Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
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.
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.
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."
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/10/amazon-wants-to-depose-presi...
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...
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.
It's always been the case. That's how Supreme Court works.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2024/10/22/nx-s1-5161480/trump-media-thr...
You write this, apparently sincerely, as if the other side of politics do not and will not attack their political opponents.
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.)
...probably at a way lower profit range than most corporate contracts given how demanding gov deals are.
Citation needed
I thought they had fabulous margins
Am I wrong
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.
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.
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
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.
> 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 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.
I can not really think of any truly impartial news source. Can you? At least no in the countries I have lived in
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.
That's not factually accurate. The BBC is principally funded through the licence fee (i.e. directly by the viewers).
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.
This is the precise opposite of what would be required.
The Guardian's ownership is independent
The Guardian's views are very much not. Very predictable
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.
You are not British, are you :-)
The US government punishing Amazon is not.
The first amendments limits the governemt in its actions, not the people.
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).
Their coverage of international events only impartial if those events have no effect on UK.
In recent history, apparently the last time they did not endorse a candidate was the 1980's.
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 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.
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.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#:~:text=Don....
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 ;)
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.
I’d argue impartiality isn’t a thing in any human domain anyway.
* 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?
Fraud is not a victimless crime
Can WaPo really be perceived as "impartial" if we know they already were going to endorse Harris?
- 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.
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.
>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...
Just some context worth adding.
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")
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.
Here's a front page title from the Nov. 5 1888 edition of the New York World, run by Pulitzer (yes, that one):
A Plot - The Republicans' desperate scheme to secure electors
1. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3906395
That's fine... For some, age does not really slow them down. For others it does. People just need to be real about it.
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?
At least you and I can agree how vile and disgusting that behaviour is.
the top 100 political articles from WaPo and the NYT from this year ...
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.
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
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...
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).
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.
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.
Pew says 57 to 42.
Evangelicals factor into this I guess.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It absolutely does not. You have no idea what my political preferences are, and I'm quite confident that your guesses are wrong.
The customer is predominantly the advertiser. Newspapers publish opinions to have something to fill the empty space surrounding the advertisements.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sound point unless you figure Bezos is accepting government may be about to change?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
> 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,
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?
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Incomplete list. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Democratic_newspape...
He owns the paper, they just work there.
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.
There's definitely some very hard and frank questions we need to ask if free information decides to focus on profits over communication.
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.
I’d say that is something.
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.
Edit: lots of changes to try and clarify my point
That may be less of a problem than government goon-squads raiding the Washington Post but I still think it's a problem.
The issue at hand here is what happens to objective news reporting when a rampant vindictive psychopath enters the office of the President.
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.
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.
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.
"Engineers make implements of war" or so.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
Are there a clear bright line tests for things like "objective" and "bias" and "fair"?
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
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!
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Of course with endorsements you can technically bring up the is/aught dichotomy. The facts may be what they are but that doesn’t necessitate any particular action. While this is technically true, I never see anyone complaining about the ethics of testing products and endorsing good ones. Wirecutter is basically doing the same thing with headphones and running shoes. Yet I only ever see pushback on political endorsements.
In short, umpires are neutral and fair but the fact that some teams win a lot more than others doesn’t mean they’re not doing their job.
It’s not 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.
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...
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.)
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.
There is no neutral publication. Of there is an editorial board there is by definition no neutrality.
That's pretty charitable. In my experience most opinion and "analysis" is typically heavily biased and in service of some agenda.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
On abortion, there's now a national patchwork of policy. You could write a damned book analyzing their implementation and consequences.
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?
Because they work for the newspaper and that's part of their job?
> How does it not undermine a paper's journalistic ethics to be neutral and fair?
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.
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.
Why do you think that readers don’t understand that?
It hasn't felt like this to me for many years, for pretty much any outlet.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
It’s not biased to call a spade a spade.
I say supposedly because I find it hard to believe the WaPo endorsement would actually sway anyone.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
granted, they may also have interests or agendas. They point is we need decentralization!
How will an apology from Bezos improvement life?
What would improve mymlife are clear concrete actions not measly words.
It's a dream but would not last. All sides would attack it for being for whoever the boogeyman they think is.
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.
The difference is that the paper as a whole won't endorse a candidate?
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.
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.
Endorsements express the values of the paper and gives people more information about the candidates and what is at stake.
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.
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.
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.
At least Taylor Swift was able to make her recommendation, so I know I'm all set.
The newsroom basically did all they could to say it without saying it.
But that's a societal issue that's only given lip service at most.
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).
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.
And the standard to/not publish should be clearly laid out and justified in their own words.
Probably not a single voter cares.
It's funny reading the comments here but has anyone considered that Bezos may in fact support Trump? Bezos is a billionaire and Harris seeks to target them to fix the deficit.
Its just possible Bezos supports Trump and it makes economic sense too, though its terribly unfashionable to come out and say such a thing.
The fact that he had the editorial board he had (1), which wrote up an endorsement of Harris several weeks ago for his approval, and then he suddenly decided it was better not to endorse at all? That fits cowardice much more closely than it does pure economic interest.
