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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

#631

Post by mensetmanusman »

dfxm12 wrote: post #422
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…

I just hope this will finally put to bed any ridiculous mentions of "liberal media bias", or that the tech sector has some liberal bias.

Why would it put it to bed? It’s worth people knowing that the media leans over 90% left from all the stats that exist.

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#632

Post by zahlman »

lostlogin wrote: post #405
sigy wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> It's hard to think that he doesn't know how lop-sided this election is, so the naive notion of "neutral" should not be applied to his behavior. I’m not American or in the US, so please keep that in mind when I ask, ‘what’s lopsided?’

Kamala Harris currently has a popular vote advantage on the order of 51-49, but in the American system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_Colleg...) effectively only the "swing states" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_state) matter.

One of the best respected analysts in the business, Nate Silver, currently has Trump at a 53% probability of winning (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/), in a system designed to magnify the effect of small changes near the halfway point (historically, getting about 65% of the popular vote would net you a landslide worth approximately every seat in legislature - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/12/11/bidens-vi...). Silver's model can pick Trump as a slight favourite despite being behind in the popular vote, again because of the nature of the system. In particular, each state gets an extra constant two votes on top of the ones apportioned by population, favouring rural areas which currently prefer the Republican party.

The same analyst, BTW, gave Trump a ~30% chance of winning, shortly before the election, in 2016 (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/). This was notably higher than the probability ascribed by pretty much anyone else with any authority or respect in the matter.

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#633

Post by mensetmanusman »

mjcl wrote: post #587
kcplate wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly it’s surprising to me that people really think that the news side of a media company operates with complete autonomy from the business side. They might claim it exists but that’s a fallacy. I worked at a major daily newspaper 30 years ago and I personally know of two cases in my short tenure there where news stories were killed because they didn’t want to piss off important advertisers. I am also aware of a…

Then I'd suggest their tagline of "Democracy dies in darkness" is pretty self-important and misleading.

Walk should rebrand as ‘Darkness’

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#634

Post by eapressoandcats »

xkbarkar wrote: post #460

Cannot in any way understand why this is an actual issue. Sheesh If more newspapers would stay out of endorsing political parties we would live in a better world. Frankly leftist newspaper propaganda has done little but make the rightist ( especially the ones with a racist agenda ) political parties expand massively. Every election i. almost any european country is showing this trend. Why on earth are you all flaming…

“Left wing publications caused right wing movements to be popular” is such a lazy trope and terrible “anti-anti-Trump” argument.

Thinking that newspapers should stay out of publishing opinions about political parties is basically the most authoritarian position you can take.

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#635

Post by mensetmanusman »

janalsncm wrote: post #306
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 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…

Politics is simply preference. The shape of the earth is not.

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#636

Post by WatchDog »

alwayslikethis wrote: post #394
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.

The problem for BBC is that it's government-funded. It can't really take a stance without potentially upsetting the next government.

Why is that a problem?

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#637

Post by mensetmanusman »

mperham wrote: post #418
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?

“He gets to be lawless while she has to be flawless.” It’s not biased to call a spade a spade.

[flagged]

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#638

Post by eapressoandcats »

htk wrote: post #196

[flagged]

Every choice of coverage is an opinion about what is important, and shapes the tone of coverage as surely as an editorial. This is actually a very common critique of the News Media, which loves to aggrandize itself by saying that it is neutral.

At least editorials are honest about the views of the institution.

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#640

Post by dragonwriter »

zahlman wrote: post #632
lostlogin wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's hard to think that he doesn't know how lop-sided this election is, so the naive notion of "neutral" should not be applied to his behavior. I’m not American or in the US, so please keep that in mind when I ask, ‘what’s lopsided?’

Kamala Harris currently has a popular vote advantage on the order of 51-49, but in the American system ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_Colleg... ) effectively only the "swing states" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_state ) matter. One of the best respected analysts in the business, Nate Silver, currently has Trump at a 53% probability of winning ( https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/202…

> One of the best respected analysts in the business, Nate Silver, currently has Trump at a 53% probability of winning (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/)

You mean G. Elliot Morris; Nate Silver has nothing to do with fivethirtyeight any more (since he and Disney broke up, he now has his own private subscription publication—Silver Bulletin—which also does forecasting and which has much better odds for Trump from what I understand, but I can't give you details because its paywalled and I’m not paying him; aside from that gig, he’s also employed by Polymarket, now.)

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