I rely on Amazon a lot. Judging by the mystery packages that show up at my door, so does my wife. Amazon also owns 25% of the Yankees broadcasting network. I’m not dumping Amazon.
Never had a WaPo subscription so no change there.
I would be fine if no news outlets made endorsements.
I guess no one here reads the Washington Post any more so missed this article from them (non-paywalled):
After non-endorsement, 250,000 subscribers cancel The Washington Post
Newsroom staffers press for answers on the loss of readers and trust after the owner and publisher decided to no longer endorse presidential candidates.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/10/29/washington-post-cancellations-number/
He also expressed regret about the timing of the announcement — just 11 days before the election — which has prompted speculation that he was seeking to curry favor with a possible second Trump administration, given his many business interests before the federal government. Bezos denied that, writing that there was “no quid pro quo of any kind” and that the decision “was made entirely internally.”
If you are going to lie, at least don’t be so terrible at it. This is what PR flacks are for, Jeff.
Stranger
Eh, this will be one of those rare moments where I could believe him. I’m just thinking of my fellow executives who, from time to time, would find themselves utterly surprised by something they should have known was coming, something in their purview, but something that had just gone off their mental radar until it came along, and then they were like, “What! What is this? What are we doing?”
I’m not saying that’s what happened, but I can see it happening.
Except that Bezos has admitted to withholding the endorsement. His only defense is that it is not part of an explicit quid pro quo, which may be true as far as it goes but the only reason to withhold the endorsement (that was already drafted by the editorial board of the paper which clearly anticipated publishing it) is the conscienceless calculus of avoiding retribution should Trump win and the reality that there will be no consequences if Harris prevails.
And again, this isn’t an issue of mere political bias, or wooing back practically non-existent contingent of conservative voters who would be put off by the apparent bias of an endorsement; this is an issue of showing bias toward facts and integrity over lies and corruption of a candidate who has declared that he would be a dictator “on Day 1” and a much longer history of authoritarian statements and tacit (and sometimes explicit) alignment with proto-fascist movements. Endorsing Harris is a no-brainer if Jeff Bezos actually cared about the preservation of democratic institutions or supported journalistic and editorial integrity.
But he doesn’t; Bezos is just concerned about his bottom line in a hypothetical future where a presumptive Trump administration embarks on a campaign of egregious retribution for even petty political disagreements. He’s a recreant billionaire who has the pulpit and voice to speak up against autocracy (or at least permit the honest journalists in his spare change side band to express their courage) and instead has chosen the route of the tacit collaborator. He’s not wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat in Fraktur font and proclaiming himself to be “dark MAGA” to ‘troll the libs’ but he is just as complicit in his own way to burgeoning demagoguery.
Stranger
Bezos is merely a shareholder in Amazon- yes the largest shareholder, but it is not owned or operated by him. Bezos owns the WaPo outright in a solely owned company.
Right.
I did cancel my LA Times sub.
You can buy a lot of stuff on Amazon from "partners’ who list items there, and pay a modest fee. I buy a lot of used books that way.
I quit WaPo, but I need Amazon Prime way too much to ever quit it.
Which was previously reported by NPR (as stated in the article) and several times on the SDMB yesterday.
My business has been slowly burning our bridges with Amazon by sending discount codes (via snail mail) for our own website to customers who have previously ordered our products through Amazon. It’s grounds for having our products delisted, but they are such a horrible business partner, we don’t care.
Anyway, we track the use of those discount codes and they have spiked since the WaPo kerfuffle. Just one reference point, but take it for what it’s worth.
To some extent, I agree with this. If a media outlet makes no bones about being partisan, and puts out endorsements as a result, then at least they’re being transparent about it. Fine for Mother Jones or the National Review.
But neither of those are considered credible by people in the center, let alone by partisan opposites. That’s fine; they have their niche. Bezos clearly doesn’t want that for the WaPo.
Nevertheless, clearly it’s possible to be something other than nakedly partisan by virtue of there actually being a spectrum of sources available. And while news source reliability does seem to drop down faster as you head to the right, it’s fairly dramatic on the left as well. The most reliable sites lean only a little left.
Story selection rather than factuality is probably the biggest tell. If legitimate stories that make “your side” look bad simply don’t appear–despite attracting extensive coverage elsewhere–then what you have is a propaganda outlet rather than a source trying to be maximally informative.
Regardless, none of this actually addresses the point that sources must not just be credible but must also be believed to be credible. It doesn’t matter how good your stories are if they aren’t believed by most of the population.
I can believe that. To be honest, I don’t think non-staff editorials should be read at all and don’t really consider them part of the newspaper. There’s enough room via story selection and other techniques to inject bias into the news itself.
I never read papers for the op-eds. In Canada, there still exist some political columnists I respect who are non-partisan (or minimally so), who do say who they would vote for as an individual, and for whom this is not always the same party. But that doesn’t influence my choices.
