Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 1001 posts

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#251

Post by sbuttgereit »

Molitor5901 wrote: post #11

To 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?

To play Devil's Advocate to the Devil's Advocate... I would posit that journalistic neutrality isn't possible: and if that's the case I'd rather the journalist or publication wear their biases on their sleeve.

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.

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#252

Post by ImJamal »

cflewis wrote: post #134
moduspol wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now we'll never know who the Washington Post's editorial board would have endorsed. At least Taylor Swift was able to make her recommendation, so I know I'm all set.

Actually we do, the reporting in WaPo itself said they had already put together the copy for Harris and were ready to run it. The newsroom basically did all they could to say it without saying it.

The person you are replying to understands this and was being sarcastic. Everybody already knew who they wanted to endorse well before this came out.

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#254

Post by ribosometronome »

vagab0nd wrote: post #203
greenthrow wrote: post #165

So many times HN posters have extolled how Bezos hasn't interfered with the WaPo and those of us who expressed concern about his purchase were chicken littles. It has never been true and it's plain as day now. He bought it for the same reason Musk bought Twitter. To have control over a media outlet he values.

If you have that kind of money, why wouldn't you do that?

They're not really saying Bezo or Musk are acting illogically. He's lamenting everyone who has set with their heads buried in the sand and pretended they aren't doing the things they're doing.

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#256

Post by CamperBob2 »

moduspol wrote: post #52

More interesting to me is that this is the third tech billionaire to take a decidedly different stance than he did previously. Musk is quite active, but even Zuckerberg took a much more neutral stance for 2024. 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.

It's almost as if coming out in favor of taxing unrealized capital gains right before the election wasn't the stroke of political brilliance that Harris thought it was.

"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.

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#259

Post by ribosometronome »

htk wrote: post #196

[flagged]

What a sad state of affairs when people who consider themselves educated enough to opine about what newspapers should and should not do clearly has no historical understanding or basic familiarity with newspapers.

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#260

Post by dclowd9901 »

moduspol wrote: post #161
dclowd9901 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to speculate. It’s in black and white: last time Trump wanted to spite Bezos, he canceled $10Bn in AWS contracts. This is profit driven, plain and simple. > 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 vindic…

It's certainly possible, though if he truly felt pressured that way, he could do a lot more than waiting until 11 days before an election to simply withhold an endorsement.

Like what?
Post reply on HN