I am confounded by even the weak support this decision has garnered. Do people truly think the editorial voice offers no value? That editorials shouldn’t have, you know, opinions?
It’s ridiculous. And unless he’s shutting down the entire editorial office, his “explanation” is incoherent.
If the WaPo is viewed as a propaganda arm of the Democratic party, it has no credibility. To anyone, of any party affiliation.
Explicitly partisan news outlets will never earn votes from the opposition party because they’ll never be believed. If they adopt a neutral stance, they might have a chance.
I was shocked to read this: did not make things better.
As Stranger said above, Prime is a money loser for Amazon. Dropping it helps Bezos make more money.
It’s boycotting Amazon in all its forms and products and services that might hurt Bezos after a couple dozen tens of millions of people do the same. Good luck with that.
The Bezos article might not be too bad if Harris wins.
If Trump wins, he needs to turn the paper non-profit, give it a nice endowment, and walk away. Otherwise Trump will continually pressure Bezos to move the Post rightward.
P.S. Doesn’t Bezos plan to to turn the Post a bit rightward regardless? Apparently, but if Trump is president, it will never be rightward enough without turning into an administration mouthpiece.
trump or henchmen will pressure every paper to move evermore pro-trump. An endowment is no guarantee of immunity to coercion.
The thing that causes the opposition to think of the Washington post as a liberal rag, isn’t that they endorse Harris its that they report accurately facts which are in contrast to those reported on Right wing media. The only way that the Post could regain credibility with this group would be to engage in radical both siderism.
But again this isn’t really about whether the Post should or shouldn’t endorse Harris, its about whether Bezos should be able to dictatorially direct editorial policy. If this decision came from the board I would disagree and criticize their choice to do so on which is probably the most clear cut example of an election when a candidate should be endorsed, but I would not have canceled my subscription.
Was it seen as just a propaganda arm of the Democratic party during Watergate?
I never said it was a guarantee. But having media owned by an oligarch, whose other businesses rely on government contracts, greatly speeds up the process where the authoritarian president gains informal control over the media.
No regime is permanent. Delay consolidation of power long enough, and it did not take place.
Maybe I should stop posting until after the election. Half of what I post now will be all wrong depending on the result.
Something that I’ve been thinking for a long time is that the left just really doesn’t know how to earn trust. You don’t earn trust simply by being right all the time (not that the WaPo is spotless). You have to do things in a way that is believable.
So I thought Bezos was right on the money when he made that distinction:
Let me give an analogy. Voting machines must meet two requirements. They must count the vote accurately, and people must believe they count the vote accurately. The second requirement is distinct from and just as important as the first.
Likewise with newspapers. We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate.
He’s right about voting machines and about newspapers. It’s not enough to just get the facts right.
I don’t know what the answer is for newspapers (or voting for that matter). But clearly what they’re doing now is not working.
Sorry, I’m not that old and don’t follow which newspapers were credible throughout American history.
But I can say that they aren’t credible today. And it’s not just the right that distrusts the media these days, although it is biased in that direction.
The problem is that many people don’t believe the voting machines unless they say Trump wins. To a substantial group of people it may not be possible to be accurate and credible at the same time.
Ouch!
I think Bezos lacks balls. I hope his lack of balls doesn’t kill one of the last newspapers that actually hires reporters.
If Bezos is afraid of Trump, i don’t see how a lot of people protesting helps, honestly. He knows he’s craven.
I didn’t have any suggestions for what could make a difference.
The more transparent and open you make the process, the less room there is for dispute.
Computerized voting machines are (rightly) distrusted because they’re impossible to observe. Even if they’re correct, no one should ever believe they’re correct, because it’s impossible to tell the difference. Paper ballots are superior in this case.
No, you’ll never eliminate the distrust completely. But you can reduce it.
I can tell you the one thing that would make me trust the media more, not having it run at the whims of billionaires with their own agenda.
The 4th estate is practically DOA these days. Owners of WaPo and the LA Times both punted with their wallets, and editors fleeing like rats from a sinking ship. That pretty much leaves the NY Times as the last traditional “newspaper.” Maybe USA Today?
Newsweek and Time are dead. Not sure anything like the Atlantic can still hold a torch?
The wireservices like API, Reuters, etc are still holding on. Bloomberg.com is more or less a financial wire service. But these are straight reporting and move on.
I can’t think of another old school 4th estate name that still has any impact or much relevance? IMHO, 4th estate as any kind of check on power has been subsumed by social media and alt-news. Thoughts?
There’s room for at most one newspaper in America that isn’t funded as a billionaire vanity project, and that newspaper isn’t the WaPo. Them’s the breaks.
The Chicago Tribune used to be pretty well-respected, if not quite at the same level, or national visibility, of the Post or the NYT. But, they were bought by Alden Global Capital in 2021; Alden is well-known in the industry for squeezing profits out of the papers they own, at the expense of quality. They’ve gutted the staff, and jacked up subscription prices – they just informed me, over the weekend, that my monthly digital-only subscription with the Trib is doubling in price next month: from $20 to $40.
(Oh, and you cannot cancel a Trib subscription – even a digital one – online; you must actually call them on the phone.)