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Washington Post editorials omit a key disclosure: Bezos' financial ties

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Re: Washington Post editorials omit a key disclosure: Bezos' financial ties

#51

Post by metabagel »

cogman10 wrote: post #24
skybrian wrote: post #13

My initial reaction to the White House ballroom was “the next president should tear it down and put it back the way it was, just on principle.” I was surprised by that editorial and thought it made a good (or at least arguable) point that it’s needed and the next president will be glad to have it, instead of doing large official gatherings in tents. I’m more neutral on it now. I don’t really know what facilities the…

> it’s needed and the next president will be glad to have it, instead of doing large official gatherings in tents. This may be true, it's simply the way that it's approached that has my hackles up. This is something that should have been provisioned and approved by congress. > Separately, raising money through corporate “donations” seems like a huge loophole for corruption. The US corruption laws are laughably bad. Y…

> You don't even need this sort of loophole other than to avoid reporting on who's doing the donations.

There is no loophole. What Trump is doing is flatly illegal.

https://www.gao.gov/legal/appropriations-law/resources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antideficiency_Act

Re: Washington Post editorials omit a key disclosure: Bezos' financial ties

#52

Post by davisr »

ecshafer wrote: post #46
davisr wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please, do explain to everyone what you think is biased about it, and why.

Their headlines include lines about marching against fascists and calling people toadies. This would indicate their bias is rather left.

How do you believe their reporting differs from reality? They're writing about rising authoritarianism and those who submit to it, which is a fact of the world happening today. They use the term "toady" in its literal definition. FAIR has anti-bias and counter-spin, aka "a bias towards reality."

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/toady (noun) : one who flatters in the hope of gaining favors : sycophant

Re: Washington Post editorials omit a key disclosure: Bezos' financial ties

#53

Post by pessimizer »

embedding-shape wrote: post #2

> When it comes to the appearance of conflict, I am not an ideal owner of The Post. Every day, somewhere, some Amazon executive or Blue Origin executive or someone from the other philanthropies and companies I own or invest in is meeting with government officials. I once wrote that The Post is a “complexifier” for me. It is, but it turns out I’m also a complexifier for The Post. - https://archive.is/flIDl It kind of…

> Washington Post becoming a shadow of itself

The Post was always terrible, always extremely conservative, and always blatantly mixed editorial in with its news reporting (unlike most other outlets in the past.) A bunch of anti-Trump people decided it was movement liberal because it didn't like Trump (like every other Republican and Republican outlet until people started voting them out over it.)

WaPo was the most right-wing non-tabloid major paper in the country other than the WSJ before Bezos, the only thing that changed afterwards was that the headlines became more linkbait (5 minutes earlier than every other paper) and their coverage of Bezos properties became lighter.

The idea that the WaPo was ever anything but rabidly capitalist is nonsense.

Re: Washington Post editorials omit a key disclosure: Bezos' financial ties

#54

Post by pessimizer »

afavour wrote: post #23
nickff wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like the problem with WaPo is that it’s constantly losing money, and has been since well before Bezos bought it. This makes it difficult to be hands-off for (at least) two reasons: he can’t just put it in a conventional trust, because he has to constantly give the organization money (which is abnormal for such a trust), and (secondly) in order to be sustainable, WaPo needs to be significantly changed so that…

I’d say the UK’s Guardian newspaper is a useful example here. It’s been owned by the Scott Trust since the 1930s: https://www.theguardian.com/about/history And it has survived without continual extra investment. Possible that WaPo is just managed badly.

> And it has survived without continual extra investment.

It has not. The Guardian loses millions every year. I think it made money one year in the late 90s iirc.

Re: Washington Post editorials omit a key disclosure: Bezos' financial ties

#55

Post by agnokapathetic »

next_xibalba wrote: post #50
ecshafer wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their headlines include lines about marching against fascists and calling people toadies. This would indicate their bias is rather left.

[flagged]

the institution of democracy should not require a neutral point of view.

