> the average reader who gets up in the morning with no training
What is that mythical "training"? I see no evidence of any relevant "training" in anything I read in the press. Most of them know how to handle basic grammar and write somewhat coherent text, but any person with basic education can. Beyond that, I don't see any special "training" there. And certainly there is an ample number of people who undergo much more rigorous training about how to handle facts, e.g. when studying hard sciences. Most press opinion writers do not undergo anything like that.
> tries to understand a slew of facts dumped on them without context.
What is that mythical "context" not available to regular people and where does it come from? Is there some secret "context sources" that are only opening if you work for WaPo? What is stored in those "context" treasuries?
I think their existence is a complete fiction. There's just a bunch of people who are getting paid for publishing their opinions because they have a degree saying "journalism" on it or just because they applied to the job and got hired, but they don't have any special insight or "context". I mean, some of them might be just good at thinking and making conclusions (they usually don't survive in the press long) but that would be just random luck. Given the selection pressure, I'd expect lower chance to find such people among professional press than just in a random selection of people with the same class and education level.
Since I can’t reply to the dead child, the concept that you need training to interpret opinions sounds like a way to force people to believe your opinion without actually convincing them. It’s an extension of the “people are stupid, they need to be told what to do” from some years back that a certain party tried to push.
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That would seem to negate the entire point of any editorial column then, right? If we don't care about their opinion, what's the point of reading in the first place?
Well, somebody may care, and by random chance or a strike of luck they may just hire somebody whose opinion is worth hearing... I am just saying we shouldn't assume it upfront just because there's a bunch of guys that is paid for doing it. If there's a blog on the internet and it is interesting, I read it. If not, I ignore it. I don't stand in awe or cower in reverence just because some guy has a blog. Same should be done for opinion pages - it should be afforded reverence only after proving its worth, not upfront.
So - cancel the opinion section while we're at it I guess?
Well, US is still a somewhat free country, so anybody can publish any opinion they want to publish, anytime they want to. I have nothing against that, in fact, I must admit I am guilty of it myself - I have a blog where I publish my opinions. It would be very hypocritical to me to deny anybody else the vices I enjoy myself. I think just realizing those people aren't better or worse than anybody else and do not deserve any special consideration is enough.
It seems like the newspaper editorial section really ought to endorse somebody to make their biases clear, if nothing else. What are we to believe, that a bunch of people whose job it is to write opinion pieces don’t have an opinion about the election in their own country? Haha, yeah, sureeee…
>the editorial section which is specifically separated from the rest of the newspaper
It hasn't felt like this to me for many years, for pretty much any outlet.
Layers of interpretation = surfacing the bias of the editorial team so you can look for it in the non-oped sections of the paper
You can take that way if you want. But you aren't doing it justice if you just view it as purely cynical deliberate manipulation rather than a true effort at enhancing the reader's understanding.
Essentially they offer a framework of reasoning around the facts presented that the reader can use to make their own evaluation. Like if someone reports that 122,211 electric vehicles were sold last year. Is that a lot? Is that not a lot? You would need to start comparing to previous years, what external factors might be influencing sales. There is intrinsically no way to do that without introducing selective bias about what is considered or not. But the reader at least gets that context to enhance their own understanding.
In practice there is little or no distinction. The list of top articles always includes opinion pieces, the choice of “neutral” fact articles to publish (and the headlines used) signals bias, and on a basic common sense level a newspaper isn’t going to publish an opinion piece that goes against the opinions of their workers/owners. Every time an opinion piece is published that goes against this, it’s a huge brouhaha.
Interestingly on another note, opinion writers are often actually less qualified than you’d expect, because the business model of a newspaper doesn’t really work for accumulating expertise vs. a specialized magazine/Substack / etc. The only way to have consistent opinion pieces is to have a generalist, not a specialist.
> crucial in making those facts interpretable by readers who aren't expert in the subject matter.
That's pretty charitable. In my experience most opinion and "analysis" is typically heavily biased and in service of some agenda.
> to not undermine the neutrality of the journalism in the other sections.
There is no neutral publication. Of there is an editorial board there is by definition no neutrality.
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> If trump said 1+1=2
He says things like "I wish I had general's like Hitler's" or his political opponents are the "enemy within" and he would harness the military against them if he gets in power, and that migrants are criminals.
I really don't know how you can equate something as uncontroversial as "1+1=2" with such controversial and divisive statements.
It is a neutral statement that Trump is objectively terrible. By contrast it is propaganda to defend him when he claims 2+2=5, which he does on a regularly basis.
And this doesn't have anything to do with "the left" a ton of conservative Republicans have admitted that Trump is objectively terrible.
https://www.wpr.org/news/conservative-commentator-charlie-sy...
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He lies about absolutely everything, so everything he says should be met with skepticism.
If it were the editor's opinion, how is it any different from the opinion of anybody off the street? Why do the editors get the newspaper platform to publish their opinions?
>Why do the editors get the newspaper platform to publish their opinions?
Because they work for the newspaper and that's part of their job?
Then we're right back to the original question:
> How does it not undermine a paper's journalistic ethics to be neutral and fair?
Writing opinion and reporting on events are different things. Opinions are usually denoted at masthead, preamble and postscript.
Why do you think that readers don’t understand that?
Opinions aren't meant to be neutral and fair, and it isn't a violation of journalistic ethics to publish them as such.
If they had tried to disguise opinions as journalism by introducing intentional bias and distortion into a story, then that would be a problem. But newspapers have published opinions for ages.
It's rather naive to think that newspapers ought to be neutral (or fair) in everything they produce. What kinds of neutral is desirable? There's neutral tone or neutral political bias -- there are many different ways for a newspaper to be or not be neutral.
Assuming neutrality isn't something that we should expect newspapers to value, then I think transparency is an good alternative. A presidential endorsement can be a good thing in that the newspaper staff are being openly transparent about their political bias.
I guess we need to think about what it means to be “neutral”. If half of Americans believe the earth is flat, is the neutral stance to say it’s unclear? Or is it to figure out what the truth is? In my mind there’s a difference between journalists and pollsters.
Of course with endorsements you can technically bring up the is/aught dichotomy. The facts may be what they are but that doesn’t necessitate any particular action. While this is technically true, I never see anyone complaining about the ethics of testing products and endorsing good ones. Wirecutter is basically doing the same thing with headphones and running shoes. Yet I only ever see pushback on political endorsements.
In short, umpires are neutral and fair but the fact that some teams win a lot more than others doesn’t mean they’re not doing their job.
That’s because if you praise a terrible toaster, life for most Americans is unaffected. If you endorse a political candidate, and nudge the election in one direction or other, roughly 50% of Americans will see that move as hostile.
The principle is the same though, whether you’re recommending candidates or toasters. Just because one has more impact than the other, doesn’t make it less ethical to investigate and recommend.
Your last sentence isn’t grounded in reality. Negatively impacting the lives of millions of people is less ethical than negatively impacting the lives of a few.
Politics is simply preference. The shape of the earth is not.
It’s a bit more than that in my mind. Political candidates at this point are telling vastly different stories about the reality we live in. The changes they want to make follow from the story they are telling.
It’s not that politicians share a common set of facts and just have differences of opinion about how to best accomplish the same goal. They are telling vastly different stories. In some sense, the more compelling story wins.
So I see a pretty direct connection between facts and political preference.
To put a finer point to it, some politicians use “alternative facts.”
As do some news organizations; For how long exactly did the news claim that Trump was talking about Nazis when he said there were "Fine people on both sides"?
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-very-fine-people/
If I Google "Russian Pee Tape", Business Insider is the 3rd result with claims that the tape most likely exists. 1st being Mashable and 2nd being Buzzfeed.
https://www.businessinsider.com/christopher-steele-trump-pee...
When he said there were "fine people on both sides", he clarified that he was not speaking about Nazis; however, it is clear (even/especially with his clarification) that he was indeed talking about those on the same side as the Nazis ("both sides"). To many non-Nazi-adjacent folks, simply being on the same side as the Nazis (and not, like, kicking them out of your protest/party/social circle) actually does make you a Nazi too. From that perspective, it's logically impossible for there to be "fine people on both sides", if you admit that one side allows and agrees with Nazis. And are we still debating post-MSG-rally whether Trump believes the Nazis are very fine people?
As for the "Russian Pee Tape", I'll give you that one -- fake news sure exists. (I think if it was real, it would have leaked by now -- no pun intended.)
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It's not automatically unethical for a journalist to advocate for something.
I guess if they entirely stopped publishing self authored editorials it might be "neutral" to not publish a particular one. But that isn't what is happening.
The main thing for journalists is to strictly separate news reporting from editorial opinion pieces and clearly mark which is which.
"The main thing for journalists is to strictly separate" a journalists personal opinion and political leanings from the news they are reporting. That is possible but it takes a strong editor to say no, you're trying to push your own personal opinion of the facts based on your political beliefs, when it should be up to the reader to decide that.
A journalist's job is to journal something, nothing more and nothing less.
If a purported journalist wants to influence or otherwise lead his audience somewhere, he is many things (commentator, advocate, activist, influencer, etc.) but he is not a journalist.
> If a purported journalist wants to influence ... he is not a journalist
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advocacy_journalism
That seems to just describe activism, not journalism. What makes it journalism to you - the association with a company that punishes a newspaper?
That’s a pretty low bar for “activism” in my mind. Activism is more about organizing people, organizing events, coordinating action, raising money, protesting, etc. although good journalism enables activism.
The entire point of journalism is holding powerful people/groups accountable. This is why countries like China hate journalists. Big companies like “journalists” who don’t ask tough questions. But the job of journalism isn’t just to reprint a press release with slightly different phrasing.
Declaring your misunderstanding doesn't make it so.
"Engineers make implements of war" or so.
It’s very strange how many people here have confidently incorrect ideas about what journalism purports to be or do.
An engineer is someone who develops and implements engines.
