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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

#441

Post by jasonlotito »

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…

There is support for that reasoning in the article linked.

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#443

Post by otwall »

jll29 wrote: post #408
noncoml wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> To be honest only BBC comes into mind when I think about a somewhat impartial medium. 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…

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Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#444

Post by calf »

rightbyte wrote: post #415
calf wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neutrality is a problematic ideology because it serves the powerful and the status quo, the first question to ask back is are they (an authority, an institution) really neutral/impartial?

I don't think neutrality serves the powerful. Neutrality serves the 'truth' otherwise it wouldn't be neutral in the first place. Your point only stands if you assume that the partial source would side with the 'good' side on average. And being perfectly neutral is not possible, no.

Neutrality is problematic because in practice it serves the powerful, like every instance of bureaucracy and scientism we can point to through civilized history. Instead you are appealing to some politics-free context-free notion of neutrality which might as well be a made up word then. Humans and institutions are not truth objects, so your incorrect argument is in conflating this with a discussion of access to truth. Universities are human processes, not mathematical theorems for which good and bad are irrelevant, which is a different issue than neutral.

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#445

Post by mandevil »

calf wrote: post #431
dotnet00 wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing how motivated reasoning and a poltics poisoned mind can be used to make obvious points out to be unreasonable. Institutional neutrality is simple, the organization does what is ncessary to operate, but doesn't prescribe anything unnecessarily over that. It does not mean that professors are not allowed to talk about disagreeable things that are required for teaching the subject. If anything, it makes it e…

What backwater high school did you go to that had you study creationism of all religions? We never covered propaganda in science, in Canada.

It never made it into science class, but only because institutions had (and have) the power to set rules and not be neutral on important issues of the day. It was our choice at the museum that received tax payer funding to not be neutral that kept creationism out. That's picking a side. And that is absolutely essential is my point, because the truth is, unfortunately, not neutral, and we all need to do our best to find that truth. Just saying "be neutral" is abdication of responsibility.

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#446

Post by ihsw »

mmooss wrote: post #403

I don't think there could be a more powerful endorsement of Trump so far, much more than if Bezos's paper actually printed an endorsement of him (which would have been laughed at): 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…

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Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#448

Post by willturman »

lancesells wrote: post #412
willturman wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe? It’s almost a certainty that the news media outlets are outright bullshit and/or attention sucking propaganda. https://fs.blog/stop-reading-news/

https://www.washingtonpost.com I don't disagree with some of the things that blog post is saying, but excluding the opinions on the Washington Post home page, where is the is outright bullshit or propaganda? I hear the opinion often but I don't see it when I go to a newspaper. Now if you were to go to the home page of reddit or twitter there's clearly tons of propaganda.

1. Immediacy trumps quality.

The current headline on the Washington post is talking about Israeli strikes in Iran.

Is that the most immediate event pertaining to Israel? Probably. Is that the most important recent event pertaining to Israel? Well, that depends, doesn’t it?

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#449

Post by bee_rider »

zmmmmm wrote: post #312
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?

Endorsements are published by the editorial section which is specifically separated from the rest of the newspaper so to not undermine the neutrality of the journalism in the other sections. Opinion and analysis has always been part of news publications, and plays an accepted role in adding layers of interpretation onto the raw "facts" that is crucial in making those facts interpretable by readers who aren't expert i…

It seems like the newspaper editorial section really ought to endorse somebody to make their biases clear, if nothing else. What are we to believe, that a bunch of people whose job it is to write opinion pieces don’t have an opinion about the election in their own country? Haha, yeah, sureeee…

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#450

Post by adamc »

null0pointer wrote: post #347
adamc wrote: post #166

Good reason not to subscribe to the WP.

Why?

I don't want to read a newspaper where the owner is suppressing -- well, anything -- because of concerns for how it might affect his fortune. I want the owner walled off.
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