This isn't government censorship, obviously, but do remember that the only point of the Editorial Board is to write opinion pieces and have them published in the paper. That is their entire job! They aren't reporters, they don't go out and ferret out news. They have opinions, and they write them out and get published in the paper. And they wrote out an endorsement of Harris, and suddenly it was announced (to the board only slightly before it was announced to the rest of the world, according to published reports) that they weren't going to endorse for President any more. That's a fact pattern that leads one strongly to Jeff Bezos' personal cowardice as the most parsimonious explanation.
1: At least before the resignations come in, I expect the board to be very different in a few weeks.
But it wasn’t censored for no reason, and it’s entirely reasonable to question the motives that led to this specific act of censorship.
It’s a big deal that a major historic news organization’s editorial board is overruled by the owner, whether or not you agree with the decision.
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.
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.
It’s not that I particularly like Trump as an individual (quite the opposite), but Harris is just very unappealing to me from a policy standpoint.
I do think that the Hitler comparison undermines any point you are trying to make so maybe tone it down a bit.
You may have noticed that basically everyone in Trumps first term cabinet has come out and called him things ranging from "moron" to "fascist" to a "danger to the country". This is not normal. It's extremely abnormal. It's a warning to the country.
Just trying to gather details.
Edit: I'm gonna have to spin up alternate accounts again for the first time in a decade if I get told one more time to "slow down" my posts.
This election is not a normal election, sadly far from it. It's not business-as-usual about policies, personalities and partly loyalties.
This election is, sadly, about paying heed to the warnings that have been given to you by the cabinet members, incl. military generals, that worked most closely with Trump in his first term, and the senior Republicans who are voting Democrat.
When multiple generals, who have worked directly with/for Trump, tell you that he is a fascist and "danger to the country", then it would be wise to pay attention.
If you care about the future of America, and want to safeguard democracy, then, sadly, you need to step up and vote to keep Trump out of office.
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.
This is the key.
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.
But it exposes the fiction that Bezos allows editorial freedom at the WaPo.
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.
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...
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
By the way, I think Musk did the same math. He likely thinks/knows Trump is an idiot, but it's almost all upside supporting him and little downside. Plus, Musk is likely still upset he was left out of a Whitehouse summit on EVs a few years ago. Regardless of what people think of Musk that was BS, and I wonder if that snub is part of what led him to come out in support of Trump so vocally.
“Elon Musk has been in deep-cover WWE-level kayfabe for the past several years” is an opinion you literally have to make up out of thin air and hopes. There is nothing public indicating that that is true. His enthusiastic and wholehearted embrace of the value set endemic amongst Trump supporters has been and continues to be very much on public display. The dude posts nonstop about culture war bullshit all day when he’s not showing off that he’s carrying around two shields in Elden Ring for some reason.
Billionaires are not aircraft carriers or nation states. They do not have a special type of existence that bestows their opinions or decisions with a deeper complexity or meaning than any other person exercising whatever level of power they have access to. “Jeff Bezos is a guy that has the power to decide what’s printed in a newspaper and exercised it in support of his preferred candidate” as an opinion only sounds outlandish to a non-billionaire because people aren’t comfortable with the idea that for one guy, changing what goes in the newspaper is easier than buying a bumper sticker.
If papers were meant to be more neutral, I suppose they would need to be owned as cooperatives by the subscribers themselves, assuming the subscribers were balanced and philosophically diverse.
It'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.
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.
We're "here without an endorsement" because the media machine decides to talk about it, not because it's significant.
The most influential power the media has is what they decide to write about and what they don't. They don't report the news, they make the news.
Sure it does, when someone says "logically it follows" then there needs to be a logical argument.
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
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?
1: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/the-celler-kefauver-act...
Everything is awful about this. What would it take WaPo away from this horrible person?
Endorsing Harris is a no-brainer. Quashing an endorsement of Harris reeks of cowardice.
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?
The Washington Post says it will not endorse a candidate for president
Second: this is what happens in Brazil. Everybody gets angry because each news outlet defends its own conservative candidate.
[1] Which, let's be honest, is pervasive and popular. You aren't simultaneously arguing to kick Hannity off the air, right?
That's why I see aiming for unbiased reporting to miss the point of journalism. We want opinions, but not random uneducated opinions, we want well argumented, relevant and proof backed opinions.
"Candidate X is a liar" is valid journalism if there's the facts to back the claim and the analysis to make it a thought provoking piece that brought something to the readers. We have whole Pullitzer winning books going into minute details about how some public figures are crooks.
To note, not reporting, not expressing opinions is also a bias so I don't see a middle ground. For instance if a major national journalism would not publish the news of a candidate getting arrested, that in itself is a biased decision. If they'd publish a dry piece just quoting the official police declaration, that would also be tremendous bias and everyone would see it as a refusal to comment on it.
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.
WaPo has been giving out endorsements since the 70s. The era you’re pining for never existed.
By no means. Word choice on its own __is__ a bias. Even if you reported straight facts, the word choice used presents a bias or not. Is it a military action or a terrorist attack? Is it a protest? An occupation? Are they Freedom Fighters?
Choosing __to__ or __not to__ use an organization's given name or a description of them, is having a bias.
