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Comment by fenomas | Hacker News Reader

> not endorsing candidates might be good for the Washington Post's business, by improving its perceived impartiality

You're at the wrong meta level - if the paper's owner is making the editorial decisions, there's no impartiality to perceive in the first place.

I mean, if the question at hand was "should the editors endorse someone?" then what you're saying could stand. But that's out the window if they're being overruled by somebody without even a presumption of impartiality.

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I think one could claim that the editorial department was trying to make a decision that could/would be interpreted as a company stance, rather than a department stance, to the average person. Sure, you could blame the average person.

I also can’t comprehend the benefit of a biased editorial department, from a business or quality perspective. A diverse set of views is always more interesting to read, but I’m surely in the minority with that perspective. If someone could explain the benefit, I’m very interested.

I don’t see this is any different than the media black out that nearly all corporate employees enjoy, that exists for one reason: don’t make your opinions appear as those of the whole. Looking at the mixed responses to all of this, across the internet, that does seem to be the case, where people are confusing it all.

1. Publishing an editorial endorsing a candidate is extremely common, both for US papers generally and for this paper specifically. The reasons for that are various but they have nothing to do with what we're discussing here.

2. Moreover, that whole question is irrelevant when the editors aren't even making the decision. If Bezos is willing to override them, then effectively he is the paper's editorial board - so there's no "diversity of views" to talk about, except within the confines of what he's decided to allow.

(1) might be both common and also wrong. (1) being why I dislike most of these media outlets. (2) the editorial board may be wrong and suffering groupthink, and ultimately slowly killing the paper.

The fact that editorial endorsements are extremely common is relevant because it means that no typical reader would mistake them for being the position of the paper's parent corporation, like GGP suggested. Whether endorsements are right or wrong in the abstract isn't relevant, and I didn't say anything about it.

Could you explain the benefits of having a biased, rather than balanced, editorial department?

No, because that's a straw man. What many people want is a balanced, unbiased editorial department that weighs the facts as they see them and then publishes an endorsement.

Please follow hacker news comment guidelines [1], this isn't reddit. It's a genuine question. If you see it as easily answered (as a straw man would be), then answer it easily.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#:~:text=Don....

1. I answered you - nobody said they see a benefit to having biased editors, and no reasonable person would, by definition. People see benefit in something else, as I explained - that's the answer to your question.

2. I know some people say "straw man" as a swipe, but it's also a term of art for a rhetorical fallacy and that's how I meant it. The position you asked me to defend (that there's benefit in having a biased editorial board) isn't a position anyone here took, or agrees with. Hence the term.

3. "this isn't reddit" is a swipe - and one that's a bit mysterious to people who are unfamiliar with reddit, like me ;)

> I think one could claim that the editorial department was trying to make a decision that could/would be interpreted as a company stance, rather than a department stance, to the average person.

This makes no sense whatsoever. It is the editorial board deciding what candidate is endorsed by the paper. It is a company stance, made by the company's representatives on behalf of the company and based on the company's editorial guidelines.

We can easily bring the meta level down one more step to conclude that given the editorial staff are individuals with different beliefs, this dictates that they’re impartial to the extent of the (weighted) average of their beliefs.

I’d argue impartiality isn’t a thing in any human domain anyway.

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