He knows something
He knows Trump will hold it against him, and his probability of becoming president is nonzero.
More importantly, he knows that Harris administration will not seek retribution. So he sees nothing to lose here.
Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris
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Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris
#232It seems like it would be less polarizing if it was the default state for news and information outlets to not endorse any candidate ever and just remain as neutral as possible.
News outlets by definition can not be neutral. Just look at the insane amount of stuff that the global news agencies like Reuters or AFP push out every minute, and on top of that comes all the state, county and local news.
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.
Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris
#233To play Devils Advocate for a moment: Why do we need, or even want, a newspaper to endorse a President? How does it not undermine a paper's journalistic ethics to be neutral and fair?
I think if Bezos had announced this change in policy in, say, Feb 2021, it would have landed differently.
Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris
#234[flagged]
Mostly I agree. Billionaires chose long ago to prioritize wealth.
Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris
#235[flagged]
One candidate has proposed a day of violence and given indications they consider “anyone who disagrees with me” as an “enemy within”. I don’t think they have talked about televised tribunals, and they also have a … tenuous … relationship with the truth or following through on promises (even when baselines against normal “politician lie rate”)
Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is the the billionaire owner of the newspaper is censoring it, not the number of votes that will change.
Is it censorship when your boss forbids you publishing your personal opinion as the official position of his company? 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…
If all Bezos cared about was having lower taxes for billionaires he could have simply hired a bunch of people who believed in that and had them be the editorial board, and they would endorse whomever he wanted.
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.
Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not automatically unethical for a journalist to advocate for something. 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.
A journalist's job is to journal something, nothing more and nothing less. 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.
These are not journalists, these are the OPINION EDITORS. You know, the op-ed page, the page that contains NO journalism.
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.
Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris
#238Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris
#239[flagged]
One candidate has proposed a day of violence and given indications they consider “anyone who disagrees with me” as an “enemy within”. I don’t think they have talked about televised tribunals, and they also have a … tenuous … relationship with the truth or following through on promises (even when baselines against normal “politician lie rate”)
the genocide doesn't give you any form of perspective?
Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris
#240"Democracy dies in darkness" and silence, apparently.
[flagged]
Best case senario and he's just bluffing about deporting people, removing parts of the judicial system, deploying the military on US soil against US citizens.
None of that is healthy. None of that is part of normal democracy.
In previous years, presidential candidates talked about policies, rather than divining meaning from a demented old guy (you may also point to biden on that one, he is still able to answer a question though.)