Choosing to report on something at all is a presentation of bias.
There is bias in everything and to imagine there isn't is to be even more susceptible to it.
Getting some notion of what USA politics are like on HN, I can understand why you'd have this viewpoint, but I don't think it's true
The news I am used to, I couldn't tell you what political color it has. The selection they make seems based on the perceived severity, which certainly means there is a selection process that must be introducing some sort of bias, but as near as I can tell, this bias is towards a shared humanity and not a party
Perhaps I am just naïve, so I opened the local Wikipedia and it has no mention of them being accused of having a bias, political coloring or selection, notable omissions, or any such thing
I disagree strongly with the party for hate and egocentricity having come out as the biggest one in the most recent election, and to a lesser extent with the rich people be rich party from the previous ~decade, so it's not like all noses are pointed in the same direction where I'm from; but I couldn't tell you how this organization (the default thing if you turn on your TV at prime time) feels about any particular party beyond that I expect they would condemn hate and violence in general -- shared humanity, basically.
Sure, but just because you can't be perfectly unbiased doesn't mean the only alternative is to become a mouthpiece for a political party.
NYT is particularly guilty of that behavior.
How one contextualizes a story and presents the attention grabbing headline puts a massive thumb on the scale of how the topic is perceived.
Because of what the article mentions or doesn’t mention, provides context for or no context for, the exact same core story centerpiece is biased and leading. Any impression the author wants to convey is easy to bring out in the “neutral” writing. This is simply a fact of writing.
And yet some reporters and news orgs, like the NYT, profess they are neutral observers as if from the planet zorg recording a miraculous unbiased story.
No, that is impossible and everyone knows it. Claiming to be neutral is gas lighting.
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.
The job of the journalist is to try to present a version of the story which is as close to the truth as possible, and without leaving out any relevant information. But, also the story is in context of the values which most of us hold dear, because we are human beings.
We might have thought that an unbiased news story would have to be written by a robot, but as we know now, LLMs are biased too.
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
Just as how universities are starting to adopt neutrality, so should news outlets.
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.
I don't disagree with some of the things that blog post is saying, but excluding the opinions on the Washington Post home page, where is the is outright bullshit or propaganda? I hear the opinion often but I don't see it when I go to a newspaper.
Now if you were to go to the home page of reddit or twitter there's clearly tons of propaganda.
The current headline on the Washington post is talking about Israeli strikes in Iran.
Is that the most immediate event pertaining to Israel? Probably. Is that the most important recent event pertaining to Israel? Well, that depends, doesn’t it?
However, with video and websites, it is very easy to mix editor opinion with news. People tuning into a news channel mid-report don't necessarily know they're listening to just an opinion, and same goes for people reading the headline from an embed or URL without clicking through to the page.
Another thing I often notice is that opinion pieces get to play more loose with the facts. They can say completely unsubstantiated things or get actual facts wrong, but still say something as if it had the credibility of the organization. Yet if the backlash gets too strong they get to deflect by arguing that it was just an opinion and not meant to reflect on the organization.
The current state of opinion pieces is like running a blog about my research and getting important things wrong there, then expecting people to assume that my actual research publications are accurate.
Is the superiority of phonics based literacy approaches "neutral" or criticism of teachers unions? If a economics professors research indicates that, say, supply-side economics doesn't work under current circumstances, is it "neutral" for her to tell her class that? If a law professor thinks that judges only make ad hoc arguments to achieve whatever ends they desire, can they teach their class legal nihilism?
"Neutral" is the sort of thing that someone who has never actually tried to teach or inform can think is reasonable, until you actually try and do it and realize that there are people out there who strongly want to contest whether the earth is round, and that either you throw up your hands and accept epistemological nihilism or you accept that you have to pick sides, and try and do a good job of picking the right sides.
It does not mean that professors are not allowed to talk about disagreeable things that are required for teaching the subject. If anything, it makes it easier for them to do so, as they can teach whatever is necessary to produce well-functioning members of society.
Eg you don't need to endorse a specific candidate to fulfill your duty of teaching students. You don't need to avoid talking about research that runs counter to the organization's politics. You don't need to openly pick sides on protests besides advocating for enough civilty to allow your institution to keep operating, and so on. I'm fairly certain that a good portion of the neutrality statements from universities have been coming from the difficult ideological situation presented by the flaring up of the Israel-Gaza conflict, where picking sides opens them up to either being islamophobes or antisemites.
I'm not really sure what you're getting at with the tension about creationism as part of science education. In my schooling the early science education often covered the history of the topic, which would inevitably talk about the local religious ideas, working it's way through them, sometimes even with brief readings of some associated stories, through to major discoveries that provided the evidence for the modern consensus. That's just part of providing a comprehensive education and connecting it to the culture kids are exposed to?
If you are referring to traditional cultures, they have creation myths which are better suited for social sciences classes.
Showing both sides of the debate is itself a worse form of indoctrination. Haha, look at how creationism is pseudoscience! Now you will be tested on the reasons why. No, let's just not platform propaganda as if it deserved any fair footing in good-faith context of discourse.
