401–410 of 1001 posts
It is ironic because Washington Post is the most left leaning of all major news paper. Their endorsement is really a no-op, because there is really only one candidate they could ever consider.
And yet here we are without an endorsement. Significant by your own admission.
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It is one thing to be neutral when one candidate wants more military spending and a lower top income tax bracket and the other is in favor of higher taxes on top and more social spending. But in this case one candidate literally tried to subvert the last election. Even ignoring all his other issues, that one is enough to say we shouldn't vote for him.
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He tried to pressure Raffensperger into finding him 11,780 votes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Raffensperger_ph...
He pressured Michigan election offcials not to certify Biden's victory in Michigan: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-pressured-michigan-of...
Then he rallied his supporters to go to the Capitol, where they tried to stop the Congressmen from counting the votes.
It's a signal of Trump as extraordinarily powerful, a stronger signal than probably anything else I've seen. That boosts his image among suppoters - remember power is what he sells - and will intimidate many, many more into complying. What journalists and business people, or any elite, will stand up to him now after Bezos and the Washington Post - probably the second most respected news organization in the country - have bent the knee. And it makes a Trump victory look more inevitable, a key selling point for anyone, but especially a populist.
When Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong did the same thing recently, "The Trump campaign swiftly shared the ... story with supporters." [0]
[0] https://www.npr.org/2024/10/24/nx-s1-5163293/la-times-editor...
The first time they ever made an endorsement was (wait for it) 2020! Everything has become political these days.
https://www.axios.com/2024/09/16/scientific-american-kamala-...
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.
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I’m not American or in the US, so please keep that in mind when I ask, ‘what’s lopsided?’
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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.
The correct posture, therefore, of the free press when a charismatic authoritarian is on the cusp of power is opposition. So-called “neutrality” is not just foolish, it betrays their entire reason for being!
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.
> The newspaper also published an article by two staff reporters saying that editorial page staffers had drafted an endorsement of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris over GOP nominee Donald Trump in the election. This is a bizarre way to use his control as a owner. If you own a newspaper or tabloid, we know from Trump how you use it effectively: you practice 'catch and kill', or you kill your own inconvenient stories,…
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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…
It takes a lot time to build the reputation of impartiality. To be honest only BBC comes into mind when I think about a somewhat impartial medium. What I see is a traditionally Democartic leaning newspaper, choosing "impartiality" as an excuse, because they cannot come out and support Republicans. And of course I believe that this is the choice of the owner.
The BBC is pro-UK government, who fund them.
To me only Reuters (disclaimer: I once worked there) and AP come to mind when I think impartial news.
What do others think? https://www.purevpn.com/blog/unbiased-news-sources/
The Guardian is a great source of news, and it has a curageous team of reporters, but even it has its biases. I recommend reading multipe news outlets and being aware what he individual biases might be.
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 guess we need to think about what it means to be “neutral”. If half of Americans believe the earth is flat, is the neutral stance to say it’s unclear? Or is it to figure out what the truth is? In my mind there’s a difference between journalists and pollsters. Of course with endorsements you can technically bring up the is/aught dichotomy. The facts may be what they are but that doesn’t necessitate any particular ac…
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You are forgetting that the ftc is looking at amazon under biden, one would hope that harris will keep kahn in the post (because she's kicking asses that have been needed to be kicked for 30+ years). I think he's in a bad place. If he endorses trump he's endorsing a potential fascist dictator. If he endorses harris he's contributing to amazon's anti-trust peril.
A billionaire personally intervening in the endorsement of a major newspaper on the basis of profit motive seems like the sort of thing that would contribute to anti-trust peril.