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Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

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Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s because if you praise a terrible toaster, life for most Americans is unaffected. If you endorse a political candidate, and nudge the election in one direction or other, roughly 50% of Americans will see that move as hostile.

The principle is the same though, whether you’re recommending candidates or toasters. Just because one has more impact than the other, doesn’t make it less ethical to investigate and recommend.

Your last sentence isn’t grounded in reality. Negatively impacting the lives of millions of people is less ethical than negatively impacting the lives of a few.

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#762
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no neutrality in the face of evil. Journalism and journalists are not supposed to be neutral, but impartial . Ethics are pretty universal.

"There is no neutrality in the face of evil" This is said by both sides, it is equally stupid every time. If ethics are pretty universal, how is it that one party wants no abortions at all and thinks any abortion that isn't absolutely medically necessary is evil and the other party wants abortions right up until viable birth and thinks that anything less than that is evil? Especially when considering that most of the…

You were demonstrably wrong three times in your comment, misrepresenting the reality of both sides of the argument and the prevailing opinion of humanity. The fact that one side doesn’t have the tools to confidently reach that conclusion is the problem.

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as the Post has an editorial page, with people employed to share their opinions, what are they supposed to do? Opinion and reporting are separate- famously the WSJ reporting is quite strong and their opinion section is ... often wrong- but as long as an opinion section exists that's kinda their job, to share their opinion. If you want to get rid of opinion that might be a reasonable thing (with cable news and…

They could share their opinions on the policies of each candidate. That could be great at helping people see perspectives other than their own, so that they can weigh it all up and make their own decision. Doing an endorsement is kind of the opposite of that, because it is essentially telling readers "you don't need to decide, we have done it for you."

Counterpoint: the biggest problem facing opinion journalism today is the competition. Actual news reporting is expensive and slow and sometimes doesn't pan out, isn't very profitable and there isn't that much of it. But you can get opinion everywhere these days- cable TV news, internet streamers, internet articles, it's everywhere. That suggests that there is actually a huge demand for highly opinionated work (and also that it is remarkably cheap to produce), but whether it's something like Daily Kos or Free Beacon or Alex Jones or Newsmax, it seems like everyone can find their own personal brand of opinion journalism that both flatters their own pre-existing opinions and at the same time molds them. Lots of narrowband broadcasting in that space, and the daily papers are really struggling with their goal of broad reach- they are getting outcompeted in each specific niche by a specialty player that caters to a much smaller, more specific set of opinions. (They try to have a diverse range of OpEd columnists, hoping that if you don't agree with Paul Krugman maybe you'll like David French, but that's a hard thing to pull off these days when your competition is just people of one specific ideological wedge.)

In theory your idea would be good, except when I look at the market I don't see anyone actually succeeding at that, which suggests to me that it's not actually a very large market of consumers.

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They retroactively invalidated several years of compensation packages...

"They" of course being the Delaware Chancellory Court in this situation... man people are clueless about how things work.

"Delaware Chancellory Court" of course being a political appointee in the home state of the powerful politician whom they had an adversarial relationship with, in this situation... but you know how these things work

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#765
post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Calling an important aspect of most cultures as "propaganda" is rich. You don't have to be religious (I'm not religious and wasn't religious at that time either) to recognize that it's useful to understand those beliefs and how we worked our way to the modern age. That's how you help students to learn our current understanding of the world such that they are less susceptible to eating up blatant lies and believing th…

Creationism is an American protofascist phenomenon, it actually is propaganda and does not need to be taught in a science class in order to nurture and develop critical thinking skills.

If you are referring to traditional cultures, they have creation myths which are better suited for social sciences classes.

Showing both sides of the debate is itself a worse form of indoctrination. Haha, look at how creationism is pseudoscience! Now you will be tested on the reasons why. No, let's just not platform propaganda as if it deserved any fair footing in good-faith context of discourse.

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#766
post #216
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clear favourite. It might be a toin coss still at this moment, but the odds are getting ever-so-slightly worse for Kamala for many days in a row now. So it's about the trend. On top of that, the growth of the blue firewall in PA is losing steam too early...

Seems like in the language I speak "ever so slightly" and "clear" are in opposition. You can be a clear favorite or a slight favorite. Which is it?

If the odds long enough ever so slightly move toward Trump, he is then in my eyes a clear favourite. It's been going on for three weeks now and we have 10 days to go still.

I do hope I'm wrong, but purely looking at the numbers, I don't think I am.

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#767

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?

And it's also bad for business. I think people on either side of the aisle underestimate just how tilted the other side can get when you go against them

Re: Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

#768

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't doubt that, but what company isn't compromised in favor of its owner's interests?

[flagged]

I took the same comment on a different way. To me they're referring to the fact that there are many other media outlets. Not only the big ones that do the same. But the smaller, "independent", that deserve more readers.

granted, they may also have interests or agendas. They point is we need decentralization!

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