I was a volunteer at a US science museum that received some taxpayer funding back in the mid-aughts when "Scientific Creationism" was still a thing. Our museum had (and still has) an institutional commitment to the scientific consensus on the age of the universe and earth. If we had caught a volunteer providing visitors with creationism they would have been asked to hand in their badge and not work any more shifts, because that was our institutional position and everyone had to respect that.
Trying to throw that away because of Israel-Palestine is much more threatening to the value of truth than it helps it.
And being perfectly neutral is not possible, no.
I.e. it is better if the puppets think they are living in a fair democracy, since they might act like they do, decreasing the power of the puppet masters. The opposite is concepts like the series "House of cards", that instruct people to play the game and be "political".
I define "neutral" as loosely "trying to not be biased".
Like, for example, pretending until it became way over the top too embarrassing that the president is mentally fit for another 4 year of any work, is a good example of being "political" about it.
Gaslighting that backfired badly.
So I think either your definition is wrong or your goal of neutrality is wrong.
I don't think that is your point, but treating creationism as a science would rather quickly disprove it? Like Dowsing rods or whatever.
If God descended from heaven (lets just pretend he did, not a powerful alien or whatever) and showed you how he creationisted everything, then it would be 'biased' to pretend it didn't happen. But I guess you could still believe it is fake, as long as the facts are considered in some way, without being biased.
But the issue of whether science class was "biased" against creationism- and whether it should neutrally teach both sides in public schools, museums, etc.- was a huge political argument in the US for decades, resulting in many legal battles- with Justice Scalia and Chief Justice Rehnquist voting that it should be taught in public school science class (Edwards v. Aguillard, 1987, decided 7-2 against creationism). Given the current makeup of the Court - where Scalia's positions have far more clout than they did then- I hesitate to see where a new case would end up.
To just wave that away because you want the world to be different is avoiding how the world actually works. It would be nice if organizations could be "neutral" on things you disagree with them about and biased on things you agree with them about, but unfortunately people disagree with you, and they get a vote too.
Far more important to spreading the truth to let organizations have bias, and then build good institutions that achieve positions closer to the truth, and those institutions get respected for being closer to the truth, and lose respect for being further from the truth.
1: The Omphalos Argument, the God of Abraham could have made the entire universe 6000 years ago with an appearance of age, with light from distant galaxies already in flight towards the Earth, with radioactive isotope ratios consistent with a 13.7 billion year old universe and a 4.54 billion year old Earth, for His own purposes.
Omphalos is Greek for navel, and the name comes from a medieval argument over whether Adam and Eve had bellybuttons: they would not have had one naturally, obviously, due to their special creation, but then they would not be like all other humans, and they are supposed to be. But if they did have them was God lying about their past? This is why most artists of the time carefully placed some cover where the bellybutton would be, to stay neutral in this argument.
In that sense, I agree with you.
But you can interpret neutral more as not attempting to influence. In that sense, it does not mean the result will be neutral, but that you tried to be. Neutrality is an effort, like trying to be kind to others, or to be positive. It's an attempt at curbing bias. And I think that's something you'd want journalists to practice. Just like it's beneficial to have people try to be kind and positive, even if it's impossible for them to truly be at all times and to the most extent, it does make the world a better place still when people try.
Now, if you tried to read news, and wanted to form your own opinion, would you rather read the one from someone purposely siding with one side, and specifically choosing their words and what to say in a conscious effort to bring you over to their position? Or would you rather read the one from someone attempting to be impartial, disclosing their bias from the start so you can weigh it in, attempting to show the arguments against theirs, as well as their own, spend some time to discuss the other viewpoint, have quotes from both sides, etc.
Journalism and journalists are not supposed to be neutral, but impartial.
Ethics are pretty universal.
I at least, am out of patience for sophistry as if this is just a normal and innocent difference of perspective.
Anyone who has taken a basic philosophy or ethics class or read more than the summary page of their history books knows this is not even remotely true
This is said by both sides, it is equally stupid every time.
If ethics are pretty universal, how is it that one party wants no abortions at all and thinks any abortion that isn't absolutely medically necessary is evil and the other party wants abortions right up until viable birth and thinks that anything less than that is evil?
Especially when considering that most of the world is somewhere in between, where abortions are legal for a few weeks and then illegal unless absolutely necessary.
You’ve got the position of the other party wrong as well, but I’m not going to even bother correcting that because if you don’t find the above completely vile there’s no helping you.
You are either with us, or against us.
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.
The US seems really unstable right now. It is like a ever growing political cacophony. And blaming the "other side" for a mutual problem seems silly for an external observer.
The bad faith tone is making the caricatures real by moving people further from each other and entrenching distinctive extremes as ingroup markers.
E.g. I feel that during the pandemic supporters of the former president believed the caricatures of his policy on the matter, making it a thing.
Trying to keep a "the truth is in the middle" attitude is unethical.
I think the main issue becomes "bad faith", and we're back to the credibility issue. IMHO discourse should be fact based, and arguments should be researched. If you're calling your opponent names, show the receipt and not vague gesturing at what you think reality is.
Blaming the other side should be fine, as long as you can defend that position.
It is illogical too. In a simple question of "little" and "much" the truth could be "even smaller" and "way bigger than much".
