I think some of us figure that because the US Constitution affords additional and explicit protections to the press, that it also comes with additional responsibilities.
I cancelled WAPO long ago. I’d like to say that I was prescient in some fashion, but it was because we never read it.
I find lots to watch on Paramount+ and it is less a month than Netflix. I chose an ad-supported basic plan and let my ad blocker take care of the ads.
/end minor hijack
I am so tied into Amazon and just can’t cancel at the moment but I am exploring alternate options. It’s difficult to find so many things in stores these days. I really wish there was another feasible site.
I’ve had an Amazon account in one form or another since circa 1997/1998 when it was primarily for ordering books online.
That’s just the thing, some people think things should be a certain way when it is not a requirement. Rights work both ways, not just the way you want them to. Bezos has the right to remain neutral if he wants to. That’s what make this democracy the best system in the world.
People have the right to cancel their subscriptions to WaPo and Amazon if they feel strongly about it, I’m not saying they don’t. I’m just not coming down hard on Bezos for side stepping this shit storm of an election. Especially since no one (most no one) gives a damn about his endorsement one way or the other.
This is shifting the discussion from “is it the right thing to do?”, vs. “is there a right to do this thing?”. As far as I know, literally nobody is suggesting either party doesn’t have the right to do what they are doing.
What people are suggesting is that given the powers vested in the fourth estate, not recommending a President isn’t the right thing to do.
More to the point, Amazon Prime membership is a ‘loss leader’; it costs Amazon far more in shipping costs and licensing fees than they receive from the annual membership fee. The purpose, of course, is to incentivize regular purchases and product subscriptions so unless you intend to boycott Amazon.com entirely cancelling Prime membership is a purely symbolic gesture that will hurt you more than it does Amazon and Jeff Bezos’ stock holdings. If you were inclined to do this, it makes more sense to do so in protest of the anti-competitive and manipulative practices of Amazon than as a reflexive response to the refusal of endorsement by a newspaper held by an entirely separate company that is also owned by Jeff Bezos. As a practical matter, there is nothing you could do to actually harm Bezos’ net wealth even if you could somehow convince all of your friends and family to stop patronizing Amazon.com and cancel their memberships.
Indeed. It is noteworthy that while publisher William Lewis has elected not to endorse a presidential candidate, he has not squashed the many very explicit criticisms even within their editorial pages much less Washington Post journalists on their private social media accounts, and the Post has been generally very vocal in their criticisms of Trump and J.D. Vance including frequently using the therm “fascist”, unlike, say The New York Times, which has been editorially reluctant to use that term unless quoting from some public figure, and has also been notably critical of Biden while giving Trump early (and arguably unnecessary) publicity. Regardless, cancelling subscriptions from the Washington Post as a protest will hurt the bottom line of the paper which is already losing subscribers and in the red, the consequences of which will be more ‘restructuring’ (i.e. layoffs) without really doing any fiscal injury to Bezos, and might well serve as another excuse to carve away at unprofitable hard news reporting, which harms honest journalists who are still trying to report on real issues.
As disturbing as it is for newspapers which have traditionally issued endorsements of presidential candidates to stop doing so in this election specifically because their billionaire owners have directed the publisher to refrain what gives every appearance of anticipation of potentially forthcoming authoritarian pressure or censorship, boycotting these platforms is more harmful to truth in media while essentially accomplishing nothing of real impact. It can be argued that newspapers and other media outlets shouldn’t issue endorsements for specific candidates just on the basis that it presents evident editorial bias, and unlike labor unions, community organizations, political action committees, et cetera, they are not representing specific self-selecting polities, so the endorsement is really an expression of just the editorial board or the publisher rather than employees as a whole. Even the League of Women Voters does not endorse candidates at any level even while it presents opinions of specific issues.
The problem isn’t really that a Trump administration will “take over the media” (Trump seems pretty clueless about using the media effectively even while they are falling over themselves to fête him) but that outlets with billionaire owners and multiple conflicts of interest will use their media holdings to curry favor with a hypothetical Trump and post-Trump GOP administration. Of course, there will be independent voices as long as their is an unfettered Internet but at long as a good section of the public seeks out self-reinforcing MAGA propaganda it really doesn’t matter how honest or loud such voices are if they are being actively ignored.