The division and partisanship in the United States is nuts. Regardless of the many, many weaknesses in the Canadian system, at least the courts and health care are essentially nonpartisan, the police and military largely so, the municipal politicians to some significant extent.
The WaPo decision lacks courage. I still believe few would be swayed at this time by an editorial or its endorsement. There is reason to believe this was done for personal and business advantage. I understand this. Those who point out the timing of this decision are right to do so. If the stakes are truly unique in this specific election, then the decision is harder to justify. But I get that taking an institutional stand when people are polarized risks backlash. I think businesses are wise to largely stay out of politics and pontificating on every world event. The equivalent word in chess is zugzwang.
The problem is not just upturning tradition, however. It is the part of the role and rationale of serious media. If you are going to invoke ethics and gravitas and credibility it helps to practice these. If times are changing in the paper business, and they are, you won’t recover ethics and gravitas and credibility through taking the easy business decision but ostensibly the wrong moral one.
Nevertheless, I like WaPo. There are limited options for good news coverage. As a Canadian, its endorsement does not mean very much to me. I may not like their decision. But I also don’t give it much weight. I understand their decision. Amazon is slightly tangential to the WaPo decision, though obviously people should do what they feel is best.
What a bizarre Q. If I cancelled a newspaper subscription every time it declined to endorse my favored candidate, I’d never have a newspaper subscription.
I live in the DC metro area. I’ve been a subscriber to the WP for over 20 years. Damned if I’m going to cancel that because they didn’t overtly support “my candidate.”
Seems like a lot of “I’m taking my ball and going home” attitude here.
Well, you do you. But better get over yourself if you can’t handle a newspaper not getting behind your candidate.
My friends who own a used book store say that Amazon makes a lot of money for them, and they like it.
But we are in a situation where half the country believes that 2+2=5 and the other half beleives that 2+2=4 and the only way to appear unbiased is either to say that 2+2=4.5 or that nobody really knows what 2+2 equals.
Even if you do as you suggest and try to appear balanced via story choice. That implies that there is actually a balance of story choice. If as in the debate Trump lies practically every sentence he makes and Harris stretches the truth a few times, it may be balanced to put out a fact check that includes 5 Trump lies and 5 Harris lies, but it utterly distorts what really happened.
As many have said in this thread and elsewhere, it’s not about wah, wah, my candidate, but about the decision not to endorse 11 days before a consequential election that arouses ire.
To be clear, those of us who are canceling our subscription aren’t doing so because the Post didn’t endorse who we liked, we canceled because it was clear that the choice of who to endorse or not was based on the personal needs of the billionaire owner rather than good journalistic practice. Which then calls into question whether he will put his thumb on the scale in other areas.
Also at this point that Harris is a better choice for president has gone well beyond arguable opinion and into the factual level of “was the US economy bad in the 1930’s”.
Well, you also have to weight by the importance of the lies. That’s something of a judgment call.
Regardless, obviously a newspaper can’t spend all of its time fact-checking candidates, or even spend more than a fraction of the time on political candidates at all. There’s plenty of non-political stories that nevertheless have political consequences, and the selection of those is a type of bias.
And by an owner who (after earlier claiming that he would not engage in editorial interference) withheld an endorsement drafted by the editorial board for a candidate whose opponent is not only opposed to a free press but who has also advocated persecution and even physical harm to his opposition, as well as nakedly stating his dictatorial ambitions. Again, an endorsement in this case isn’t just favoring one set of policy views or normal political alternatives to another; it is actually favoring the integrity of a candidate being essentially truthful and supporting established democratic norms vice one who vows to tear down those norms and who can’t go one stream-of-consciousness sentence fragment to another without spouting demonstrable falsehoods.
Let’s stop pretending that this is just politics as usual; as in 2016, Donald Trump is not a normal political candidate engaging in normal political rhetoric and standing for principles that are somewhere on the spectrum of normal political views. He has advocated for, and is backed by, extremists who have an express goal of bringing the government to its knees and replacing it with a fascist, White Christian nationalist regime in complete abeyance to democratic norms and Constitutional protections.
Stranger
People are not upset because the Washington Post failed to endorse their favored candidate.
People are upset because the Washington Post editorial board had decided whom to endorse in the 2024 presidential election, written a reasoned editorial opinion explaining their decision, only to have their billionaire owner step in at the last minute to quash the endorsement and prevent its publication.
People are upset at the blatant censorship by Bezos. It’s not government censorship, so it’s not unlawful or a 1st Amendment violation. Bezos as the owner is free to censor the newspaper he owns. But he can’t then also pretend that the newspaper is independent of his whims, as he and his hand-picked CEO purport. And neither the newspaper’s staff nor its readers have to accept this censorship, which is why you have multiple resignations within the editorial staff, and hundreds of thousands of readers cancelling their subscriptions.