What is an engine? Citing Merriam Webster[1]:
>3a: something used to effect a purpose
So yes, an engineer can make implements of war among many other implements. The people who actually wage war are called other things.
[1]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/engine
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Journalism and a robust news media are a critical part of democracy. We can’t have a functioning democracy without them, just like we also need an independent judiciary, independent educational institutions and so on. As such, journalists are on the “side” of democracy. It is no accident that fascists and authoritarians attack the news media. They have to in order to gain and keep power.
The correct posture, therefore, of the free press when a charismatic authoritarian is on the cusp of power is opposition. So-called “neutrality” is not just foolish, it betrays their entire reason for being!
Devil's advocate: you can be more than one thing at once. And newspapers never promised to only be for journalism.
These are not journalists, these are the OPINION EDITORS. You know, the op-ed page, the page that contains NO journalism.
It has been a long tradition for the OPINION EDITORS of newspapers to endorse one or more positions of various political races, especially the presidential race.
This is regarding endorsements by the outlet as a whole. If someone wants to go out and publicly endorse a candidate on their own name, nobody's stopping them.
What Bezos did is say, no, you cannot and will never again slap the Washington Post's name onto your personal endorsement. I think that's fair, he owns the brand, and I think it's also good for journalism overall because it's not a journalist's job to push opinions.
> This is regarding endorsements by the outlet as a whole
Endorsements are written and attributed to the Editorial Board, not the entire outlet.
Examples:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/10/18/opinion/kamala-harris...
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/30/opinion/editorials/kamala...
https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/editorials/a/endorsement-pr...
It’s a distinction without a difference to anyone who isn’t being pedantic.
When Woodward and Bernstein issued a statement about Bezos's interference, it began, "We respect the traditional independence of the editorial page." Do you know more about journalism at The Washington Post than Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein? Or are they just pedants?
Given general hypocrisy, I expect an R endorsement come 2028. When the "swamp" is cleared and Bezo's Ai can write his opinions ghosting as a "journalist" with a respected brand.
If Bezos goes back on his word and lets or orders the Washington Post endorse a candidate in future elections? Yeah, weapons free to torch his ass.
I'll take my apology now.
This is a completely wrong and perhaps deliberately misleading impression of journalism and journalists. Healthy journalism absolutely provides critical analysis.
lol....a key tenet of journalism is objective reporting:
Objective Reporting: Journalism aims to report events truthfully, objectively, and fairly, without bias. This involves verifying facts, seeking multiple perspectives, and presenting information clearly.
Activist-journalism is an oxymoron. There are very few journalists anymore.
You can find countless lists describing principles and tenets of journalism that differ from each other.
Accuracy, verification, impartiality, yes, but seeking the truth upsets people, and the usual attack on that is to claim bias, prejudice, activism and “fake news” on the part of the journalist/organization
Is it activism to report on a rape survivors group and not an ice cream social?
Are there a clear bright line tests for things like "objective" and "bias" and "fair"?
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> How does it not undermine a paper's journalistic ethics to be neutral and fair?
Where did you get this? Every news source has some bias, journalists, editors and owners of the media house are not some ideal beings. The good ones are honest about their bias.
As to endorsing a candidate, it's absolutely for the paper to decide. Endorsing a candidate might alienate some readers, not endorsing others.
To play Devil's Advocate to the Devil's Advocate... I would posit that journalistic neutrality isn't possible: and if that's the case I'd rather the journalist or publication wear their biases on their sleeve.
I can read a biased story, with values very different to my own, and still draw conclusions that are still meaningful. Mind you, I would expect omissions and couching that is flawed, but understanding the thinking of those I oppose is valuable and allows me to see their blind spots (or my own for that matter).
But a news organization or journalist being clear about their values and politics also disposes of the harmful notion that they've actually achieved some sort of objective reading or that they're being complete and well rounded. There's a deceptiveness in that pretense which some readers (watchers) may actually take for truth and not think more critically about what they're consuming than that.
I think if Bezos had announced this change in policy in, say, Feb 2021, it would have landed differently.
I think this is exactly right.
I'm 100% on board with impartial reporting, with the caveats that a) endorsements are of the Opinion section, and b) the fact of the matter is that only the higher-minded news orgs would attempt impartiality -- so it's really just ceding the argument.
And LATimes and WaPo endorsements almost certainly won't have an effect on this election.
But, this reeks of cowardice. If you wanted to return to the journalistic standard of impartiality, that's a great thing to do when the pressure is low. Feb 2021 would have been perfect.
Less than two weeks before the most contentious election in modern history? And specifically when one candidate has threatened news organizations and their owners with retribution (legal, commercial, extralegal) for stories they don't like?
That's capitulation, not impartiality. If you believe in the mission of journalism, the honorable option would be to anti-endorse any candidate who threatens that mission.
If you don't believe in that mission, then what are you doing operating a newspaper?
Bezos is a coward.
100%. Or even January 2024. Shutting down the operation last minute is simply suspect in so many areas.
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The editorial page runs on opinion - I expect them to opine
Spiking an endorsement that's already written is not neutral either. They could have made this decision in January or years ago. They did not.
I think people "need" their publications to do this in the sense that the publication may worry about losing readership for not "doing their part to support the morally correct candidates." But you're right. Ideally a publication would report the objective reality and let its readers decide what to make of it.
Newspapers have several different departments- a news reporting department, which ostensibly attempts to be neutral and fair (but often isn't), and an editorial department, which is neither neutral, nor fair. The endorsement comes from the editorial side.
I can't answer why we would want newspapers to endorse presidents- except that historically, newspapers played a big role in shaping public opinion (now mostly replaced by social media).
I would extend that to all businesses. For the sake of the business & their customers it's usually best to keep politics out of it.
As long as the Post has an editorial page, with people employed to share their opinions, what are they supposed to do?
Opinion and reporting are separate- famously the WSJ reporting is quite strong and their opinion section is ... often wrong- but as long as an opinion section exists that's kinda their job, to share their opinion. If you want to get rid of opinion that might be a reasonable thing (with cable news and the internet no one has a shortage of opinion these days!) but doing it in such a ham-fisted way so close to the election is not a sign of a carefully thought-out business decision, it's a sign of cowardice.
They could share their opinions on the policies of each candidate. That could be great at helping people see perspectives other than their own, so that they can weigh it all up and make their own decision. Doing an endorsement is kind of the opposite of that, because it is essentially telling readers "you don't need to decide, we have done it for you."
Counterpoint: the biggest problem facing opinion journalism today is the competition. Actual news reporting is expensive and slow and sometimes doesn't pan out, isn't very profitable and there isn't that much of it. But you can get opinion everywhere these days- cable TV news, internet streamers, internet articles, it's everywhere. That suggests that there is actually a huge demand for highly opinionated work (and also that it is remarkably cheap to produce), but whether it's something like Daily Kos or Free Beacon or Alex Jones or Newsmax, it seems like everyone can find their own personal brand of opinion journalism that both flatters their own pre-existing opinions and at the same time molds them. Lots of narrowband broadcasting in that space, and the daily papers are really struggling with their goal of broad reach- they are getting outcompeted in each specific niche by a specialty player that caters to a much smaller, more specific set of opinions. (They try to have a diverse range of OpEd columnists, hoping that if you don't agree with Paul Krugman maybe you'll like David French, but that's a hard thing to pull off these days when your competition is just people of one specific ideological wedge.)
In theory your idea would be good, except when I look at the market I don't see anyone actually succeeding at that, which suggests to me that it's not actually a very large market of consumers.
Only in this hyper-partisan world has politics become a liability for business. If a restaurant hosted a candidate it didn't get death threats and calls for boycott 20 years ago. It's hard for some retail businesses to stay out of politics because they get dragged into it. Perhaps another way of looking at it is to not take too seriously when businesses get involved in politics.
“He gets to be lawless while she has to be flawless.”
It’s not biased to call a spade a spade.
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Until your second paragraph I thought you were talking about putting a certain 34-count felon behind bars.
The editorial board is separated from the newsroom and consistently writes persuasive opinions in the editorial page. "We think you should vote for X" is not structurally different from anything else that appears on the editorial page.
My gripe with endorsements is they imply people can't think critically for themselves.
I find endorsements very valuable when voting in down-ballot elections. A good endorsement includes the reasoning behind the decision. I read the endorsements of multiple outlets and find myself agreeing more with one or the other.
What's the alternative, do comprehensive research on the record of 20 candidates? I don't have time for that. Read the blurbs they write about themselves in the voter's guide? Why should I trust that, they can write anything there.
Supposedly some voters are undecided. Perhaps they would be swayed by a persuasive argument; this doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t think critically.
I say supposedly because I find it hard to believe the WaPo endorsement would actually sway anyone.
It wouldn’t be interesting or newsworthy to me personally if they had done that.
Given that editorial boards at newspapers like WaPo traditionally do, I find it notable when the billionaire owner steps in to stop them from publishing the endorsement, due to fear of retaliation from one of the candidates.
To me, that’s worth knowing about.
There's no neutral human being.
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Which is worse, a newspaper expressing an opinion or a newspaper being forbidden from expressing an opinion?
Forbidden by whom? Forbidden by its owner vs forbidden by an external party like the government are two different situations.
I'm not aware that the government has forbidden any news outlet from endorsing Kamala Harris. It would be weird if they did.
I'm not aware of any either, just trying to understand the point you're making with your comment.
I was referring to the context of the comment to which I was replying, and asking a rhetorical question regarding the relationship between the free speech rights of the press and the implication that the press should be prevented from expressing editorial opinions.
The paper is self-censoring. My confusion is around how the free speech rights of the press are being infringed. As I understand it, the paper willingly gave up its own rights. The point I was trying to make (poorly) is that this seems like less of an issue than, for instance, being compelled by a third party.