> I think the main issue becomes "bad faith"
Ye I think I agree here about it being the main concern. Bad faith accusation, debates etc seem to radicalize the supporters of the accused. I think you make the caricature real at some point when supporters start to believe the misconception.
The population already struggles with determining fact from fiction. Taking away the power from journalists because a _billionaire_ wants to ensure his wealth remains high.
Your definition of neutral appears to be “shut up” and is creepily authoritarian.
It would seem you didn't care or notice because there previously wasn't an opinion conflict with the owners.
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.
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.
https://smalldeedsdone.com/2024/07/09/do-not-obey-in-advance...
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.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/25/us/politics/trump-officia...
These aren't nobodies, they aren't the only ones close to him saying this, and that's before his public statements. The bulk of Project 2025 is a how-to guide for rooting out administrative disloyalty. I don't think he'll be successful but I don't want to deal with the shit he's going to cause in the attempt.
It would be really really easy to make everyone feel better by nominating literally anyone else, preferably a Moderate Republican. I'll personally go door to door campaigning for them if it means not Trump.
That's how a Banana Republic functions.
I don't actually think he'll be able to end democracy, because I think a sufficient number of Americans (including in the military) will stand up to him, but I do believe he'd like to.
Like probably we’ll still have elections but you know, so do Hungary and Russia.
Trump withheld disaster aid from blue states: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-de...
Trump already punished Amazon for the Washington Post’s reporting: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/washington-post-endo...
And like, if you don’t believe any of that reporting, listen to the man himself? Like he regularly and personally advocates putting his opponents in jail. Either you’re saying he’s blatantly lying about his intentions or your entire defense of him is that he’s an incompetent nincompoop.
The problem is that because it’s probably true that we’re not going to all and up in prison camps on Inauguration Day, you can claim that things aren’t really bad, which is absurd. Like, lots of people have ordinary lives in authoritarian countries. Most of them are not in fact North Korea.
The US becoming far more authoritarian and cronyistic is still really bad.
To me, the US has become basically 1984 the last 10+ years but because of the "left", that has become so radicalized, that now everyone and everything to the right to Stanlin is labelled far-right/nazi/hitler/etc.
People as diverse and mutually antagonistic as George Orwell, Noam Chomsky and C.S. Lewis said that the outer elites -- the exact kind of people that inhabit HN -- were far more thoroughly propagandized than the working class and the poor. It's on full display here.
CEASE & DESIST: I, together with many Attorneys and Legal Scholars, am watching the Sanctity of the 2024 Presidential Election very closely because I know, better than most, the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential Election. It was a Disgrace to our Nation! Therefore, the 2024 Election, where Votes have just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again. We cannot let our Country further devolve into a Third World Nation, AND WE WON’T! Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.
It is right here https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1133692554916...
He's right there saying it. We're in a slow motion train wreck. Bezos is chickening out because of it.
You really might see the end of democracy in America within weeks. Trump is telling you he's going to end it. One of the richest men in the world is listening to him.
i guess Bezos can bend the leadership principles back and forth the way it best fits his current needs.
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...
> have bent the knee
This sounds a bit like "thedonald" nomenclature?
Where is that assumption in my GP comment? I said Bezos gave Trump the most powerful endorsement possible.
(The rest of the parent is a distraction.)
I read "bent the knee" as some sort of humiliation? I.e. Bezos don't really want to support Trump, but did anyway. Also on "thedonald" it was used as some sort of "humiliated loser folding in line" meme which is why I namedroped it.
English is not my native tongue so I get such nuances wrong sometimes.
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...
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"?
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.
Everything is backwards.
> 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
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.
- Don't know who The Washington Post editorial board would endorse
- Would change who they are voting for based on this lack of endorsement
But I could be wrong.
Then again, I always wonder what the hell actually went through peoples minds in Nazi Germany.
This is an issue with first past the post, but that's a much larger thing to tackle.
I’m not enamored with Democrats, but Trump doesn’t share Constitutional values and I’m very much for independent journalism.
This is bad.
It’s a distinct lack of imagination and historical knowledge that stops at one event, and refuses to ponder the long term consequences.
- 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.
California has even blocked SpaceX because they don't like the politics of Musk (https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-10-11/la-me-sp...) so I would say is risky to expect any of the two (or its followers) not seeking revenge.
https://timothysnyder.org/on-tyranny
Helpfully, the relevant quote I was thinking of is directly on the books website:
> Do not obey in advance.
> Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.
(The quote on the website goes on with several pages of examples.)
On X they're floating the theory that he knew this would cause a lot of them to resign, and wanted that for other reasons. All we can do is speculate, I guess.
> In a 2019 lawsuit, Amazon claimed it lost a $10 billion Pentagon cloud computing contract to Microsoft because Trump used “improper pressure ... to harm his perceived political enemy” Bezos.
Notably, most presidential candidates aren’t so petty and vindictive as to cancel contracts with political opponents for spite, but we’re talking about Trump here. It would be best if you woke up to this reality.
Or, just to throw out a few ideas: insist on more conservative people on their editorial board. Insist on endorsing Trump (rather than simply not endorsing). Insist that more pro-Trump stories be covered, and fewer pro-Harris ones.
