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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

#651

Post by rayiner »

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…

It's the editorial board that has the conflict of interest--between running a newspaper, and using the newspaper as a vehicle to advance their personal political ideologies. I grew up in the D.C. area reading WaPo. It went from being a milquetoast paper to being a vehicle for political radicals. And that's been a disaster for the business. The paper was on pace to lose $100 million last year, and has lost 500,000 subscribers since 2020: https://www.foxnews.com/media/washington-post-lose-100-milli....

WaPo's business is catering to D.C. professionals. The nature of the country's electoral politics is that roughly half of those are going to be batting for each side. It's a good business decision not to seem like you're rooting for one side or the other.

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#652

Post by DonHopkins »

dmix wrote: post #539
a123b456c wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the implicit argument is that he wants to avoid more canceled contracts, along with other forms of retribution like personal attacks he experienced a few years earlier.

Maybe but Bezos is not lacking money. That contract was $1B/yr contract over ten years. They make $600B+ a year. Not exactly going to tip the scales of his stock options. These billionaires usually buy money losing newspapers, or social networks, for personal reasons. If I was going to bet on it I’d very much lean on a personal motive beyond money.

Not lacking money does NOT imply not so obsessed with making more money that he will do absolutely anything.

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#654

Post by edm0nd »

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…

>by improving its perceived impartiality

Can WaPo really be perceived as "impartial" if we know they already were going to endorse Harris?

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#655

Post by rat87 »

wordofx wrote: post #427
zmmmmm wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[flagged]

It is a neutral statement that Trump is objectively terrible. By contrast it is propaganda to defend him when he claims 2+2=5, which he does on a regularly basis.

And this doesn't have anything to do with "the left" a ton of conservative Republicans have admitted that Trump is objectively terrible.

https://www.wpr.org/news/conservative-commentator-charlie-sy...

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#657

Post by fenomas »

nomel wrote: post #624
fenomas wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not endorsing candidates might be good for the Washington Post's business, by improving its perceived impartiality You're at the wrong meta level - if the paper's owner is making the editorial decisions, there's no impartiality to perceive in the first place. I mean, if the question at hand was "should the editors endorse someone?" then what you're saying could stand. But that's out the window if they're being over…

I think one could claim that the editorial department was trying to make a decision that could/would be interpreted as a company stance, rather than a department stance, to the average person. Sure, you could blame the average person. I also can’t comprehend the benefit of a biased editorial department, from a business or quality perspective. A diverse set of views is always more interesting to read, but I’m surely i…

1. Publishing an editorial endorsing a candidate is extremely common, both for US papers generally and for this paper specifically. The reasons for that are various but they have nothing to do with what we're discussing here.

2. Moreover, that whole question is irrelevant when the editors aren't even making the decision. If Bezos is willing to override them, then effectively he is the paper's editorial board - so there's no "diversity of views" to talk about, except within the confines of what he's decided to allow.

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#658

Post by DonHopkins »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #631
dfxm12 wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#659

Post by refurb »

oivey wrote: post #180
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.

Why would they want to appear neutral? All news reporting, no matter what, is inherently biased in some way. There isn’t some “ideal” where that isn’t the case. There can’t be some magical font of unbiased information because just selecting what stories to put on the front page introduces bias. News can’t be unbiased and being unbiased was never a goal. News is meant to inform, which includes facts as well as analysi…

> Why would they want to appear neutral? All news reporting, no matter what, is inherently biased in some way. There isn’t some “ideal” where that isn’t the case. There can’t be some magical font of unbiased information because just selecting what stories to put on the front page introduces bias.

Sure, but just because you can't be perfectly unbiased doesn't mean the only alternative is to become a mouthpiece for a political party.

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#660

Post by CalChris »

SamDc73 wrote: post #580

> "Katharine Graham the previous owner of the Washington Post during the Watergate years was threatened by Holden who famously said, and I will leave out a bit of the quote because it's too crude to say out on the stage, but he said you tell Kate Graham if she prints that we'll put here blank through a big fat ringer, and then they actually worked to try get their broadcast license resented, it's completely un-Americ…

That was Nixon's AG, John Mitchell, who said that and it happened in 1972. Graham died in 2001, well before Eric Holder was ever Attorney General.

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

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