31–40 of 305 posts
If you think this kind of reporting is cool, you should donate to https://fair.org . Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) has been exposing two-faced news for decades. They are worthy of your attention.
Glad they're still around.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems like the problem with WaPo is that it’s constantly losing money, and has been since well before Bezos bought it. This makes it difficult to be hands-off for (at least) two reasons: he can’t just put it in a conventional trust, because he has to constantly give the organization money (which is abnormal for such a trust), and (secondly) in order to be sustainable, WaPo needs to be significantly changed so that…
It's almost like trying to run a newspaper the same way you run a for-profit online marketplace isn't the greatest of ideas. Who could've known...
The title makes it seem like this is a major or systemic issue, but the article content essentially says this was a one-off, potentially a mistaken omission that was fixed within 24 hours. The article itself even states that the Post routinely discloses its ties to Bezos in its reporting and this was an anomaly. I used to read the Post (I’m not a subscriber anymore) but I do distinctly remember seeing such a disclosu…
My initial reaction to the White House ballroom was “the next president should tear it down and put it back the way it was, just on principle.” I was surprised by that editorial and thought it made a good (or at least arguable) point that it’s needed and the next president will be glad to have it, instead of doing large official gatherings in tents. I’m more neutral on it now. I don’t really know what facilities the…
Is the Whitehouse fit for purpose in the modern age? Probably not. Is it a symbol of the country? Yes. Messing with that symbol on what seems to be a whim funded by corporate interests rather than doing something public and methodical is disgusting. Especially with a government shutdown. We aren't even getting bread and circuses, just Nero at this point.
Silicon Valley, Venture Capital: they're the sociopaths whose current project is "disrupting" democratic governance.
> When it comes to the appearance of conflict, I am not an ideal owner of The Post. Every day, somewhere, some Amazon executive or Blue Origin executive or someone from the other philanthropies and companies I own or invest in is meeting with government officials. I once wrote that The Post is a “complexifier” for me. It is, but it turns out I’m also a complexifier for The Post. - https://archive.is/flIDl It kind of…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue is not whether or not the White House needs a new room, it's that the private funding model is an incredibly obvious avenue for bribery. Every single "donor" has immediate business with the federal government, and they've seen how easily Trump will sell pardons or diplomatic favors or merger approvals to anyone who pays him enough. There is no other plausible explanation for the list of funders. If this wer…
Such an article would just be repeating what everyone else already said. The editorial actually said something new (new to me, anyway) that added to the discussion, which seems valuable.
Now scale your annoyance based on how important you think the White House and presidential power are relative to some random Launch HN post. In this case, knowing the financial motivations of the publisher, was the editorial actually valuable? They say: "this project would not have gotten done, certainly not during his term, if the president had gone through the traditional review process. The blueprints would have faced death by a thousand papercuts." Is this a misleading premise, was there actually a lot of process and red tape preventing a president from doing this renovation the "traditional" way? I have no idea, and since I can't trust this source I have to go find out some other way.
Did they leave out any other important information? They say: "Privately, many alumni of the Biden and Obama White Houses acknowledge the long-overdue need for an event space like what Trump is creating. It is absurd that tents need to be erected on the South Lawn for state dinners, and VIPs are forced to use porta-potties." Is this true? Again I don't know and I can't trust the authors.
Like the HN investor example, we can't tell if this editorial was primarily driven by "observer knowledgeable about the needs of the presidential office" or "guy who wants the president to eliminate the NLRB". It doesn't mean the editorial is wrong, but it does mean it isn't really valuable because you'll have to find other sources to verify its claims.
My initial reaction to the White House ballroom was “the next president should tear it down and put it back the way it was, just on principle.” I was surprised by that editorial and thought it made a good (or at least arguable) point that it’s needed and the next president will be glad to have it, instead of doing large official gatherings in tents. I’m more neutral on it now. I don’t really know what facilities the…
Is the Whitehouse fit for purpose in the modern age? Probably not. Is it a symbol of the country? Yes. Messing with that symbol on what seems to be a whim funded by corporate interests rather than doing something public and methodical is disgusting. Especially with a government shutdown. We aren't even getting bread and circuses, just Nero at this point.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems like the problem with WaPo is that it’s constantly losing money, and has been since well before Bezos bought it. This makes it difficult to be hands-off for (at least) two reasons: he can’t just put it in a conventional trust, because he has to constantly give the organization money (which is abnormal for such a trust), and (secondly) in order to be sustainable, WaPo needs to be significantly changed so that…
I’d say the UK’s Guardian newspaper is a useful example here. It’s been owned by the Scott Trust since the 1930s: https://www.theguardian.com/about/history And it has survived without continual extra investment. Possible that WaPo is just managed badly.
Not sure how that translates into US media context.
The second lesson from UK media is that the Daily Mail General Trust is usually assumed to be a vehicle for whatever the owning dynasty wants, despite encompassing multiple newspapers with different editorial stances (this is also certainly historically accurate: in the 1930s the man who set up the trust was writing letters to the PM offering editorial support in exchange for being allowed to veto any government appointments the PM wanted to make). So I don't think a trust structure alone will make people believe Bezos has no influence over it.
> When it comes to the appearance of conflict, I am not an ideal owner of The Post. Every day, somewhere, some Amazon executive or Blue Origin executive or someone from the other philanthropies and companies I own or invest in is meeting with government officials. I once wrote that The Post is a “complexifier” for me. It is, but it turns out I’m also a complexifier for The Post. - https://archive.is/flIDl It kind of…
The Post is a plaything to him that has a disproportionate impact on the rest of the world. We’ve created systems that allow a few individuals to control resources beyond the wildest dreams of the monarchs of days past. Whether it is about power, control, self-aggrandizement, or simply a special interest to him, there is no accountability at the end of the day, and we are all excellent at justifying and rationalizing…
That didn't happen without vigorous help from the "servants of the people".
> I don’t think there has to be an ulterior motive per se, it’s simply human nature.
It's both, of course. Ulterior motives and human nature aren't mutually exclusive, in fact they overlap quite a lot given the chance.
If you think this kind of reporting is cool, you should donate to https://fair.org . Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) has been exposing two-faced news for decades. They are worthy of your attention.
IMO, the Columbia Journalism Review (https://www.cjr.org) is a better source for media criticism.