Re: Washington Post editorials omit a key disclosure: Bezos' financial ties

#56

Post by 8ig8 »

davisr wrote: post #3

If you think this kind of reporting is cool, you should donate to https://fair.org . Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) has been exposing two-faced news for decades. They are worthy of your attention.

Or NPR…

https://www.npr.org/donations/support

Re: Washington Post editorials omit a key disclosure: Bezos' financial ties

#57

Post by metabagel »

notahacker wrote: post #38
afavour wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say the UK’s Guardian newspaper is a useful example here. It’s been owned by the Scott Trust since the 1930s: https://www.theguardian.com/about/history And it has survived without continual extra investment. Possible that WaPo is just managed badly.

In fairness, when it comes to surviving the modern media landscape the Guardian seems to be good at online, but has the distinct advantage of the UK having no other remotely left leaning broadsheets or even middle market tabloids. Since Lebvedev destroyed the Independent, it's basically the Guardian or the Mirror which is a trashy rag, and the nominal centrist papers are owned by Murdoch and the Daily Mail General Tr…

Anecdotally, The Guardian has a lot of U.S. readers. I regularly read and donate to The Guardian. Their U.S. and California coverage is very good and seems to be continually improving.

Axios has an article about The Guardian's success in the U.S., but I don't have access behind the paywall.

https://www.axios.com/2025/05/06/the-guardian-us-expansion

Better resource:

https://uploads.guim.co.uk/2025/09/11/Guardian_Annual_Report...

Re: Washington Post editorials omit a key disclosure: Bezos' financial ties

#58

Post by vjvjvjvjghv »

cogman10 wrote: post #24
skybrian wrote: post #13

My initial reaction to the White House ballroom was “the next president should tear it down and put it back the way it was, just on principle.” I was surprised by that editorial and thought it made a good (or at least arguable) point that it’s needed and the next president will be glad to have it, instead of doing large official gatherings in tents. I’m more neutral on it now. I don’t really know what facilities the…

> it’s needed and the next president will be glad to have it, instead of doing large official gatherings in tents. This may be true, it's simply the way that it's approached that has my hackles up. This is something that should have been provisioned and approved by congress. > Separately, raising money through corporate “donations” seems like a huge loophole for corruption. The US corruption laws are laughably bad. Y…

“ The US corruption laws are laughably bad”

The crazy thing is that if you are a low rank Congress staffer or other government employee, the anti corruption rules are actually quite strict. It only loosens up the higher you go.

Re: Washington Post editorials omit a key disclosure: Bezos' financial ties

#59

Post by makr17 »

JohnMakin wrote: post #4
embedding-shape wrote: post #2

> When it comes to the appearance of conflict, I am not an ideal owner of The Post. Every day, somewhere, some Amazon executive or Blue Origin executive or someone from the other philanthropies and companies I own or invest in is meeting with government officials. I once wrote that The Post is a “complexifier” for me. It is, but it turns out I’m also a complexifier for The Post. - https://archive.is/flIDl It kind of…

It’s part of the centi billionaire class power grab playbook. each one of them for the most part has some major media interests. if you can control and dictate the narrative, for a while no one can protest you, and maybe they won’t notice for a while that their futures are being robbed to enrich a handful of extremely vain white men. by the time they do, it’s likely too late.

I feel like Bezos has well more than $10M, $1B/100 (centi). Perhaps you were looking for "hecto" (SI prefix for 100)?

Re: Washington Post editorials omit a key disclosure: Bezos' financial ties

#60

Post by hobs »

ecshafer wrote: post #46
davisr wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please, do explain to everyone what you think is biased about it, and why.

Their headlines include lines about marching against fascists and calling people toadies. This would indicate their bias is rather left.

Really we're all just interested in what your line for calling a person a fascist is, and what you would call the folks who did this?

"When the Pentagon announced that reporters would only be credentialed if they pledged not to report on documents not expressly released by official press handlers, free press advocates, including FAIR (9/23/25), denounced the directive as an assault on the First Amendment.

The impact of this rule cannot be understated—any reporter agreeing to such terms is essentially a deputized public relations lackey."

If you can't write with basic clarity because that makes your progressive, you might want to investigate your own bias.

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