Edit: lots of changes to try and clarify my point
I disagree that the paper is self-censoring. Editors wrote and intended to publish endorsements of Kamala Harris. They didn't choose to censor themselves, nor willingly give up anything. The decision was made by management.
That may be less of a problem than government goon-squads raiding the Washington Post but I still think it's a problem.
Isn't management the paper too?
the article says when trump was president , he interfered and caused bezos’ business to lose a government contract due to the newspaper’s coverage of trump.
Given this context, I don't give much BOTD for the "external party".
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I can respect that private corporations have the right to "censor" (I put that in quotes because nowadays literally any moderator action is considered censorship) while disagreeing with specific decisions by corporations to do so. I wouldn't say newspapers shouldn't endorse candidates if they endorsed Trump (as some papers have done,) but I would think that was a bad idea given Trump's animosity towards the press.
I can also distinguish between the value of the press and the value of a social media platform. Banning an account on Twitter doesn't carry the same social weight as banning journalists. To me, while both are legal and within the bounds of free speech, one is distinctly worse for society than the other.
Yes.
The idea is that these people spend their days in the weeds, working over stories and leads, getting to know people personally, absorbing information and insight that doesn't make it to print, seeing the connections and threads between all the things they publish, and are literally professional news people the way many of us here are professional technology people who might have some insight on technology topics.
You can make the case that they might be disingenuous or manipulative in sharing what they claim to be their opinions, or that their opinions reflect cultural indoctrination rather than professional assessment, etc -- and so you don't have to take their endorsements seriously.
But it's not a crazy idea that they have something valuable to share for all the time they spend very close to news and politics, and it's not bad to know what their big picture view of topics and people are as they write and select stories for the rest of the paper as it helps you contextualize them in their subjectivity.
Those people working in mass media are going to have massive biases and blind spots the same way tech people do. That’s because news isn’t an accurate representation of reality, it’s representing the most extreme examples and outliers in society. If you have a group of people reading about outliers all day they aren’t going to be grounded in what ordinary people are actually experiencing.
If you'll pardon me, as a devil's advocate, it could go either way. They have a value but it's difficult to know to whom they owe that value to, the party, the corporations, voters, readers etc. The other is that.. they have value in the act of playback.
One political faction/side knows a publication is favored by one of the two parties. It can use that fact to feed it false information, or truthful, and watch to see how it gets reported, and the reaction of that electorate.
But it’s sold as keeping you informed about the world. When it actually is just about what journalists think.
Like you said, that can be valuable, especially in politics, when one hopes they aid your messaging. But it’s not a moral or even practical imperative to keep up with journalism.
Imagine learning about sports through ESPN commentary and never actually watching a game.
A similar professional blindspot occurred when many engineers thought twitter would collapse when Elon fired all those people. Because they see twitter as a piece of software, not a brand and organization.
> that can be valuable, especially in politics, when one hopes they aid your messaging
But why is there a cohort so unsure of their decisions they need support from others? Is this how we want people making decisions for the country?
I agree with the sentiment, this is just how people work. We aren’t constructing frameworks from first principles, we hear ideas from peers and filter them through our experience. Journalists just insert themselves in that process, using local ethics and archetypes against their audience.
Im sorry you didn’t catch the underlying meaning of my statement. Anybody unable to form an opinion on their own I don’t wish they have the ability to vote.
Are you advocating for aristocracy? Based?
This reminds me of when The New Republic had a bunch of staff quit en masse because the new imported editor was blatantly bullshitting them. He didn’t realize that he was talking to a bunch of professional journalists who knew exactly what being bullshit was like.
Was that the story they wrote about themselves?
It may have been.
And it's also bad for business. I think people on either side of the aisle underestimate just how tilted the other side can get when you go against them
I think there's arguments either way, but I also think as a certain point there is an obligation to point out that Trump is basically an anti American who probably takes more notice of a roll of toilet paper than the constitution. I'd argue that maybe it would behoove an institution of trust to make an endorsement only rarely, but it's also long been part of the means of public discourse for papers to put out opinions and endorsements.
More so than that question, I think it's more obvious to ask "if you're going to have that argument, is the year Trump, the nation destroying clown, is running, the year to suddenly make a change after something like > 3 decades? Especially when it seems like your owner might be making the change because he wants to curry favor for contracts?"
It's a pretty pathetic look, but I don't particularly expect any civic virtue from Bezos, so not shocked.
No doubt this will be portrayed as Bezos reigning in "Democrat" conspiracies and used to normalize Trump by the denizens of that delusional universe.
How is this not dead?
Your question is irrelevant. If Bezos or the leadership of the post had an ideological issue with endorsements, they should have decided that 6 months ago or one month from now.
It is blatantly obvious that this decision was done solely for Bezos business interests. Ignoring this and leaning into a theoretical debate to defend the decision is insulting.
Let's do an extreme example. If one candidate were to say, "I will burn down the Washington Post" would you expect the Washington Post to be neutral? Seems fallacious.
Now do Fox News.
It’s a disingenuous question: newspapers endorse presidents. That ship has sailed and it’s sailed a long time ago.
The issue at hand here is what happens to objective news reporting when a rampant vindictive psychopath enters the office of the President.
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It’s a statement of the values of the newspaper. This is what we stand for, and we are endorsing this person because of those values. It tells people about the paper and about the candidate being endorsed.
The issue here is that Trump is a threat to our democratic system of government. It’s not the time to be changing policies and refusing to endorse. It’s a time for taking a stand.
Clearly the values of the newspaper (as determined by the owner) aren’t what the employees, or many of the readers, thought they were.
Or.. at the end of the day, the newspaper is a business not a social movement. I have not seen anything about the business aspect of non-endorsement, other than perhaps the cancellations.
That’s a bit beside the point in this case. Newspapers are supposed to have a first amendment right to say whatever they want and the key concern is that Bezos spiked the editorial to curry favor with Trump.
Bezos own the paper, so it's _his_ first amendment right, not the editorial board's.
Sure but the concern is that he did it to appease the government which will retaliate against speech under Trump.
Whatever his reason, this isn't a first amendment issue because it's a private entity constraining its own speech, not the government.
The first amendment issue is that he is doing it because of fear that the government will retaliate against his other companies.
A lot of folks are exhorting him to resist in order to protect the norm, but it his true that _his_ choice is caused by first amendment violations, not causing them.
I think you have the directionality backwards. Trump is not currently in office or in control of the government, therefore he doesn't have the ability to constrain Bezos' first amendment free speech rights.
If Bezos chose to constrain his own speech due to some perceived threat to his companies from a possible Trump administration, that's still a private decision (and an exercise of his first amendment right to non-expresssion).
To be a first amendment violation, the government has to constrain speech (via force or threat).
I don't know for sure, but I suspect that this phenomenon of news media endorsing political candidates is almost entirely unique to the US. Please prove me wrong.
The Globe and Mail is a Canadian paper. Here is its history of endorsements since 1984:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/federal-electi...
There is an entire Wikipedia page devoted only to endorsements in the 2024 United Kingdom general election:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endorsements_in_the_2024_Uni...
Yeah, it does seem big in anglo-saxon countries. (I already posted that Wikipedia page, btw.)
I have an eight year old so there’s a big gap between actually starting a comment and posting it. That’s a pretty weak thing to criticize me for.
You're not the only one with kids, but I'm not sure how that is relevant.
I am monolingual but here is Le Monde's English edition endorsing an anti-RN (far right party) plan in the recent French Parliamentary elections:
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2024/06/28/french-...
It was done under the name of the Director of Le Monde, rather than as an unsigned editorial as is common in English language newspapers, but it sure looks similar to my American eyes.
Making a big song and dance about the entire business of "endorsements" seems to be a very US thing as far as I know. I am of course not familiar with all democracies of the world, but it doesn't seem common anywhere else I've seen.
It's common practice across the anglosphere (US, Canada, UK, Australia, NZ). I'm not sure about elsewhere.
Cases in point:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endorsements_in_the_2024_Unite...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_endorsements_in_2019_A...
I can't prove you wrong, but I think political alignment of newspapers come in many flavors. Many countries have more parties than two, and as the choice ls less binary, the endorsements can be more subtle.
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Let’s zoom out from the present election and remember how Bezos took over…
The first thing he said was “The paper’s duty will remain to its readers and not to the private interests of its owners.”
We, the readers, should require an apology from Bezos for breaking his promise to keep this separate from his other concerns.
Until that happens, one must assume that WaPo is permanently compromised in the favor of Bezos’s interests.
It’s not about Kamala, it’s about literally everything.
I don't doubt that, but what company isn't compromised in favor of its owner's interests?
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I took the same comment on a different way. To me they're referring to the fact that there are many other media outlets. Not only the big ones that do the same. But the smaller, "independent", that deserve more readers.
granted, they may also have interests or agendas. They point is we need decentralization!
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Does an apology matter? Do we really need one?
How will an apology from Bezos improvement life?
What would improve mymlife are clear concrete actions not measly words.
Honestly, it’s all words unless the paper itself is sold to an independent nonprofit solely devoted to journalism.
Independent journalism that delves into both/all sides and does not rely on soundbites and extracting things out of context and has no agenda but the truth Like during Covid they would allow vigorous debate about efficacy, lockdowns, deplatforming, etc.
It's a dream but would not last. All sides would attack it for being for whoever the boogeyman they think is.
So, like Musk with X.
The Venn diagram of those who'd be influenced by a WaPo endorsement and committed Kamala Harris voters is a perfect intersection. For 50 years, WaPo has endorsed the democratic candidate [1] for president. No mystery here. It's a pointless endorsement.
[1] https://noahveltman.com/endorsements/
The endorsement lets them write why they support the candidate. Laying out the reasons is what could be convincing, and is what's also being blocked here.
I think the intuition of the parent comment is right, but you also make a fair point[1]. I just wonder if you genuinely believe that any prospective Trump voter could be convinced by any argument to vote for Harris at this point. I mean after all the things that have already been written and said by so many, even by Trump himself, and have failed to convince ~47% of Americans that he's unfit to be the president.