Or, if all of that is too far, just sell the paper and get out of the way.
Any of these makes more sense than simply waiting until the last minute to enforce the withholding of an endorsement if the genuine goal is to avoid being targeted in the event Trump wins.
Now there’s a roughly even chance that he’ll do so and that’s causing some hard calculations: if Harris wins, they won’t face retribution because Democratic administrations don’t do that. If Trump wins, Bezos and Soon-Shiong can go to him saying that they got rid of the liberals at their companies in a very public display of support.
Trump is an authoritarian at heart: he doesn’t care if you like him, he cares if you support his power. Vance used to be a harsh critic but got the VP position by publicly recanting and displaying obeisance. It really looks like they’re thinking along the same lines: either it won’t matter or he’ll be satisfied with their acceptance of his power since he really wants to attack other people who aren’t fellow rich men.
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.
"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.
Controlling the narrative was always the plan. Unless it's private equity. They just strip it bare and put it out of business.
I fail to see why being upset about the bad thing actually happening means people didn’t think that was the plan.
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 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's only notable because the staff was upset and leaked the backstory in retaliation. A newspaper is a business; it's not the town square. Imagine working for a company and going public every time your boss did something you disagreed with.
It would have been notable even if they hadn't been public about it, just because the Post has endorsed every presidential race for decades. Eventually someone would have noticed and asked about it, and it just would have come out then.
You may as well just say he could silently kill the Kindle line and it wouldn't be a controversy/reported on. He can literally tell Amazon employees to stop making them, but it doesn't mean it's not weird and notable that he's doing it.
A billionaire does
# The Capitulation of The Washington Post
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/jacob-heilbrunn/capitulati...
It’s generally harmless for high-visibility elections. But these endorsements are both powerful and essential for lower-visibility elections.
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.
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 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.
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-...
Reminds me of a certain time in history.
It's the equivalent of playing chicken with a train because you're bored.
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.
Morality and general spinelessness aside, it's clearly the sensible thing to do. You might anger a few sensible people but that will pass. Trump is not exactly known to be forgiving. Remember when he refused emergency aid to states that weren't supportive enough of him? That's the sort of decrepit small-minded snowflake we're talking about.
He's a cowardly monopolist.
2) It's notable that his other significant enterprise is Blue Origin, whose competitor is Elon Musk, who has by now deeply and publicly ingratiated himself with the Trump campaign.
Maybe Lina Khan is part of the story, but it's silly to act like there aren't more straightforwards reasons.
Even within the internal logic of the equivalency between Donald Trump and Lena Khan it doesn’t make sense. It’s pretty clear he is afraid of Trump.
Usually it’s the likes of Elizabeth Warren et all that attack Amazon and similar sized companies.
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.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4954591-trump-meets-bl...
and silence, apparently.
The Editorial Board pens endorsements. It is literally an opinion piece, in the section of the paper reserved for opinion pieces.
But in this case one candidate literally tried to subvert the last election. Even ignoring all his other issues, that one is enough to say we shouldn't vote for him.
But 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.
It’s one thing to be another voice in the crowd of people all saying the same thing (even a very deep pocketed voice) and another entirely to be the object example everybody discusses by letting it be believed that with all your billions, you’re scared too. People are more affected by things they decide for themselves than things you tell them, hence show don’t tell.
Were that to be the case, I wouldn’t consider it 4D chess. It seems like a straightforward strategy to me.
If Bezos believes what Trump has told him behind closed doors, then his companies are in the control of a sucker, not just a coward.
obligatory trump is terrible is racist etc. not defending trump, just highlighting questionable logic
Just look at what happened in Saudi Arabia and the billionaires there.
(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.
Don't listen to what they say, Look at what they do.
Breaking Points back in July, while discussing the Trump-Biden debate <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cV8ULfwTneE> (which I highly recommend watching; it's the single best sum-up), pointed out two things for those who claim (to believe) the above:
* If TrumpNaziKKK being reelected means "no more elections ever", shouldn't Democrats have originally chosen someone other than a living corpse as his opponent?
* While discussing how the many plans among Democrats like Newsom, Whitmer, etc. (and their successors) for 2028 were disrupted/forced up by the potential to replace Biden (before Kamala's abrupt coronation), they again pointed out the paradox of on the one hand claiming that Trump will abolish elections, and on the other hand having plans for running to replacing Trump in 2028.
Read this June New York Times interview of Whitmer. <https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/22/magazine/gretchen-whitmer...> Strange, how she doesn't say (despite being very specific about things like the plot against her) that "if Trump wins, there won't be elections in 2028 and all non-MAGAtards will be executed by Trumptroopers". You'd think that would be something of sufficient urgency to repeat at every public opportunity. Almost as if actual Democratic leaders don't really believe the rhetoric they have so successfully foisted upon their supporters, including 75% of Redditors.
Another example: Post-Trump/Biden debate, Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) explicitly denying that Trump's reelection will threaten American democracy <https://www.bangordailynews.com/2024/07/02/opinion/opinion-c...>.
