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Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

cnbc.com

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Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#341

Post by standardUser »

nickff wrote: post #324
lapcat wrote: post #296

Newspapers publish opinions for the same reason that they publish comic strips: people want to read them. Readers seek them out. Newspapers are a business and have to give their customers what they want. The problematic aspect here is that the current business owner, Jeff Bezos, has a conflict of interest. Bezos is making a bad business decision for The Washington Post, sacrificing it and losing readers for the sake…

You seem to be implying that he made a decision based on other business interests, against those of the Post, but there is no support for that in the article. Do you have a source which describes this motive? It seems like not endorsing candidates might be good for the Washington Post's business, by improving its perceived impartiality. In addition to this, the WaPo seems to have spent much of its history not endorsi…

Trump has repeatedly threatened media companies he thinks have wronged him with specific actions he's said he will take as president. Bezos has a whole business empire to worry about that goes way beyond WaPo. He doesn't need a petty president trying to wreck his bottom line for 4 years. And with a business that big, Trump has a lot of ways he could cause trouble.

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#343

Post by EasyMark »

greenthrow wrote: post #143
73kl4453dz wrote: post #44

What's even the point of being a billionaire if you're still scared of Trump?

Why is everyone in this thread pushing the idea that Bezos is scared of Trump? It seems more plausible to me he is scared of the DoJ breaking up Amazon under Harris.

I think people are finally coming around to paying attention to “Putin’s a really great guy” and “imprisoning the enemy within” and realizing Trump’s not joking around about that.

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#344

Post by sgnelson »

nickff wrote: post #324
lapcat wrote: post #296

Newspapers publish opinions for the same reason that they publish comic strips: people want to read them. Readers seek them out. Newspapers are a business and have to give their customers what they want. The problematic aspect here is that the current business owner, Jeff Bezos, has a conflict of interest. Bezos is making a bad business decision for The Washington Post, sacrificing it and losing readers for the sake…

You seem to be implying that he made a decision based on other business interests, against those of the Post, but there is no support for that in the article. Do you have a source which describes this motive? It seems like not endorsing candidates might be good for the Washington Post's business, by improving its perceived impartiality. In addition to this, the WaPo seems to have spent much of its history not endorsi…

While you may not take this as proof it affected this exact decision, it's hard to ignore it as a possible reason.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/10/amazon-wants-to-depose-presi...

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#345

Post by megous »

mschuster91 wrote: post #232
ahnick wrote: post #76

It 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…

You learn this by science, and scientific reporting. Not by reporting events usually selected by severity of harm to humans and clickbait factor to enrich the media companies.

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#346

Post by makeitdouble »

93po wrote: post #185
coreload wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are opinion editors. They're expected to have opinions.

maybe biased opinions should be entirely separate from journalistic enterprises if those journalists want a single shred of credibility. people are mad at trump supporters and anti covid and anti vax stuff, and while i agree that's all stupid, i don't blame them at all for falling for it because main stream corporate journalism has destroyed any and all trust with absolutely everyone. maybe if we weren't constantly b…

Journalistic credibility comes from presenting facts. Which facts you present, which pieces you publish are in themselves opinions, biases.

That's why I see aiming for unbiased reporting to miss the point of journalism. We want opinions, but not random uneducated opinions, we want well argumented, relevant and proof backed opinions.

"Candidate X is a liar" is valid journalism if there's the facts to back the claim and the analysis to make it a thought provoking piece that brought something to the readers. We have whole Pullitzer winning books going into minute details about how some public figures are crooks.

To note, not reporting, not expressing opinions is also a bias so I don't see a middle ground. For instance if a major national journalism would not publish the news of a candidate getting arrested, that in itself is a biased decision. If they'd publish a dry piece just quoting the official police declaration, that would also be tremendous bias and everyone would see it as a refusal to comment on it.

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#348

Post by quesera »

anyonecancode wrote: post #233
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?

I think if Bezos had announced this change in policy in, say, Feb 2021, it would have landed differently.

I think this is exactly right.

I'm 100% on board with impartial reporting, with the caveats that a) endorsements are of the Opinion section, and b) the fact of the matter is that only the higher-minded news orgs would attempt impartiality -- so it's really just ceding the argument.

And LATimes and WaPo endorsements almost certainly won't have an effect on this election.

But, this reeks of cowardice. If you wanted to return to the journalistic standard of impartiality, that's a great thing to do when the pressure is low. Feb 2021 would have been perfect.

Less than two weeks before the most contentious election in modern history? And specifically when one candidate has threatened news organizations and their owners with retribution (legal, commercial, extralegal) for stories they don't like?

That's capitulation, not impartiality. If you believe in the mission of journalism, the honorable option would be to anti-endorse any candidate who threatens that mission.

If you don't believe in that mission, then what are you doing operating a newspaper?

Bezos is a coward.

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#349

Post by tvaughan »

vr46 wrote: post #302
dotnet00 wrote: post #257

I like this trend of taking neutral positions that seems to be picking up again, although the timing for this doesn't look good. Just as how universities are starting to adopt neutrality, so should news outlets.

There is no neutrality in the face of evil. Journalism and journalists are not supposed to be neutral, but impartial . Ethics are pretty universal.

Well said. Journalists also don’t have to give equal weight to the other side when the other side are whackadoodles

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#350

Post by dang »

seper8 wrote: post #182

[flagged]

Could you please stop posting in the flamewar style? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, and we've already had to warn you about this (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41790409). If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

On this particular topic please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41950993 also.

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