Honestly, I look at the billions of dollars being poured into political ads, and I can't help but think that it's all a tremendous waste because it's hard to imagine that there's anybody left who didn't already form a strong opinion about Trump at some point over the past ten years.
[1] Like even assuming that prospective Trump voters don't read this newspaper, an especially novel or powerful argument could get picked up and spread by other outlets that do reach prospective Trump voters.
Undecided voters will decide the election, yes they exist and yes they can change opinions
Political ads have many purposes, including convincing people to vote for their candidate, instilling a sense of urgency/motivation/purpose to actually get out and vote, and then second order goals like general PR/familiarity for the party, etc.
I don't really expect that there are Trump voters who could be convinced to vote for Harris by the op-ed, but I do think there could be voters who may have been on the verge of reconsidering Trump who may hear something like this story (of Bezos stopping an endorsement) as something that makes them identify their moment of reconsideration as a mistake because they think Bezo's behavior should be perceived as supporting the concept that Democrats and other anti-Trump parties are the ones off-kilter.
But this change doesn't stop any of the journalists from writing editorials endorsing a candidate, including laying out reasons, correct?
The difference is that the paper as a whole won't endorse a candidate?
On the other hand, Trump is using the L.A. Times non-endorsement to attack Harris. So, it does matter.
Endorsements express the values of the paper and gives people more information about the candidates and what is at stake.
And it opens to them up to retribution from Trump if he wins, which is his entire method of operating. From a game theory perspective it doesn't make sense for them to do an endorsement when a mob boss type character is about to get elected.
Let's be clear who "them" is. It's Bezos. The people at the paper wrote up the whole thing and then were blocked by Bezos and the CEO of the paper.
You can argue it's game-theory sensible, but it certainly tells you that Bezos doesn't care to put any of his vast money at risk for any cause at all.
Yes but we know this about him.
Sure, but let's not pretend the writers at the paper are deciding this is better for their future. And let's not even give Bezos the grace that this is about if the Post succeeds. It's clear this is about if Amazon or Blue Origin gets contracts in the future under Trump and he's willing to burn down the Post to avoid that downside.
"Lets not oppose nazis in case they gain power again."
You're morally and humanly bankrupt if you believe and act this way.
> You're morally and humanly bankrupt if you believe and act this way.
Those characteristics are, if not strictly required, at least overrepresented in billionaires. It seems like a reasonable approximation for how Bezos might perceive his situation here.
You don't usually get to be a billionaire by caring very much about morality.
Well, lots of people did and do and will behave that way. Cravenness runs amok.
Yes exactly, we're talking about Jeff Bezos here.
1988 isn’t 50 years
They skipped 88 because the editorial board decided they didn't want to endorse.
https://www.semafor.com/article/10/25/2024/editor-resign-sub...
Well, I guess now democracy dies in anticipation of darkness.
Things that go trump in the night.
So many times HN posters have extolled how Bezos hasn't interfered with the WaPo and those of us who expressed concern about his purchase were chicken littles. It has never been true and it's plain as day now. He bought it for the same reason Musk bought Twitter. To have control over a media outlet he values.
Well, it might have been true until now. Certainly there's no previous good evidence for Bezos-directed coverage or editing at the Post.
But regardless: you were right. I was one of the folks who viewed him as a basically benign entity who, sure, had opinions of his own, but clearly would never put his fingers on the editorial scale. And I was wrong, and he isn't.
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If you have that kind of money, why wouldn't you do that?
They're not really saying Bezo or Musk are acting illogically. He's lamenting everyone who has set with their heads buried in the sand and pretended they aren't doing the things they're doing.
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.
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.
> 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
If it's so powerful, why is Bezos also apparently now pushing for a lot of changes in the actual writing and ordered conservative writers added to the op-ed board? https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/25/business/media/washington... and started defending it publicly: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/28/jeff-bezo...
I don't understand how those things relate to the 'power' of that 'endorsement'?
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.
It's just remnants of DEI for former slave holding states. Supposedly they are ideologically opposed to it, but as usual it turns out that only applies when convenient. Practically every conservative achieving office does so thanks to DEI giving huge advantages to rural areas over places where people actually live and business actually happens.
Elon hasn't swayed your opinion then?
It's more about how a presidential candidate has repeatedly made credible threats to go after specific media companies using the power of his office if he wins. That candidate also happens to have a terrifyingly broad idea of what those powers are. That's in the context of a 9-member Supreme Court where 3 are his own appointments and 2 are appointments from a previous president with similarly broad ideas about presidential power.
And no, not everyone knows how they're going to vote, as crazy as that seems, but I agree that newspaper endorsements are a tiny factor, especially in this election.
That’s what an undecided voter is, and that demographic is the one effectively deciding the next president, so yes these endorsements are consequential.
It's east to think that way but if it didn't matter, Bezos wouldn't have squashed it.
It matters to Trump, therefore it matters to Bezos.
Probably not a single voter cares.
I care that half the country is preparing to elect a man who blackmails newspaper owners due to their own vanity.
The problem is the the billionaire owner of the newspaper is censoring it, not the number of votes that will change.
> I’m pretty sure everyone knows who they’re gonna vote for at this point.
I already did (yay early voting), but I was pretty close to just flipping a coin. Not for red vs blue, but for the lesser evil vs one of the more amusing third parties.
I know at least one person who votes based off a publication. As for changing minds, I have no idea if this person even considered who to vote for until the publication releases their endorsements.
> Is anyone really changing their mind based on some newspaper endorsement? I’m pretty sure everyone knows who they’re gonna vote for at this point.
Clearly Bezos thinks they are[1], otherwise he wouldn't have gone through the trouble of killing it 11 days before an election.
People in this thread are badly conflating the idea of "Newspaper Opinion Journalism is Bad" with "It's OK for an owner to arbitrarily influence newspaper coverage in real time". You can agree with the former and still agree the later is a horrifying precedent.
[1] Or, "Bezos thinks that Trump thinks they are" might be closer to the truth.
Probably nobody would have changed their mind.
But it exposes the fiction that Bezos allows editorial freedom at the WaPo.
It's relevant on the margins. WaPo not endorsing Harris would be a very negative signal about Harris for fence-sitters and lukewarm voters - this is the paper that hated Trump so much they changed their motto to the apocalyptic "Democracy Dies in Darkness"!
If they had announced in 2022 that the paper would no longer be issuing presidential endorsements because they aren't useful or aren't a good use of resources, I think that would be a reasonable and much less controversial decision. Doing it now, when the paper had already drafted an endorsement of Harris and was about to publish it, is in fact an endorsement of Trump.
That's why this is news, it's not about a paper changing a policy, it's about one billionaire blatantly burying criticism of a fellow billionaire because they are having a personal fight (or they were having a fight and this is how they've resolved it).
This really is an interesting question. You are asking it rhetorically, and it's not like I'm going to argue with the implication, that it "basically doesn't matter", but then one could ask the same about Trump working at McDonald's as a part of his campaign, and pretty much about everything these guys do. Unless it's a major fuckup, it almost doesn't matter, because it doesn't convert anybody but one hypothetical guy who says "you know what, I'll pick a random newspaper right now, and the first guy I'm gonna see, I'll vote for him!"
At some level of approximation it doesn't even matter who the candidate is at all. An established trend in the USA is that the public is divided pretty much 50/50 between 2 colors, and hardly sways no matter what happens. Which makes it all pretty laughable way to make the choice (seeing votes as weights, and God makes a choice using these weights to make a decision) on an important question. If we assume the elections in the USA are "fair", it's pretty much flipping a coin every time. (But then, most people are already settled on the idea that it isn't an important choice, hence the "giant douche and turd sandwich" joke is so relatable.)
So while it largely doesn't matter indeed, at some low enough level any small detail might matter. I don't imagine who is that guy who was going to vote Kamala based on WP endorsement, but, well, maybe there is one. Really, I have no idea.
I think there are some number of people who are trying to decide what's "true" or "real" and while I don't think they'd have even noticed a WaPo editorial, I do think they might hear that Bezos prevented an endorsement and see it as indicative that the endorsement of Harris was somehow dishonest and tally it as a stone on Trump's side of the "reality scale."
I'm sure you're mostly right, but there are no doubt a few still on the fence, which can only either be people who have not been exposed to the truth about Trump (e.g. people who only watch Trump sane-washed sources like Fox), or republicans who are well aware of the danger he poses, but are having a hard time accepting that the responsible thing to do is vote against him.
For the few that are still on the fence, then more straight shooting reporting, from any source, can only help.
To me this is a total cop out, and very irresponsible, for the Washington Post to not want to "take sides" and express an opinion. I guess they would've let Hitler win election too, rather than want to "take sides" and say anything bad about him. It's like not wanting to express an opinion on whether a grizzly bear or a hamster would be a better pet for a 5 year old, because you're afraid of upsetting the grizzly bear.
I like that many people here have speculated that Bezos simply wants to avoid the ire of a possible Trump administration. This is very charitable, so much so that it ignores another reasonable guess a person could make based off of the same objective information that we all have — that this action is an endorsement, and the person that chose to endorse a candidate did so because he wants them to win.
On one hand you can imagine that Bezos somehow wants a Harris presidency but doesn’t want to appear that way out of fear, but that sounds more fantastical and wishful than “The guy whose company is currently trying to wholesale eliminate the National Labor Relations Board(1) likes Trump’s policies and wants him to win”, especially when you think about what’s going on with the other guy(2) that’s trying to destroy the NLRB.
Sometimes when people indicate they want something to happen it is because they want that thing to happen.
1
https://www.reuters.com/technology/amazon-joins-companies-ar...
2
https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-leaps-into-the-meme-history-bo...
