To “tell the truth” is not sufficient, nor does it properly narrow down what a journalist needs to do.
Why do people fear flying out of proportion to the danger? Probably because every major aviation accident makes the news, often with grim statistics about hundreds dead. Maybe with pictures of fireballs or worse. In some cases the coverage goes on for weeks if there is some mystery about it. Meanwhile, the 40,000 automobile deaths per year (in the US alone) are largely unreported.
The media reports the “truth” but people are deceived anyway. And that was a non-partisan example. It only gets worse when there is some inherent bias to the underlying story.
Let’s see… for the first couple years, they offered me the same $29 price I’d been getting. After that, I got notifications that it’d renew at a higher price. I call and say that I can’t do it because it’s too much. Then they start offering a lower price. I hold out until it’s $29 again. It’s like lowering your cable bill by threatening to cancel. They have the rate available; they just don’t always offer it up right away.
FYI, the New York Times is the same way. I have an all-access digital subscription, including recipes, for $24. I have to call and ask for it every year, and they seem happy to do it.
Dunno why anyone should be polling me for this. Although I did laugh when Stephen King said he was cancelling his WaPo sub and got a few responses to the effect of “so you’re pulling all your book sales from Amazon now, right?”. Everyone’s principles have a limit, I guess.
If people want to cancel their subs, more power to them. And in fact my argument isn’t even about whether Bezos is actually acting in a principled manner or not. Just that, taken at face value, his editorial is absolutely correct IMO. There is a serious media credibility problem, and to solve it it’s not enough to simply be right on all stories. You have to be believable at the same time. Endorsements damage that credibility even when they’re “right”.
Per year. For at least 2 years now, maybe 3. At one this year (February?), I noticed they were billing me more than that (they bill monthly), so I called and they fixed it and credited me the difference.
Yes, it’s all-access. News, Games, Cooking, Audio, Wirecutter, Athletic, gift links, and 15% off select items in the NYT Store, whatever the heck that entails. Everything except home delivery.
That’s hardly the only step that’s necessary. Nor did I say one should expect to win over conservatives (the further out ones, at least).
The Wall Street Journal hasn’t endorsed anyone for nearly a century. They’re only a little to the right of center and generally fairly balanced, though there are exceptions in both directions. Closer to the center than the WaPo, at any rate. I expect they’re relatively well respected by independents.
Bloomberg is a tiny bit left of center and also doesn’t seem to have endorsed anyone. They also don’t ping my “liberal rag” meter.
The Economist usually does do endorsements, but hasn’t in 2024. Sorta curious that that hasn’t gotten any news traction. Maybe people don’t care since they’re British, but they’re pretty widely read.
Anyway, the WaPo will have to do a lot more than withhold endorsements if Bezos wants to shift the WaPo from being well on the left to something more neutral.
Perhaps it’ll help that a bunch of their more extreme journalists resigned, conveniently filtering them out without even having to pay them severance pay…
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page is pretty far right of center. Their news is generally fairly balanced, but their editorial page is not at all “balanced”. Similarly, WaPo has a left wing editorial page, but has let balanced news. Despite sanewashing Trump, the New York Times has much more left-leaning journalism. I dropped it because i got annoyed at how biased their news coverage was.
Apart from not endorsing my favored candidate, which I prefer but to not expect a newspaper to do, I like WaPo’s coverage and do not expect it to change. So I’m not dropping it.
Additionally I would note that this is all on Bezos, that his laughably transparent response has changed the narrative to “Billionaire newspaper owner admits forcing his journalistic narrative over objections of editorial staff”. It’s gained enough Streisand-effect backlash to blast the story into the stratosphere.
So no, I’m not canceling my WaPo subscription. I like them and I think they’ll continue to earn my support. I don’t blame them for what Bezos did, and I don’t much care about it because it’s backfired so tremendously.
I’m reposting this from this thread because it is the same response to this stupid argument:
Bezos is a fucking coward who is also undermining the essential purpose of a news outlet, and if he doesn’t want the personaly liability of letting the editorial board express their collective business then he shouldn’t be in the business of owning a newspaper. Unless, of course, he just wants to turn it into a promotional outlet for his main business interests which also occasionally publish pictures of him looking like a freaky mannequin in a flight suit and cowboy hat. But CNN.com already does that so readily I don’t know why he’d even bother losing money on a side hustle with a long history of needling political figures at all ends of the spectrum.
If Trump wins he will continually pressure ALL media to move rightward/worship him or else attempt to destroy said media. It doesn’t matter if it is for-profit or non-profit.
The world is full of cowards, in fact, they’re probably the majority. And kissing Der Fuhrer’s ring is one of the ways you survive the Reich.
I don’t have to approve of someone’s motivations to understand them.
As for the OP - I haven’t had a WaPo subscription for years because I have limited funds and can’t subscribe to everything and I’ve opted for other sources for my own reasons.
I’m not giving up Amazon Prime because it’s useful to me and doing so would have about zero effect on Bezos or politics. Doing that would be cutting my nose off to spite my face.
There is no such thing as an unbiased media organ, and the ones with the highest credibility are transparent about their biases. That’s what a newspaper does when it endorses a candidate and explains why they did it.
The absolute worst, most trash media on the market are the ones that loudly proclaim that they have no bias, which is always and only a cover for a bias-laundering operation to make right-wing positions agreeable to “independents”. These people have a childlike media literacy that begins and ends with rooting out “bias”, and having found it, their brains shut off and process no further information.
This makes them easy targets right-wing media who claim to be unbiased. Their strategy is to make left-leaning bias the overwhelming focus of their coverage, gradually grooming their audience to be hawks for left-wing bias while being oblivious to right-wing bias. This is what enables those organs to get away with their own outrageous lies and half-truths and claim to be “unbiased”.
Another way to restore trust in our vaunted democratic institutions is to resist the all-out right-wing assault on each and every one of those democratic institutions.
Capitulating? Appeasement? Not my preference.
YMMV, of course.
[Not a WaPo subscriber. As a disabled person, I grudgingly rely on Amazon for quite a bit]