Yet another example: After discussing Golden's op-ed, Ezra Klein citing other Democrats who privately admit to him <https://x.com/Timodc/status/1811136469911711877> that a) they don't believe Trump is an "existential threat to democracy", and don't know why others say that, and b) that's why they aren't speaking out about Biden stepping down, because they believe the damage to their own careers from doing so is a greater threat than Trump winning
Yet another example, perhaps the most prominent of all: Biden telling George Stephanopoulos that if he loses to Trump then, well, "I'll feel, as long as I gave it my all and I did as goodest as I know I can do, that's what this is about". If he was the only person who can save the country from Orange Hitler, would that really be the extent of Biden's reaction? Really?!?
They clearly are a party divided by old timers, radicals and the rest. Biden has a retinue of close advisers who loose power when he looses office (either by mental ability or loosing) They have the influence to damage anyone taking a swipe at the "king". Obvious disloyalty is toxic in politics. (even more so in trump circles. even though hes not very loyal to you)
Trying to pry a leader out of their seat, when there are no clear charismatic upstarts is fucking hard, even more so when your party is in paralysis because they are loosing in the polls.
THe democrats bungled it. and you have Harris.
Youre citing sources saying that the democrats will plan x,y & z, and they are keeping it a secret.
They can't keep a secret. Look how much warning we had about Biden being yeeted. _months_ of low lying noises and grumbles.
Where as you look at trump and he says: "I'm going to deport milions"
and
> “We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the big — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”
There isn't really an equivalent from the democrats, because they are disorganised and frankly useless.
Trump has a chance to do this because he's surrounded by pricks who'll let that happen.
I used to fear for what this would mean for Europe (me), but I think it will be incompetence top to bottom. He had a decent crew last time around, but by the end it was Giuliani, MyPillow and the big dick toilets guy.
This is about billionaires wanting to avoid taxes.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-apple-ceo-cook-c...
Now, if Americans are stupid enough to make Trump president again - well, that's a different scenario because Trump would be president. Then Tim Cook has incentive to try to convince Trump to not thoroughly wreck and destroy the US economy. Tim Cook can wait until after the election to see if he has to cross that bridge.
> So no, there's no reason to believe this happened.
Why hasn't he (or any of the other Big tech CEOs who Trump has claimed conversations with) denied it? They just have to put out a statement saying "the conversation never happened". Their silence is deafening.
Not if you want something from the narcissist. Instead you chuff the narcissist up. It's gross, but we've seen them all do it reactively after he was elected in 2016, so why not be proactive this time? None of them (Big tech) are going to lose customers over it, so there's no risk.
> Only an idiot believes Trump's incessant lies and neither I, nor presumably Tim Cook, gives a rat's ass what idiots think of us.
Whatever his cognitive abilities, if elected president, he will have nearly absolute power over foreign trade policy. He could try to use it to exert leverage over the EU to weaken their antitrust enforcement.
If you think Big Tech can't be replaced, then you haven't been paying attention. Google is facing irrelevancy in the age of AI. Netflix subscriptions have been tanking as the world's largest content creators have moved into the streaming space. Facebook's growth is anemic and people are actively trying to use their service less.
Apple's customers trend liberal and Apple already has the challenge of convincing them they need a better camera than the one they bought two years ago, when the one they bought two years ago works just fine and does everything they need. That's why iPhone sales are down - significantly. Same with Mac sales. Good enough is good enough. Facing those challenges, do you really want to go and piss off your customers over something like politics?
Amazon is about the only one that's looking like it has a bright future. That's why Bezos wisely chose not to endorse Harris last week - why would he want to piss off half his customers over politics? Especially heading into the holiday season where he's expecting major sales? Look what politics did to Bud Light.
So no, Big Tech is not safe. They're big because they're smart, and by being smart they know there's no need to kiss Trump's ass before he's president and there's a business need requiring them to do so.
I never said that. They are not safe. Specifically they are not safe from anti-trust enforcement and the threat that the corporate tax rate will rise to what it was before the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, and those are strong motivators for them to get ahead of the political ball.
Big tech is probably also talking to the Harris campaign before the election, to try to negotiate the de-fanging of the FTC and preserving their tax cuts to the extent they can if she wins. Some of Harris wealthy tech donors specifically want Lina Khan removed.
They are smart (and cynical) by covering all their bases. Trump talks about it because he feels (not incorrectly) that name-dropping those conversations helps him.
There is little long-term risk of these corporations losing business over this stuff. Consumers have demonstrated for a long time that they don't care much about the unethical behavior of corporations, especially if changing their consuming behavior affects their lifestyle in any way.
Between now and the election or holiday season, what are Apple, Google and Amazon's customers going to do to boycott? Delay an iPhone purchase? Stop advertising on Google (conceding attention space to competitors)? Shop instead at ... Walmart?
As far as what customers may be willing to do, do you think Bud Light drinkers stopped drinking beer? I'm not confident we can rely on past customer behavior to predict future customer behavior in today's political climate. That's the very essence of chaos.
I agree that most of his statements are lies, but his claim that big corporation CEOs called him is far more plausible than his lie about Haitians eating cats and dogs.
Again, why haven't the CEOs debunked his claims? If anyone else with a similar megaphone to Trump made such false claims, they would immediately release a statement to the contrary. Their lack of rebuttal of his supposedly false claim is incredible telling of how much they hope to gain from him if elected.