This is so obviously the nail on the head. Shocked how far I had to scroll
I think the act of spiking the endorsement sends a stronger signal than the lack of endorsement. He could always make his own endorsement, but he didn't.
I don't know what's in his head. I just know that Trump sources are saying it's because of fear of reprisal [0]
[0]: https://x.com/gabrielsherman/status/1849960615197966648
I think it can be both. In scenario planning it makes sense for billionaires with large business empires to vote for Trump. One, the few details that can be determined from his platform are around lowering taxes on the very rich and making it easier for them make more money. Two, Trump has been pretty clear in his rhetoric he holds a grudge and will use the government to punish anyone who he perceives is against him. Taken together, there is little to no downside in supporting Trump, even if Harris wins. It's not like Harris is threatening to throw people she doesn't like out of the country. Whereas vocally supporting Harris where Trump wins runs the risk of becoming a target.
By the way, I think Musk did the same math. He likely thinks/knows Trump is an idiot, but it's almost all upside supporting him and little downside. Plus, Musk is likely still upset he was left out of a Whitehouse summit on EVs a few years ago. Regardless of what people think of Musk that was BS, and I wonder if that snub is part of what led him to come out in support of Trump so vocally.
Endorsements have never been without the blessing and influence of the owner of that paper or institution. The extent that an owner lets the editorial team pick an endorsement is the same extent to which they align philosophically. It's an illusion of choice or independence.
If papers were meant to be more neutral, I suppose they would need to be owned as cooperatives by the subscribers themselves, assuming the subscribers were balanced and philosophically diverse.
The key point here is that despite all their biases, the Washington Post and The New York Times were at least perceived as independent, with both of them famously publishing articles that would upset those in power. If their owners feel the need to spike articles unfavorable to the administration, then no more Pentagon Papers etc.
I agree. I was reading about Rupert Murdock's start in Australia. He was able to swing an election there through his ownership of a few newspapers. Newspapers don't have the same pull as they did back then. Now I guess it's the online platforms like Facebook, X, or Reddit. Reddit seems to be captured by the Democratic party.
There used to be a concept of journalistic integrity, to just report the facts, not to put any spin on them. These days that's totally abandoned, it's considered entertainment.
Has an owner ever killed an already-written endorsement 11 days out from an election? You're right that there is an implicit assumption that an owner condones the paper's operation. But to exert control like this so specifically and in such a baldly partisan way is unprecedented, thus the resignations both at the Post and the LA Times.
It's one thing to hire an editorial staff with whom you agree, it's quite another to step in and overrule their attempt to do the job you hired them to do.
It is ironic because Washington Post is the most left leaning of all major news paper. Their endorsement is really a no-op, because there is really only one candidate they could ever consider.
And yet here we are without an endorsement. Significant by your own admission.
If the Post endorsed Harris but then added an addendum that this was the last election they’d be endorsing, this would make sense and seem a lot more impartial to a now 40-year tradition.
I went to return something to Amazon and though it was clearly their fault for sending the wrong item, the rep said “we’ll make a one time exception here” and I said fine whatever. Seems like there’s a Bezos precedent for this kind of “last time” approach lol
To be fair they always say that. Everybody gets the "one time exception."
A while ago, the failing/risks of banks that were too exposed to particular sectors (crypto/blockchain) brought some discussion on the merits of diversification of key risks.
In a highly partisan landscape with increasing geopolitical tensions, is ownership a key risk to objective news? Is diversification of ownership of news sources a good way to help mitigate that? If so, any good ideas from the HN crowd?
Maybe restore the Celler-Kefauver act (1)?
1: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/the-celler-kefauver-act...
The WaPo is a long, long ways from objective news.
For me, seeing a person or business consciously claim neutrality this year is reprehensible and impossibly out of touch. Whether Bezos likes it or not the business he is in comes with the assumption of an endorsement, and silence is an implicit endorsement. I’d never hold an individual to that standard but power comes with responsibility and this choice is putting his privilege on full display.
Funnily Bezos has probably made more for Harris by stopping the endorsement then if he let it go through. No one would have cared about the endorsement, now this story is everywhere..
I thought that having billions buys you freedom. Turns out you still have to lick the boot.
Only if your greed is bigger than your pockets. Which is bound to be true for anyone who accumulates this much money and still exploits workers to the degree Amazon does.
Politics is the new religion. Everyone is cowed by the power if the zealots.
“Fuck you money” is a myth.
A single man issued an edict and ended decades of precedent/history. All for the sake of the mighty dollar and ensuring his multibillion dollar fortune doesn’t take a tumble by a 5-10B in the _possibility_ the wrong candidate gets elected.
Everything is awful about this. What would it take WaPo away from this horrible person?
I find it strange that people are so upset about the absence of an opinion piece from this newspaper. What is the reason? Either you want to be told what to think, or you want everyone else to be told what to think. I think it is the latter. Would there be any outrage here if Fox news decided not to endorse a candidate? I highly doubt it. Some people may like being challenged on what they believe, which is good, but that's probably the edge case
Perhaps one wants to be told what they - the paper as institution, to include both owners and editorial staff - think. What values do they hold, and why? These inform their reporting content and choices.
Moreover, no one thinks well in isolation. Others’ ideas challenge and inform one’s own. To engage, to converse, to question: this is not being told what to think, but rather a catalyst of unique thought. Else why are you posting here?
That’s not exactly what happened. What happened at both the L.A. Times and the Washington Post is that the editorial staff was prepared to endorse Harris until the owner quashed it. That’s what people are upset about.
Endorsing Harris is a no-brainer. Quashing an endorsement of Harris reeks of cowardice.
Related:
The Washington Post says it will not endorse a candidate for president
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41948631
It seems like it would be less polarizing if it was the default state for news and information outlets to not endorse any candidate ever and just remain as neutral as possible.
Why would they want to appear neutral? All news reporting, no matter what, is inherently biased in some way. There isn’t some “ideal” where that isn’t the case. There can’t be some magical font of unbiased information because just selecting what stories to put on the front page introduces bias.
News can’t be unbiased and being unbiased was never a goal. News is meant to inform, which includes facts as well as analysis. That seemingly the average American doesn’t understand that is a failure of the education system.
> Why would they want to appear neutral? All news reporting, no matter what, is inherently biased in some way. There isn’t some “ideal” where that isn’t the case. There can’t be some magical font of unbiased information because just selecting what stories to put on the front page introduces bias.
Sure, but just because you can't be perfectly unbiased doesn't mean the only alternative is to become a mouthpiece for a political party.
These are opinion editors. They're expected to have opinions.
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.
First, they are never neutral.
Second: this is what happens in Brazil. Everybody gets angry because each news outlet defends its own conservative candidate.
While we’re at it, let’s do away with voting. Much less polarizing if we stop asking the demos to endorse a government.
Being neutral in the face of a candidate who has promised to do what Trump has promised to do may not be the virtue you think it is.
But it is not. They regularly make endorsements and call outs. They recently called for Biden to step down from the ticket, just months ago. It seems like we should not examine situations based on idealistic, non-existent scenarios but the world we actually live in.
no endorsement is an endorsement for the oppressor
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100%. People upset about this are just upset cause they didn't endorse their candidate. Trust in media/journalism is at an all time low. This is simply a smart move to not alienate 50% of the population. If individual editors/writers/journalists want to endorse someone, take it to your blog or website or twitter.
> "Katharine Graham the previous owner of the Washington Post during the Watergate years was threatened by Holden who famously said, and I will leave out a bit of the quote because it's too crude to say out on the stage, but he said you tell Kate Graham if she prints that we'll put here blank through a big fat ringer, and then they actually worked to try get their broadcast license resented, it's completely un-American, so I guess the only thing I say is as Katharine Graham my role model I'm very willing to let any of my body parts go through a big fat ringer if need be." Jeff Bezos in 2016 when asked about Donald Trump. ^1
I don't think he is pro Trump, but I think he just doesn't want to be on his bad side just in case, just like Zuckerberg he tried to patch his relationship with Trump after he publicly threatened him
1: source https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guVxubbQQKE 1:01:00
That was Nixon's AG, John Mitchell, who said that and it happened in 1972. Graham died in 2001, well before Eric Holder was ever Attorney General.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Graham
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.
There is no neutrality in the face of evil.
Journalism and journalists are not supposed to be neutral, but impartial.
Ethics are pretty universal.
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.
There’s not really any such thing as neutrality. Arguably universities can maybe step away from things (although this is complicated with departments that are inherently political), but “neutral” if you’re writing about politics always reflects some kind of value judgement. By definition one person’s neutrality is someone else’s bias.
Being neutral in an unbalanced situation means you are purposefully ignoring things that should be said and not putting on the table things that should be there. Not publishing relevant opinions pieces is part of that.
To get some distance, imagine being neutral to every candidates during Russia's last elections, and refusing to publish well researched and argumented opinions people have about the leading candidate.
So if quality news outlets no longer provide journalism when we need it most (breaking down candidate platforms, keeping candidates honest, …). Then it shifts to a variety of unverified sources (ie, TikTok, Fb, Telegram, et al) for those that couldn’t find anything credible.
The population already struggles with determining fact from fiction. Taking away the power from journalists because a _billionaire_ wants to ensure his wealth remains high.
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Good reason not to subscribe to the WP.
There you are! The correct response.
Should this not fall under the "private company, do what they want" mantra we were all so fond of wrt (pre-Musk...) Twitter, Facebook, et al? The further advice then was; "make your own social media platform."
Same thing happened at LA times a few days ago, also replete with an editor quitting, when owner Patrick Soon-Shiong blocked the same Kamala endorsement.
You're free to not subscribe, some editor or other is free to quit, and owners are free to do as they please with their private property. Freedom. What a great idea.
Why?
You didn't draw that conclusion when WaPo lied about Russians hacking US electrical infrastructure, sabre rattling for war, then retracting the entire story when it was proved they fabricated the story? One of the authors of the faked story is still employed by WaPo, by the way.
