> stuck on models that worked in the past, like "both sides"ing issues
This happens very rarely though. The Washington Post is definitely not a "both sides" kind of paper.
This happens very rarely though. The Washington Post is definitely not a "both sides" kind of paper.
There's a reason people love the "NYT Pitchbot" so much.
That's a surprising perspective. The controversy over Bezos changes at the Post is that he's changing it from a paper that aggressively reported on and criticed Trump to an extreme form of 'both-sides regardless of the facts'.
And that change has greatly damaged credibility with many in the public and within journalism.
> And that change has greatly damaged credibility with many in the public and within journalism.
The people within journalism are the problem he's trying to fix, so credibility with them doesn't matter. As for damaging credibility with the public, I don't know of any rigorous opinion polls which show that, but at any rate you'd expect finally admitting a problem exists to temporarily harm credibility. What will be interesting is whether Bezos can actually change things in a way that increases public trust in the WP. Even if you are wrong and he is right, it will take years at minimum for anyone to notice that the WP has changed and in the meantime he'll of course alienate all the readers who go to the WP specifically for one-sided reporting.
Yes, we agree. Bezos wants to create false balance. Therefore it hasn't been there and people's complaints about it, at least in this context, are wrong.
> The people within journalism are the problem he's trying to fix, so credibility with them doesn't matter.
That sentence assumes Bezos claims are not only sincere - he's trying to improve journalism, not trying to censor journalism to serve Trump, Bezos' interests, and the right wing - and that his claims are accurate.
Nobody is saying the Post's reporting on Trump was innacurate or not credible. Bezos wants to stop them from doing it.
> Nobody is saying the Post's reporting on Trump was innacurate or not credible
People are in fact saying that and have been for years, which is why Bezos felt he had to intervene. There are people saying that in this very thread. Bezos left them alone for 10 years and the result has been massive drops in the proportion of people telling pollsters they trust journalism. He states clearly in his op-ed that this is why he is now intervening editorially at the WP: the staff's approach to being trusted has objectively failed (yes, there's that word again).
That's not what Bezos said. He didn't say the reporting was innaccurate or not credible.
> drops in the proportion of people telling pollsters they trust journalism
If an ideological movement distrusts and attacks anything that disagrees with it, the solution isn't to appease it. Of course they will attack and 'distrust' anyone who criticizes Trump or violates their ideology; that's very clear.
Obviously, the vehicle itself did not explode, the explosives packed into the truck bed did.
It’s deliberately misleading language like this was turned me off both WP and NYT. Any other vehicle and they would have just referred to it as a car bomb.
That he rented a cybertruck and used fireworks instead of the traditional white van full of fertilizer is worth reporting.
Normally they don’t mention the make/model other than in passing.
This time they not only mentioned it, it became their headline, and they claimed it exploded when it didn’t, which is outright misinformation.
It's a litmus test for submitting to Musk's power.