> As far as what customers may be willing to do, do you think Bud Light drinkers stopped drinking beer?
Please explain what is the serious non Bigtech option for your next smartphone, or the serious retail alternative to Amazon or Walmart (without trading off convenience - which most consumers will not do).
In contrast, there are a ton of cheap beer alternatives to Bud Light, like Coors, Pabst, etc.
What we seen to disagree about and are arguing about are the subtleties of the posturing and timing rather than the intent.
Not one hundred percent of them. And many tech execs are liberal. I'm talking about the larger demographic trends.
https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/ftc...
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.
(yes i know Jeff doesn't work there, but y'know...)
You’re able to see this for yourself when you travel to other countries and talk to people you meet about the politics in their country in person. Suddenly, magically, you’re able to see both or all sides and actually listen instead of selectively listen.
On the other hand, one would say people closer to the issue are the more informed ones and that’s usually correct. A counter point is people closer to the issue are being targeted by more advertising and usually we associate targeted advertising with causing a populace to become more misinformed rather than more informed. The primary media bias every year is calling elections closer than they actually are. Because if the media outlets and the pollsters they hired said any given election wasn’t close, people would check the news less and the media’s primary customers, the advertisers, would be sad about their ads reaching less eyeballs.
What is your opinion about foreign views and foreign bets on foreign elections?
My best guess is that this "betting action" has nothing to do with people trying to make money by betting on who they think will win - given the scale of divergence from polling results, and the speed at which that happened, this seems more like election interference - people spending money trying to influence the outcome.
I'd have to guess that in this election it's American citizens who see it more realistically. From afar it might seem obvious that Trump will lose (spouting Nazi rhetoric, killing Roe vs Wade, etc), and he'll obviously lose the popular vote, but you need to be very finely attuned to what's going on in the swing states - especially at ground level - to understand who's going to be more successful getting out the vote, etc. If expert US pollsters like Nate Silver can't get it right, then someone the other side of the world if unlikely to either. Anyways, as said, I don't think this money really is betting action - I expect it's just election interference.
On top of that, the growth of the blue firewall in PA is losing steam too early...
I do hope I'm wrong, but purely looking at the numbers, I don't think I am.
I don't really trust my opinion, and I have a pretty limited perspective on what people in other areas think, but between 2020 and now, there is much increased support for Harris compared to Biden, and much more muted support for Trump 2024 compared to Trump 2020.
With the polling mildly in favor of Harris in key states (but within the margin of error), I wonder how you've drawn your conclusion.
If I'm wrong, please let me know, as I'd really like to be proven wrong here.
Polls don't really trend though, they tend to settle. Of course significant news can cause people to reevaluate things, but it's probably the case in this election that most people have already made a pretty conclusive decision.
There are other people who are weary from these elections having gone on for so long now and were long ready for it to all be over months ago.
The whole reason for elections and democracy is for the administration and party in power to have a peaceful decent from power. Because without them, in history the only prior means were to overtake the administration by physical force and peaceful descents from power were rare and uncommon.
That had the negative ramifications of the power being concentrated by people with the strongest weapons, not the people with the best leadership, governance, and the most care towards it’s own populace, citizens, and constituency.
If I’ve answers this in any non-neutral or biased way, please let me know as I’m NPA —- the 3rd largest political affiliation.
"Democracy dies in darkness"
Hopefully there are no dark times ahead.
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.
As someone from Eastern Europe I do not think that any oligarch really needs this.
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?
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.
Thinking that newspapers should stay out of publishing opinions about political parties is basically the most authoritarian position you can take.
I really wouldn’t hold my breath for a president that doesn’t fearmonger about immigration in the forseeable future.
I, personally, script meetings because I don’t communicate effectively when put on the spot. To me, “unscripted” interviews feel like gotcha journalism - why not let someone take their time to describe their thought process?
POTUS is not in a tactical fighter jet dogfight where low latency is massively important. What matters is thinking things through, to consider second order effects.
Instinctual reactions are great for sports but I have no idea why they’d be important for politics, outside of optics. Type II systems, not type I.
Sometimes your guidelines are stupid.
"More specifically, Trump has pledged to toss reporters in jail and strip major television networks of their broadcast licenses as retribution for coverage he didn't like."
But hey, I'm doing political battle? You guys really are in denial.
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.
On this particular topic please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41950993 also.
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.
Billionaires are not your friends.
Obviously Bezos will be rich with or without these contracts, but he'd prefer to be richer.
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.
Its just a hedge.
If HArris wins, she's unlikley to actually take petty revenge. If trump wins, he has past form.
Who knows.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/kamala-harris-cou...
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!
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.
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.
The workers themselves and Amnesty International call it exploitation.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/05/24/de...
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/saudi-arabia-...
Either way, that’s not what matters despite you deciding to focus on it. The main point is that “Bezos is a multibillionaire, his problems are not our problems”.
> That's what Marx thought, and it's precisely where he went wrong.
This too, is nonsensical and irrelevant. Marx had exactly zero commentary on Amazon practices, because he died in the nineteenth century.