It's only bad when they refuse to bend to your political orthodoxy, not when they knowingly print dangerous and false stories about nation state hacks (eerily similar to NYT's lies about WMDs in Iraq) -- something likely to drag the world to war again.
'Anticipatory obedience is a political tragedy.' ~Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny
https://smalldeedsdone.com/2024/07/09/do-not-obey-in-advance...
Strangely, the same people who call newspapers "legacy" are all over Twitter calling WP a failure and that people need to cancel their subscriptions.
There's a trend among Tech Oligarchs to diminish the role of journalism. Seems to be all about getting slices of government contracts, if not controlling them.
We love to objectify the press and pretend they do a service to mankind, but they're just another business.
Democracy dies in darkness was a promise, not a warning.
I'm sick of this absurd FUD. You surely must realize that the claims that if Trump wins, democracy is going to end are just fearmongering, don't you?
I'm going to rewrite something verbatim the other candidate posted on his social media network:
CEASE & DESIST: I, together with many Attorneys and Legal Scholars, am watching the Sanctity of the 2024 Presidential Election very closely because I know, better than most, the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential Election. It was a Disgrace to our Nation! Therefore, the 2024 Election, where Votes have just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again. We cannot let our Country further devolve into a Third World Nation, AND WE WON’T! Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.
It is right here https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1133692554916...
He's right there saying it. We're in a slow motion train wreck. Bezos is chickening out because of it.
You really might see the end of democracy in America within weeks. Trump is telling you he's going to end it. One of the richest men in the world is listening to him.
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I have no idea who to vote for now.
it's all disagree and commit until the big boss comes and says to "just commit". didn't success and scale bring responsibility ?
i guess Bezos can bend the leadership principles back and forth the way it best fits his current needs.
I don't think there could be a more powerful endorsement of Trump so far, much more than if Bezos's paper actually printed an endorsement of him (which would have been laughed at):
It's a signal of Trump as extraordinarily powerful, a stronger signal than probably anything else I've seen. That boosts his image among suppoters - remember power is what he sells - and will intimidate many, many more into complying. What journalists and business people, or any elite, will stand up to him now after Bezos and the Washington Post - probably the second most respected news organization in the country - have bent the knee. And it makes a Trump victory look more inevitable, a key selling point for anyone, but especially a populist.
When Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong did the same thing recently, "The Trump campaign swiftly shared the ... story with supporters." [0]
[0] https://www.npr.org/2024/10/24/nx-s1-5163293/la-times-editor...
I don't get why there is this assumption that Bezos would not just be supporting him.
> have bent the knee
This sounds a bit like "thedonald" nomenclature?
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So they aren't going to endorse either candidate.
If I didn't have context about the situation, I'd say it makes sense. However I think that in this flawed two-party situation, there is unfairness on both sides, resulting in some sort of balance, and it's bad that one of the richest people on earth could upset the balance in this way, especially at the last moment.
Article from 2020: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/09/28/editorial...
Yeah, I think you’re missing the point a bit here: the fear of endorsing the “wrong” candidate, as it would lead to loss of profit by the owning company, is what led to the axing of the endorsement. Call it what you want: profit and political strongarming silenced a newspaper.
Ok, I actually RTFA and it just seems like a bunch of conjecture over what the reasons might be? Nobody actually knows?
And the editorial board's comments seem a bit dramatic?
"It represents an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love, and for which we have worked a combined 218 years"
How does it represent an abandonment? These editors have been sharing their convictions for the past combined 218 years. I don't think any reader is going to ask "I wonder who the Post is going to endorse"?
WaPo endorsing Harris would have changed exactly 0 minds. Everyone that would have read it already agrees with them. But it would have made them feel good about their existing world view.
Them _not_ endorsing _will_ change minds. There are people that read Washington Post that would take that as a sign that not even their trusted left-leaning paper is 100% comfortable with the candidate they should have endorsed, so maybe there's something there they should have hesitancy about too.
There's an irony here, the WaPo news room has become quite political in the last decade. But the editorial board has decided to be apolitical.
Everything is backwards.
Did they?
> An endorsement of Harris had been drafted by Post editorial page staffers but had yet to be published, according to two sources briefed on the sequence of events who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The decision not to publish was made by The Post’s owner — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — according to the same sources.
Seems it’s just Bezos
You didn't read the article. The board had written an endorsement of Harris. But it was killed at the demand of Bezos.
Not antagonizing the likely future POTUS is smart business especially when said future POTUS is known to lash out with retaliatory rhetoric and actions.
More interesting to me is that this is the third tech billionaire to take a decidedly different stance than he did previously. Musk is quite active, but even Zuckerberg took a much more neutral stance for 2024.
Honestly I'm more surprised that Bezos even bothered. Does he really think the endorsement of The Washington Post editorial board is so significant that it's worth intervening? That seems implausible.
Given he was the one who made the call, what other conclusion would you draw?
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.
It's almost as if coming out in favor of taxing unrealized capital gains right before the election wasn't the stroke of political brilliance that Harris thought it was.
"Hmm, I'm facing a close election. Hey, wait, I know! I'll make enemies of people who buy ink by the trainload and bandwidth by the petabyte-second."
I really wish somebody could have talked her out of that idea, or at least convinced her to wait another couple of months before putting it on the table. It was an incredible faux pas, maybe a history-changing one, whose consequences were trivially foreseeable.
Bezos cares because his businesses have billions of dollars in revenue from the federal government. Trump has already claimed to personally review those contracts and was reported as trying to kill the $10B JEDI contract:
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/10/26/trump-mattis-screw-amazo...
By all accounts, he’s prepared to be more authoritarian and less bound by the law if re-elected and he’s already threatening journalists with rape and talking about yanking broadcast licenses for channels which don’t kowtow to him.
Probably the opposite. He doesn’t think it’s significant, but the risk of petty retaliation IS significant.
of course it is. endorsements by major entities such as major newspapers… endorsements by celebrities and all these other points form the constellation of how a candidate is perceived. a huge chunk of people will not just vote blindly for whoever seems to be more broadly supported but actually deeply like whoever is put in front of them. and they will also believe it if a bunch of newspapers release the same story at the same time… even if there is no evidence offered to support the main assertion. or even if its obviously false. creation of the appearance of a consensus is an extremely powerful tool
All signs point to this being an extraordinarily tight election. 5 or 10k votes in the right state could swing the whole thing.
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.
Musk is a true believer, but Zuck and Bezos probably fear retribution from Trump if he wins and they endorsed Harris.
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Zuckerberg has never been not right wing though.
Did people really think that billionaires wanted to buy major press outlets for profit expectations?
Controlling the narrative was always the plan. Unless it's private equity. They just strip it bare and put it out of business.
People did warn about it at the time too.
I fail to see why being upset about the bad thing actually happening means people didn’t think that was the plan.
I've yet to see an argument against this not delivered in bad faith.
If the publication in question was the NY Post, Washington Times, or another center-right newspaper, the very same group currently having a collective meltdown on social media would be praising them with an equally melodramatic "saving democracy" or some other manufactured phrase du jour.
I'm really not sure of this. The argument I've mostly seen is that the endorsement was always mostly meaningless. If anything, this is a "coverup worse than the crime" situation. Killing the endorsement is much more notable than just letting it happen because it's what everyone was worried about when Bezos bought the paper - that he'd inject his own consideration into it, something he said he wouldn't do. If some billionaire owned the NY Post and banned them from endorsing Trump, that would absolutely be a story as well.
I don't think anyone thinks it's not clear who the writers at the NY Post or the Washington Post generally want to win. That makes this whole situation so much more stupid on Bezos's part.
Describing NY Post as center-right is insane. It's genuinely not up to interpretation, that's about as hard right as it gets.
From Jacob Heilbrunn on the National Interest:
# The Capitulation of The Washington Post
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/jacob-heilbrunn/capitulati...
Lots of press are declining to endorse. This is a trend.
It’s generally harmless for high-visibility elections. But these endorsements are both powerful and essential for lower-visibility elections.
It makes sense in so much as "it's a risk to our business to endorse Harris because of the risk of falling afoul of Trump's vindictive nature should he win."
From a fiduciary standpoint, I agree with that assessment. From the standpoint of a citizen, I find the implication alarming.
I do believe that this is the reasoning behind the decision, but it is certainly speculation on my part.
A newspaper that succumbs to fear of reprisal fails completely in its principal duty and becomes little more than a propaganda rag.
If you own a paper money isn't the point. Just like in a hospital or a law firm or even a bank. You do the right thing because society trusts you and making money comes from that. Do the wrong thing, and your business will vanish.
You are forgetting that the ftc is looking at amazon under biden, one would hope that harris will keep kahn in the post (because she's kicking asses that have been needed to be kicked for 30+ years).
I think he's in a bad place. If he endorses trump he's endorsing a potential fascist dictator. If he endorses harris he's contributing to amazon's anti-trust peril.
A statement along those lines should appear in the next 10-Q filing, under business risks.
This is why we need to repeal and replace the First Amendment with an amendment that guarantees freedom of expression within the bounds of civilized discourse (e.g., open Nazism=crime) and severely punishes government officials who use their power to stifle such expression. The First Amendment, as written, protects speech that oughtn't be protected, and fails to protect speech that ought to be protected, hence the current situation with the Washington Post being cowed into withdrawing their endorsement by the threat of a vindictive Trump.
Countries with no First Amendment, where hate speech is in fact criminalized, routinely score higher on international free-speech indices than the USA because in the USA the government, especially the Republican Party, has the means and the will to intimidate the press into silence or capitulation.
I guess there's no regulatory guidance here, on media ownership interfering with media op-ed operations ? Even when Bezos (probably) swore up and down he would never interfere ?
> Scientific American makes second-ever endorsement, backs Kamala Harris. This is only the second time in the magazine's 179-year history that it has made an endorsement in a presidential race
The first time they ever made an endorsement was (wait for it) 2020! Everything has become political these days.
https://www.axios.com/2024/09/16/scientific-american-kamala-...