Stranger
The Times has endorsed Harris quite strongly and prints extremely negative analyses of what a Trump administration would be like daily. Yes, there was too much both-side-ism early on but that has largely stopped. I cannot see any reason to cancel my subscription.
Now I don’t have Amazon Prime, but I do use it from time to time. It would be hard to have to give it up.
I canceled my Washington Post subscription but not my Amazon Prime.
I would like to say that my reasoning behind this was the following. The Bezos by enforcing his views on the Washington Post has meant that it is no longer a fully trustworthy news source, and so it has lost its value. While with Amazon whether or not Bezos is giving in to Trump too easily, Amazon prime does very well in performing the function that I am paying for.
In reality though its more than I am far more dependent on Amazon than the Post, and so it’s an easier sacrifice.
My Post subscription is good through August, I will probably still read it some, but I’m going to try to cut back because I know that a lot of the revenue comes from advertising and they can still count my impressions whether or not I’m a subscriber.
I’m hoping that this bad press that they are getting about this moves convinces them to install some clear unassailable firewalls between the business side of thing (e.g. advertising, subscription rates, budget etc.) which Bezos as owner has legitimate interests in, and the journalism and editorial side which he should stay the hell out of. When he joined the Post it seemed as though that was what was happening. The post would print articles that may not have put Amazon in a particularly rosy light without apparent consequence. If they reinstate those walls, and we get word from the staff that they seem serious about I might resume reading and renew come August.
Some sequelae…
Post editorial board members step down in wake of endorsement decision
David E. Hoffman, Molly Roberts and Mili Mitra said Monday that they are staying at the paper but will no longer serve on the nine-member editorial board.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/10/28/post-editorial-board-resignations/
I won’t cancel my Amazon Prime subscription. While I have some problems with Amazon, I have zero problems with a periodical refusing to endorse a candidate.
In fact, I’d like to see a lot more organizations refusing to endorse candidates. This is a good thing. If I valued the Washington Post, I think I’d like to subscribe.
Are there other organizations refusing to endorse? I’d like to give them my business if they offer something I want.
And, no, I’m not voting for Trump; my ideology is pure.
The Washington Post is still endorsing local and delegate Representative candidates; just not the presidential and vice presidential candidate, and was not a decision made unanimously (if debated at all) by the editorial board of the paper. This is clearly not a principled stance to forestall claims of bias, but direction by a billionaire owner to his handpicked publisher whose motives and ethics have previously been cast in doubt.
Stranger
I do not plan to cancel my subscription if the Washington Post.
Yes, for now, i trust the news reporting of WaPo. And honestly, i didn’t buy it for the editorials.
Yup. That worried me more than this does. But WaPo still has better reporting than the NYT. And there are so few actual sources of real journalism these days. I plan to start paying for Reuters, too.
I am debating dropping prime in protest, although that would be very painful for me. Dropping Amazon all together would be even more painful. But i just bought a Kobo, not in protest of the endorsement, but in protest of their latest product line. I really LIKE physical buttons. And i have a lot of drm-free books in Calibre that will be harder to load onto the new generation of Kindles. And they say that Kobo plays well with libraries.
Canceling your subscription still allows you access until your paid subscription period expires, while adding you to the count (200,000+) of cancellations. You can still reinstate your subscription after this blows over.
We’ve canceled WaPO. I canceled my Kindle Unlimited and Audible, and Amazon Music - all of which I meant to do anyway, but we won’t tell Jeff that. We’re going to try to use Amazon a LOT less. Not that our purchases will be enough to be noticeable but if enough people do that, maybe.
I don’t want to hurt the paper. Maybe I’d like to hurt Bezos, but i don’t think killing WaPo is a way to hurt him. Hell, it probably helps him as i suspect it’s a money loser and hurting the paper would give him an excuse to just kill it and stop dropping money into it
Bezos writes a response:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/28/jeff-bezos-washington-post-trust/
He probably could have timed this better. He’s right of course that the media has almost no credibility. And he can afford to take a long-term strategy here.
You don’t think that him knowing that 200,000+ people have spoken with their subscriptions won’t mean something, if not to him, then to the public? Maybe you should donate money to Wapo to show your support instead?
Nothing he wrote mitigates what he has done to help defeat Harris. What a joke.
Ya think?