This is several days after the WP shamelessly said that Russian hackers had attacked a fundamental part of the US's infrastructure, without doing any research work before publishing their article.
The WP is becoming the voice of the White House.
The WP is becoming the voice of the White House.
They didn't hedge, they didn't talk about possibilities and Russian actions increasing scrutiny. They quoted a stream of (also irresponsible) politicians who personally blamed Putin, and talked about how this was discovered as part of a hunt for Grizzly Steppe (true, but falsely written like the malware was Grizzly Steppe).
This one has been a pretty impressive round of narrative-fitting, and it's just going to be an embarrassment that makes it hard to convince anyone when foreign governments do get up to something.
According to a Poynter interview [1], Marty Baron, editor at the Washington Post, says "Bezos doesn't try to influence editors".
The Washington Post doesn't seem to avoid putting Amazon into a negative daylight either. E.g. the article [2] mentioning Amazon using cobalt from dubious sources.
Pushing the narrative that traditional newspapers like the Washington Post are propaganda tools without supporting evidence, looks suspiciously like propaganda in itself.
[1] https://www.poynter.org/2016/marty-baron-on-spotlight-jeff-b...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/batteries/c...
Gee, I wonder why the editor won't publicly admit that the man who pays his salary maybe sometimes try to influence him
The same strictures don't apply, for example, in the UK (my country) which has much more fluid boundaries between journalists and proprietors. Were I to read something similar about the Sun, for example, I would be pretty sceptical...
> in the UK (my country)
Yeah, maybe you being in a different country might be the issue here. I'm not going to comment on news in your country, I'm not entirely knowledgeable.
If there's one thing I've learned in the past few years is how terrible the major news outlets are, ranging from obvious mouthpieces for various political causes to how little fact checking they do. Hell, there was a fairly prominent mistrial in Charleston last month and a major news outlet took a picture of a several year old protest from a completely different state and posted it talking about protests and riots after the mistrial. There wasn't a damned thing. At this point I really cannot trust much of anything that is reported by these organizations. It's a joke.
There are lots of things wrong with the US media. Institutional groupthink is definitively a thing. He-said-she-said reporting is also problematic and deeply embedded in US journalistic culture. Sub editing and before-publication fact checking of breaking news stories varies between fine and woeful.
Look. The New York Times and Washington Post have a liberal culture. They're written by well-paid mainly white guys, who live in Democratic cities. Their worldview is mainly establishment-progressive, notwithstanding their attempts to provide balance on the op-ed pages.
But given that, you should understand that they are fundamentally honest organisations. They try hard to get their stories right, they argue internally about the right thing to do, and they're prepared to take expensive and difficult stands on principle - e.g. protection of sources in court or publishing stories like the Pentagon Papers. Other news organizations with different cultural biases but high standards also exist - the WSJ and the Financial Times being two.
There is a massive difference between the NY Posts, Breitbarts, Daily Mails, and other people who are actively trying to sell you a pup, and news organisations which are flawed but honest. You do yourself and the world a disservice by lumping them in together.
But sure, story selection is for sure a product of what a given outlet considers 'newsworthy', which has political bias (conscious or otherwise) baked in.
An honest organization would not have printed the original article, it was far beyond an honest mistake.
During the summer of 2015 we had a bit of a "national tradgedy" shooting in my city of Charleston, the kind that consumes major news outlets for a week or two. Switching between the local paper and CNN (or Fox, or other national papers) was amazing to me, the difference so stark. It was clear the local journalists (I suppose disclaimer: I know a good number of them) were doing their absolute best to report the news, not sell papers. Those national, credible outlets were just trying to stir shit, ramp up the controversy. Anything to appear relevant and knowledgeable without actually being so.
Directing propaganda is the job of intelligence agencies.
The main geopolitical divide between power/intelligence factions in US in past few decades has been, and remains, the question of China-Russia relationship.
One camp believed the Sino-Soviet break was real and bet the Western farm on integrating China into the Western order. The other camp did not believe and used this very same publication, The Washington Post, to set into motion the removal of Nixon (who initiated the openning of China).
Given Washington Post's over the top anti-Russian stance these days, and the incoming clique's equally over the top statements viz a viz China ("bad") and Russia ("good"), what we're seeing here is either a real or theatrical conflict between factions that has spilled over to the propaganda organs of powerful Americans.
I agree, and the difference in tone between the original article and this would seem to agree...to me the difference seemed extremely odd, as if something else is happening to cause it.
"I wonder what Jeff will think of this?"
Reflect on Orwell's "Freedom of the Press"
The only "doubt" is whether or not they are working for their state or just condoned by their state.
Plus a big chunk of playing to public opinion because it's heresy to imply let alone state as fact that Russian or Chinese offensive comp sci is better than US defensive comp sci. Even though, in your hearts, you all know it to be true.
You seem to believe the White House wasn't voted into power and somehow does not have America's best interest at heart.
Don't forget to remain just as critical when the next president takes office.
>You seem to believe the White House wasn't voted into power and somehow does not have America's best interest at heart.
your statement sounds just like the propaganda from my childhood in USSR. Substituting the voice of the governing body for the voice of the nation has been a kingpin of any totalitarian state known to date.
Hardly. Only two of the ~4000 people who work for the White House are actually elected. A further dozen or so need to be approved by congress. The rest are chosen without the consent of the people.
Voted in power by a bit more than 50% of voters, of which only 60~70% amongst the registered ones bothered to vote. That's a minority no matter how you look at it. And on top of that, people under a certain age are not considered able to vote - and in certain times women and people of different races were removed from voting either.
Add to this that a president can do the total opposite of what he was elected for, and there is no guarantee at all that you get what you voted for even if you were in the lucky minority who "won".
Not at all. You only have to believe that the White House isn't guaranteed to have America's best interest at heart.
We don't emphasize a strong and independent press because the President is always evil, or un-American. We emphasize it because we elected Nixon, and we could elect someone far worse than him. (We may well have just done so.)
Like maintaining a military in times of peace, we benefit from maintaining a free press as long as there is the possibility of a White House working against our best interests.