Bezos utilizing unorthodox reverse psychology techniques to delegitimize trump and bolster support for harris
This is great. Now if they could also stop pretending there are only 2 options maybe we could one day have peace in the world.
Remember when 10,000 papers endorsed Hillary?
So we have reached the intimidation phase of this election, where businesses owners fear repercussions from Trump (or standing up against him) and his entourage for not supporting him.
Reminds me of a certain time in history.
It's fascinating to compare other countries on the brink of authoritarianism with our own. In other countries it happens because of bread lines and complete dysfunction here it happens despite a country out of war and an economy that's humming along at a brisk pace.
It's the equivalent of playing chicken with a train because you're bored.
My first thought is that it's sad that a billionaire owner can override the will and culture of the journalists that compose the paper.
My second thought is that it's really bad that this could have been done in order to help Blue Origin get government contracts.
Think about it, the actions of a news paper are being influenced by what's best for a aerospace company. How did this happen? It happened because more and more companies, across all industries, are owned by fewer and fewer people.
> CNBC has requested comment from Amazon.
According to the article, Jeff Bezos is presumably afraid that Trump would continue to punish Amazon. If that is the case, this seems like an entirely futile exercise.
Not that corporate PR responses are ever particularly illuminating. I read an article regarding information conveyed per syllable. English was near the top. Languages with less information per syllable like Spanish were spoken faster. In dead last place were PR statements from Fortune 500 companies.
No, he's fucking terrified of lina khan. He won't endorse trump and poke the bear and he won't endorse harris because he's embittered.
He's a cowardly monopolist.
He's afraid of Vance. Trump is an egoist but Vance has an ideological dislike of amazon.
Imagine taking as many steroids as Jeff Bezos has taken, only to end up being afraid of an obese elderly man who cheats at golf. What was the point of all that flexing?
This isn't a normal election, or anything remotely close to it. It'd be lovely if we had TWO relatively normal candidates and could vote for them in our normal partisan ways.
You may have noticed that basically everyone in Trump's first term cabinet has come out and called him things ranging from "moron" to "fascist" to a "danger to the country". This is not normal. It's extremely abnormal. It's a warning to the country.
It's at extraordinary times like these when the country needs some leadership, from the media as well as those in power, to highlight the danger. Many senior republicans have stepped up and announced they are going to vote for Harris. It's a very poor look for a newspaper, faced with a once in a lifetime election like this, to effectively say "we're gonna sit this out out - we have no editorial opinion on who is better for the country". Very sad.
Surely the prospect of a nice little multi billion dollar defense contract from Trump would have nothing to do with it
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4954591-trump-meets-bl...
Weird, because in Trump’s last presidency he was pretty anti Jeff Bezos. But I guess however they feel about each other, the assumed business tax benefits of a trump presidency make him want trump
"Democracy dies in darkness"
and silence, apparently.
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clearly bezos is concerned about the present administration's policy regarding weapons exports
What a title. I read the first 3 words, and just had to keep reading the rest of it.
Good because newspapers should not be endorsing candidates.
It is one thing to be neutral when one candidate wants more military spending and a lower top income tax bracket and the other is in favor of higher taxes on top and more social spending.
But in this case one candidate literally tried to subvert the last election. Even ignoring all his other issues, that one is enough to say we shouldn't vote for him.
This is probably the most important topic here. It reveals their bias/partisonship and turns the whole newspaper into an opinion piece
Newspapers should do whatever they want. The 1st amendment is kind of a big deal.
The most kind way to read this is that he is concerned of reprisal, no different than the reprisal he faced from the Saudi government (with likely Trump assistance via David Pecker) in 2019.
Here’s an alternative take. Note, I’m absolutely not a Bezos fan. Maybe he is just chickening out against Trump and/or fighting against the proposed billionaire tax (which IMO will never happen.)
But consider that 1) even with all the damage Trump could do, Bezos will still be richer than god, 2) Bezos did not instruct the Washington Post to endorse Trump, and 3) he doesn’t seem to have asked them to keep things quiet either.
So of course this story breaks and of course there is all this media hullabaloo with the upshot being everyone now:
* knows that the WaPo was about to endorse Harris.
* is reminded that Trump has made official decisions and improperly pressured government matters based on personal feelings.
* is aware that even the 2nd richest man in the world fears the personal ire of a presidential candidate in a democracy, ostensibly with a solid rule of law.
I hate that this comes across as “he’s the billionaire we deserve, but not the one we need right now, and oh, BTW he's also playing 4D chess," but all this seems very expected. So maybe another way to look at this is: Bezos appears to submit to Trump, which in itself serves as a very publicly warning to the world about what will happen under Trump, and indirectly endorses Harris anyway.
I don't think he has to do 4D chess to signal support against Trump. He could always just use his giant megaphone to decry Trump as a wannabe dictator that improperly used his own power when he was President to punish his political enemies - something Trump does not shy away from publicly admitting.
What's even the point of being a billionaire if you're still scared of Trump?
Trump may be handed unprecedented [0] power, is quite openly and plainly motivated by retribution, has repeatedly threatened to use the power of the military and the state against his political enemies, and at least once has used his own media platform to call for the termination of the US constitution.
(Those are facts. Not political claims.)
Putting aside any broader assessments of his character, I think it is rational to be afraid of the consequences of being on the wrong side of such a person.
What is depressing is the number of people in positions of influence who do not feel like modelling the virtuous position of having fear of the consequences of doing what they believe to be the right thing but doing it anyway.
[0] I realise that in principle there is a precedent for him having this power because he had it before. But what any presidential candidate in 2024 now has is the opportunity to run an executive with the clear legal opinion that they are permanently immune from prosecution for most of their actions, and an implicit handbook on how to bury criminal acts in official communications that are covered by absolute immunity. This extended power has no precedent.
The Washington Post, of all papers, knows the answer: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Jamal_Khash...
Why is everyone in this thread pushing the idea that Bezos is scared of Trump? It seems more plausible to me he is scared of the DoJ breaking up Amazon under Harris.
The hedonic treadmill comes for everyone. Even the billionaires want more.
No one is safe from a nation state that is weaponized against you.
Just look at what happened in Saudi Arabia and the billionaires there.
Because soon it’s very possible Trump will rally the military behind him and start imprisoning billionaires who dared to cross him. He’ll be the only “billionaire” with real muscle to imprison his enemies for life or even summary execution.
About half of American voters are behind Trump. More poor/less educated coming to him compare to past cycles. Why wouldn’t a billionaire scared of him?
There is definitely a quiet support among the faang owners for Trump.
There's been so much focus on education as the new fault line in American politics. And though it is huge, and the less educated increasingly do support ultra-conservative policies, I think the even bigger fault line is across genders. And tech workers, though usually well educated, skew dramatically male and those degrees and salaries don't make them immune to the growing culture of male grievance and victimhood.
How quiet is it, if you and all of HN knows?
I think you can remove one of those A's from FAANG supporting Trump, and it's not Bezos' A...
I think they, like even some on the left, have reasoned that Trump will only be there for four years. That's it. He's gone, or in jail. That's four years they know who their opponent will be and the Democratic Party can prepare. Thinking a long game, it is possible the left has given up and said fine, let's get it over with.
Probably already mentioned in the comments below, but the subtext here is obvious. Bezos thinks Trump is very likely to win and he has killed this endorsement because it might screw his broad business interests in all kinds of ways under the administration of a vengeful Trump. The nature of Amazon makes it much more exposed to regulatory heat inside the U.S than would be the case for a more purely digital tech-driven firm like, say, Meta.
Aside from the likely cynicism of the move, the cliquish criticism of Bezos reeks of moralizing hypocrisy. Is there some exact moral duty among major tech company founders to effusively endorse specifically progressive, liberal elite-endorsed democrat candidates, to show their own kumbaya credentials? Bullshit. Even the ones who vigorously support democrat politicians are no less self interested in doing so. It almost always boils down to money and favorable regulations, whether someone supports the donkey or the elephant.
It's not a novel observation but there's another conclusion you can draw from the same information: it's in bezos's best interest for trump to win and he wants him to.
Does Bezos have uber-intel, and knows Trump is going to win?
Nobody does. It's a tossup, and he's hedging his bets.
lol... maybe he does? Number of trump signs vs. harris signs bought on Amazon?
(yes i know Jeff doesn't work there, but y'know...)
He is, unfortunately, a clear favourite to win. You don't have to have uber-intel to know that.
Just like their motto:
"Democracy dies in darkness"
Hopefully there are no dark times ahead.
Comparing the NYT and WaPo, seems to me the latter is more stridently alerting everyone to the dangers of a Trump presidency, this killed endorsement notwithstanding.
Actively making the Democrats chance of winning less likely for your own personal interests is shortsighted.
Jeff still needs customers, he needs a sane society where his businesses can operate from ?
Sorry but the leader of the Republican Party is completely unhinged. Bezos might get away with a tax break or avoid some other legal scrutiny or even Trumps gestapo hit squad,but wow, you’re giving up a lot for a little.
Actions like this completely undermine one of the main reasons people believe Trump should be president. Which is that he is too rich to be bought. Well, look at the rich people being bought by their own greed and shortsightedness now.
> making Democrats chance of winning less likely
Do you vote according to what others tell you to? Or do you believe most other people do so blindly? Dem voters will stay home because they didn't read a papers opinion? Or you believe that others can't tell the stance of a newspaper regarding a candidate from their reporting on them?
> he needs a sane society where his businesses can operate from ?
As someone from Eastern Europe I do not think that any oligarch really needs this.
Cannot in any way understand why this is an actual issue. Sheesh If more newspapers would stay out of endorsing political parties we would live in a better world.
Frankly leftist newspaper propaganda has done little but make the rightist ( especially the ones with a racist agenda ) political parties expand massively.
