841–850 of 1001 posts
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And it opens to them up to retribution from Trump if he wins, which is his entire method of operating. From a game theory perspective it doesn't make sense for them to do an endorsement when a mob boss type character is about to get elected.
"Lets not oppose nazis in case they gain power again." You're morally and humanly bankrupt if you believe and act this way.
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Funny in terms of liberal technology is testing Chat GPT of any political biased. Based off asking it the following 3 questions it might just be... "Hey GPT, whose your spirit animal between Barrack Obama and Donald Trump?" It provided a neutral answer providing the pros of both dudes. "Hey GPT, whose your spirit animal between Obama and Hitler?" It clearly chose Obama saying how rightfully so awful Hitler was. "Hey…
From Trump's rhetoric and flaming hatred for the 'enemies within' it seems not far fetched to imagine him setting up internment camps. It is a slippery slope as Germans can attest.
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/par...
> Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Democratic voters would favor a government policy requiring that citizens remain confined to their homes at all times, except for emergencies, if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
> Forty-five percent (45%) of Democrats would favor governments requiring citizens to temporarily live in designated facilities or locations if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Such a policy would be opposed by a strong majority (71%) of all voters.
That's a demand for internment camps. One famous academic went further and said it'd be fine to engage in mass starvation:
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/noam-chomsky-says-the-un...
The US needs to cool down the rhetoric on both sides, because it's an endless spiral of escalation right now. Trump isn't uniquely bad at this and the "slippery slope" was already slid a long way down, when he wasn't in charge.
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> Couldn't a simple answer here be that he felt Kamala is unqualified and terrible and as a newspaper with a lot of readership and influence, he decided against endorsing her? Sure, but why should the personal opinion of the owner of the newspaper prevail over the opinion of the editorial staff?
Because they own the newspaper. The question answers itself. There isn't any reason some random employee should have their opinion privileged over the owner. Or vice versa, to be fair, but the joy of being an owner is being able to pull rank. If an owner can't get decisions made in a way that is favourable to them then there are very real questions about whether they are, in fact, owning the company.
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Has an owner ever killed an already-written endorsement 11 days out from an election? You're right that there is an implicit assumption that an owner condones the paper's operation. But to exert control like this so specifically and in such a baldly partisan way is unprecedented, thus the resignations both at the Post and the LA Times. It's one thing to hire an editorial staff with whom you agree, it's quite another…
3 days ago: https://www.semafor.com/article/10/22/2024/los-angeles-times...
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> He gets to decide what its interests are. No he doesn't. He can choose to do with it whatever he may like. But whether it's in its interest or not is a property purely derived from the current state of the journal and the market. Whether he likes it or not. And, yes, the issue stems from business ownership of a so-called "independent" news outlet which has clear conflict of interest. Which is something that we shou…
"But whether it's in its interest" How do you define "its interest"? It is a business. It does not have interests of its own. its owners have interests - in this case its the one owner who has that. Its staff may have interests, as may other people, and there is always a public interest. > the issue stems from business ownership of a so-called "independent" news outlet which has clear conflict of interest. Which is s…
You nailed it here: bezos, as the dude who owns the paper has a vested interest in his personal success, whether the paper succeeds or not. If it came down to him or the paper, he would choose himself.
The editorial team, as the people who run the paper and are responsible for its quality, has a vested interest in the success of the paper. They decide what the interests of the paper are.
If bezos goes against the editorial team, that is bezos' interests conflicting with their interests, and thus the paper's interests.
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> Newspapers are a business and have to give their customers what they want. I really want to challenge this idea. Businesses can have missions quite distinct from what the majority of their prospective customers would want. If I had practically unlimited money I wouldn't ever think of funding a news organisation and then only have it produce content that customers wanted. I would have a purpose for it, stemming from…
> Businesses can have missions quite distinct from what the majority of their prospective customers would want. Failing businesses. > I would have a purpose for it, stemming from my own ethics. I never said that business is inherently in conflict with ethics, and I, as an entrepreneur myself, believe that ethics are necessary for business: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41951447 > I think it quite naive to cons…
Leaving money on the table does not necessarily mean a failing business, except for some extreme definition of 'failing'.
I meant to argue against your first assertion, not your second; I'm not concerned with whether it's a bad financial decision or not.
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's support in that Trump personally met with Blue Origin's C-suite, on the same day the Washington Post spiked their Harris endorsement—an apparent reward to Bezos, and one that put his business interests in the spotlight.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2024/10/25/2024-ele... ("Trump met with Bezos’s Blue Origin executives after The Post’s non-endorsement")
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> He gets to decide what its interests are. No he doesn't. He can choose to do with it whatever he may like. But whether it's in its interest or not is a property purely derived from the current state of the journal and the market. Whether he likes it or not. And, yes, the issue stems from business ownership of a so-called "independent" news outlet which has clear conflict of interest. Which is something that we shou…
> so-called "independent" news outlet which has clear conflict of interest If a majority of staff at a news outlet are liberal/progressive isn't that clearly a bias and hard to call independent? I just notice that people tend to only call out institutional bias in one direction
So why is it that this is about money and Amazon contracts? Why isn't it about Kamala just being so bad, in Bezos's eyes, that she doesn't deserve an endorsement. I think that's way more likely. I am not surprised however that the liberal media will look for any problem over admitting it's their own candidate that's the problem. Bezos owns 9% of Amazon. His personal share of any 10bn contract might be a few hundred m…
> Bezos owns 9% of Amazon. His personal share of any 10bn contract might be a few hundred million over many years. He doesn't care! The rest of your comment aside, I think this sentence proves too much. You can use it to prove that Bezos doesn't care about almost anything in Amazon, or that most billionaires don't care much about what happens in their companies, because it only impacts a small part of their already v…
So why is it that this is about money and Amazon contracts? Why isn't it about Kamala just being so bad, in Bezos's eyes, that she doesn't deserve an endorsement. I think that's way more likely. I am not surprised however that the liberal media will look for any problem over admitting it's their own candidate that's the problem. Bezos owns 9% of Amazon. His personal share of any 10bn contract might be a few hundred m…
> Why isn't it about Kamala just being so bad, in Bezos's eyes, that she doesn't deserve an endorsement. Bad for whom? Bezos is a multibillionaire, his problems are not our problems. It’s detached from reality to think a guy that made his fortune exploiting workers and other businesses in any way understands or cares for society’s struggles.