Every election i. almost any european country is showing this trend.
Why on earth are you all flaming this? Because it means its a hidden Trump support? Kamala is immensly unpopular, outside of all the glam endorsements. She is no Obama thats for sure. How abour adressing the root cause of that?
Wow I wish every newspaper was properly unbiased.
tldr I think you are all idiots for outrage over lack of proper political bias in a newspaper.
“Left wing publications caused right wing movements to be popular” is such a lazy trope and terrible “anti-anti-Trump” argument.
Thinking that newspapers should stay out of publishing opinions about political parties is basically the most authoritarian position you can take.
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Your comment broke several of the site guidelines, by (1) posting in the flamewar style, including nationalistic flamebait, (2) being snarky, (3) doing political battle, and (4) commenting about getting downvoted. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules? We'd appreciate it because we're trying to avoid hell here.
One candidate has proposed a day of violence and given indications they consider “anyone who disagrees with me” as an “enemy within”. I don’t think they have talked about televised tribunals, and they also have a … tenuous … relationship with the truth or following through on promises (even when baselines against normal “politician lie rate”)
Yeah, it's really scary right now. Trump with power is not going to end well for anyone, especially trans minorities
To be clear, the camps never went away, and we’ve been mass deporting for decades now. Support of ICE is a bipartisan effort. Iirc the only change Biden made was to end the policy of family separations. The rhetoric is massively different, but the actual policy is not.
I really wouldn’t hold my breath for a president that doesn’t fearmonger about immigration in the forseeable future.
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Yeah, we really are in denial.
the genocide doesn't give you some form of perspective?
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don’t ask german companies what they were doing during 1933-1945
Which party is ending capitalism? I'm curious, because there's one party saying explicitly that they intend to end the democratic process, one party explicitly stating the goal is the end of the rule of law, and one party saying they want to deploy the military against the supporters of the other political party.
You could make the argument that those positions are fundamentally opposed to capitalism as well, but that's not as explicit.
Regardless, only one party is threatening either of your alternatives, your straw man nonsense about ending capitalism not withstanding.
Democracy is largely driven by preferences of the super rich. So your statement is a little like choosing between the church* and the pope.
* I’m aware not all Christian religions are governed by the pope. But I hope you still get the symbolism I’m making.
Not all billionaires - Bill Gates endorsed Harris.
Mostly I agree. Billionaires chose long ago to prioritize wealth.
Capitalism. They own companies that are established. It’s in their interest to prevent competition.
Almost all established companies eventually support rules that enshrine themselves as monopolies in exchange to much tougher regulation.
Tariffs force governments to pick and choose industries to receive state protection. As do subsidies.
Even creating tons of paperwork for startups helps a lot.
Plenty of democracies function this way. Italy and Belgium come to mind.
Which is why we need to legislate away the billionaire.
Do you really think Harris and co are able or willing to end capitalism? They have nearly as much to lose as the billionaires.
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HN is not a living organism, it’s an abstract entity formed by the people who engage in the site. As it happens within any community, there’s no such thing as consistency. In fact, so diverse is this community that I’d wager that luck and chance explain much of what gains traction or gets flagged here.
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What an odd view of history to imagine that newspapers weren't always (and importantly) open about their editor's opinions.
The idea of "objective journalism" is both ahistorical and unsound and mostly just acts as cover for claiming that certain journalism has subjectivity we're not allowed to call out.
It's far better to know how the editors see the world than to falsely pretend that they don't.
That's basically the entire history of publishing.
What a sad state of affairs when people who consider themselves educated enough to opine about what newspapers should and should not do clearly has no historical understanding or basic familiarity with newspapers.
It's called an editorial. Newpapers have them.
Every choice of coverage is an opinion about what is important, and shapes the tone of coverage as surely as an editorial. This is actually a very common critique of the News Media, which loves to aggrandize itself by saying that it is neutral.
At least editorials are honest about the views of the institution.
Facts still must be interpreted. It could be a fact that a credible source claimed X and a non-credible source claimed the opposite. A newspaper's job is to also provide this context, not merely the "facts" of what was stated.
Similarly, an endorsement could in countless ways not simply be partisan. For example, based on what is most predicted to help the country with X/Y/Z.
If this was a long-standing policy, or one at least announced well in advance of the election it wouldn't get much attention. That it's coming right before the election for transparently selfish reasons on the part of the paper's owner is not great.
For the past 100 years, literally since WWI, all media organizations have been used to constantly launder opinions into the brains of the American people, disguised as 'fact'.
If the Washington Post only reported facts, it would be the most left wing newspaper in the US by a country mile.
Wait until they tell this guy about Fox News.
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If you flag, please don't also comment that you did. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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Even if one is Bozo and the other is Pennywise?
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The traditional ideal is that editors and journalists exercise a freedom of practice that owners don't intefere with, much the same as the academic freedom tenured professors are traditionally given at universities.
In practice, that's of course not the case (in either domain), but it predictably makes front page news when an owner acts too egregiously domineering.
> Couldn't a simple answer here be that he felt Kamala is unqualified and terrible and as a newspaper with a lot of readership and influence, he decided against endorsing her?
Sure, but why should the personal opinion of the owner of the newspaper prevail over the opinion of the editorial staff?
It's not his endorsement, it's an endorsement written by the editorial board that he told them not to run. Notably, he didn't endorse either.
He's entitled to do so as owner of the paper. But it reeks of cowardice.
The worry is 100% that this is happening to please Trump. The evidence is that he hasn’t had a hand in editorials until now all of a sudden.
It’s his choice I suppose but I don’t think it’s crazy to be worried about the precedent of a formerly very independent institution caving so readily.
True neutrality is endorsing Harris. Because it's not like Trump is a real choice. He's objectively terrible.
Harris isn't terrible or unqualified. She has plenty of experience and unlike Trump cares and wants to learn the details of policy.
The two sides are not remotely similar. And yes Bezos decision to let himself be blackmailed is insane
Sure, but then Bezos should be writing something explaining it. Instead, he's silently just using his money to squash opinions he doesn't agree with. The is the exact sort of conspiracy that Trump likes to claim where Soros is the reason anyone doesn't endorse him, except now it literally happened and it's to help him, and he turned around and took a meeting with Blue Origin right after.
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Could you please stop posting in the flamewar style? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, and we've already had to warn you about this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41790409). If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
On this particular topic please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41950993 also.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endorsements_in_the_2024_Unite...
???
>after he fell down the stairs
I think Biden fell UP stairs more often on camera.
Recent paper came out suggesting that classifying media coverage of major media outlets identified something like a 94% positive take for Kamala and a 98% negative take for Trump. I think the media companies gave up the mask a while ago. James O'keefe had a great undercover journalism piece where one the producer's of MSNBC outright said they are a propaganda arm for the DNC.
A cowards way of endorsing Trump, to be honest.
Regardless of its impact on the election, this decision ends the Washington Post a serious news organization. Prior to this, you could reasonably trust it as a decent source, if questionable on tech & Amazon stories due to the ownership bias. After this, it's clear that Bezos purchased it with intent to push his own views. It's no longer a reliable source for news, it's just a mouthpiece for Amazon & Bezos's other companies.
Sad to see an important newspaper die in this way. I hope the people that do good work there are able to find new employment.
At this point it's just tax optimization...
He knows something
I mean not really
Its just a hedge.
If HArris wins, she's unlikley to actually take petty revenge. If trump wins, he has past form.
He knows that one of the key pillars of fascism is the strengthening of corporate power.
Billionaires are not your friends.
Yes we can infer. His political leanings are fairly Democrat. His media puppet is very left leaning. He didn’t announce this policy years ago when it would have been a nothing burger, instead just a couple weeks before the election as a splashy egg on face moment.
I can smell fish. His best information is that he was backing the wrong horse and now he is scrambling to contain the damage. Because it’s also quite a slap to the Harris campaign, he must not think much of their chances or sees a very, very asymmetrical risk profile here. Snub versus scorched earth.
We are going to be in for a very interesting four years.
He knows Trump will hold it against him, and his probability of becoming president is nonzero.
The irony I see is that all of the "reporters" who resign(ed) will soon be pitching their Substacks on Twitter.
I think the endorsement was just bad journalism or bad writing and Bezos just did not want to risk it. If such an endorsement would come out in such a divided climate, then i would want it to be excellent. Maybe it was just partisan.
Who knows.
They endorsed in 2020 and 2016 and 2012 and 2008 and if they were so serious about adopting national neutrality they should have announced this in January instead of spiking an existing endorsement
Evidence that Bezos might have had good reasons to nix his paper's endorsement: the Nation withdrew its earlier endorsement of Haris:
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/kamala-harris-cou...
A piece written by the interns is absolutely not a withdrawal of the endorsement by the Nation. Please don’t mislead people.
So why is it that this is about money and Amazon contracts? Why isn't it about Kamala just being so bad, in Bezos's eyes, that she doesn't deserve an endorsement. I think that's way more likely.
I am not surprised however that the liberal media will look for any problem over admitting it's their own candidate that's the problem.
Bezos owns 9% of Amazon. His personal share of any 10bn contract might be a few hundred million over many years. He doesn't care!
> Bezos owns 9% of Amazon. His personal share of any 10bn contract might be a few hundred million over many years. He doesn't care!
The rest of your comment aside, I think this sentence proves too much. You can use it to prove that Bezos doesn't care about almost anything in Amazon, or that most billionaires don't care much about what happens in their companies, because it only impacts a small part of their already vast fortune.
It's pretty clear that this is not true for many billionaires.
> Why isn't it about Kamala just being so bad, in Bezos's eyes, that she doesn't deserve an endorsement.
Bad for whom? Bezos is a multibillionaire, his problems are not our problems. It’s detached from reality to think a guy that made his fortune exploiting workers and other businesses in any way understands or cares for society’s struggles.