This is true, but I also meant that Trump might appreciate Musk’s monetary support and efforts in Pennsylvania. Trump might consider Bezos the way he seems to have done previously. When it comes to making big donations this might mean much more than not making an endorsement.
I’m not conflating anything; the entire discussion is about partisan bias, so I assume that’s the kind of bias you’re talking about as well.
There are obviously other types of bias, with varying degrees of partisanness. Which itself is a dynamic concept. Free speech advocates? Big business? Pro-union? DC establishment? Etc. The boundaries here are not precisely Democratic vs. Republican.
You misparsed the sentence. It was admittedly ambiguous, but if you were being generous you might have hit upon the correct parsing since it matches everything else I’ve said, plus it isn’t circular. Specifically, I meant:
sources must not just be credible but people must have a belief in that credibility
and not:
sources must not just be credible, but people must believe in that source in order to be considered credible
Again, to take the example of the voting machine, it’s not enough that it counts the votes correctly. People must believe that it’s counting the votes correctly.
Thanks for the link. Seems pretty late in the game. Any idea if this is typical?
Wow, that was really powerful!
I recommend to others to watch the whole thing (it’s not very long), but Kagan’s final point as to why he had to resign was
But if Donald Trump wins, I feel this is just the beginning. And that’s why I feel for those who are still staying at the Post, I understand their decision, and I respect it especially the way they’re behaving right now but if the goal of this was to avoid offending Donald Trump before the election, imagine when Donald Trump is President. Do we really think that Bezos is going to run a newspaper that is attacking and vilifying the President of the United States every single day? I think It bodes ill in the near future even for those who want to be independent voices at the Washington Post should Donald Trump win. And that’s what this decision means and that’s why I resigned, because you can see the writing on the wall. It’s not really that difficult to see where a decision like this goes. It’s not the last thing that Jeff Bezos is going to do if Donald Trump wins, it’s the first thing.”
The Washington Post just put out an editorial that, without mentioning Harris, calls for populists like Trump to be beaten by mainstream politicians:
Modern-day populism is a threat to democracy. But it can be beaten.
Bezos justified the endorsement ban by writing that “what presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias.” If so, this editorial also does.
No, the entire discussion is not about partisan bias. It’s about ownership bias, as in billionaire Jeff Bezos interfering with a supposedly independent editorial board to bias its reporting such that it aligns with his own financial interests. You’re no kind of sharp-eyed bias hawk if you overlook the very obvious ownership bias to accept the owner’s framing that he’s actually the one who is “fighting partisan bias”.
An editorial decision facing a particular candidate isn’t automatically partisan bias, otherwise it would be impossible to cover candidates at all! This is the position of bad actors who are harmed by honest comparisons.
Journalism isn’t like this. The reason everyone needs to believe in election integrity is so that they’ll participate uncritically, and higher participation helps reinforce integrity. Otherwise they may not participate and they may choose leaders via other less ideal means (violence, coercion, corruption, etc).
Journalism isn’t like that at all. You’re supposed to participate with a skeptical eye! If you don’t like the content of a publication, you’re not required to consume it. You can choose a different voice, and in the digital age you can even publish your own. More voices are better, they add perspective, biases published and placed in contrast can get us closer to the truth.
So no, I am not going to parse this generously at all, as you’ve not argued persuasively that what you said is in any way meaningfully distinct from the entertainment-product analysis that says consumers are the ultimate arbiters of what’s biased and accurate. They’re experts on which beliefs they want highlighted, and nothing more. What Bezos has done here is used his grossly unequal financial resources to elevate his own media-consumer bias above every other consumer, some of whom are his own customers.
This discussion is about Amazon customers using their limited powers to counter Bezos. You want it to be about accepting Bezos’s comically dishonest framing that he’s “fighting partisan bias”, which doesn’t pass even the most naive smell test.
Except that Bezos doesn’t own Amazon. It’s a publicly traded company. He does own WaPo.
I cancelled NYT and WAPO earlier this year. Prime-dang it I don’t want to cancel. I suppose I can cancel and rejoin in 2025 if the asteroid does not hit
Not that this trifling little semantic hijack is worth a response, but nobody owns more of Amazon than Jeff Bezos. He owns something like 9% of it in addition to being executive chairman. At least 70% of his personal net worth is wrapped up in Amazon stock (depending on the daily stock price). So the very simple and obvious point is that if you want to punish Bezos, punishing Amazon is a likely way to go about it.
Thus, he only owns 12% of the company and no longers takes an active hand in running the business. Thanks, you just proved my point.
No one person, but thousands of stockholders jointly own roughly 90%.
No, you will punish the thousands of other stockholders, not Bezo.
OTOH he is the sole owner of WaPo, so canceling your sub does send a message.
No, it doesn’t. Jeff Bezos’ 12% of AMZN stock forms the vast majority of his ~$200B net worth, and while a few tens of thousands of Prime subscribers cancelling their subscriptions will barely put a dent in Amazon income and valuation (especially as the subscriptions renewals will be spread out over the next year), if customers stopped using Amazon en masse (as unlikely as that is) the resulting stock downturn would cause him to lose a significant amount of that net worth.
Jeff Bezos spent ~$250M in 2013 to purchase the Washington Post as a vanity projet via Nash Holdings, which would be about ~0.1% of his current net worth. The Washington Post has been losing money for most if not all of those years; last year it reported an operating net loss of $77M and is claimed that it would have been ~$100M if not for the reorganization and bringing on Will Lewis as CEO and Publisher. The paper is a money loser and Bezos would doubtlessly like to write it off completely or otherwise dispose of it as it has now become a liability for his own much larger business empire of which it is comparatively a banana stand that is currently on fire.
Cancelling subscriptions actually hurts the journalists and other employees at the paper who are doubtless going to experience another headcount reduction and further cost-cutting. For Bezos, he can use clever accounting take the loss to offset capital gains on other asset sales, or just hold onto the paper and continue to manipulate it to show was a well-heeled oligarch he is to whomever he might need to curry favor.
Stranger
You’re suggesting that acting against Amazon somehow punishes everyone who owns less than Bezos, yet somehow it doesn’t the largest shareholder, whose own personal wealth is >75% Amazon stock? That’s not even a pointless hair-split, it’s just fundamentally illogical.
Yeah, I’m sure Bezos cares what Amazon is worth. And I’m sure some of my mutual funds own Amazon stick, but I’m pretty indifferent to what Amazon stock goes for.
So, they dont hurt the employees of Amazon?
Yes, because Bezos wont notice it, but others will.
Bezos will certainly notice if a stock that makes up >75% of his personal wealth significantly decreases in value.
On the other hand, if the Washington Post goes out of business and its value goes to zero, that’s something that Bezos would not notice (financially, anyway), because the proportion of his personal wealth that currently comprised of the WaPo is a mere blip for him.
That’s the difference.
Which wont happen due to prime cancellations.
Financially- yes, but it would hurt his ego. And all newspapers are close to going out of business anyway.
I don’t have a WaPo subscription, but if I had one, I’d cancel it and tell them why. Not that my opinion would matter, but I’m betting someone is keeping track.
As for Amazon Prime, I can’t stop that. It’s the only source I’ve found for a certain OTC medication that’s the only one that keeps me from 24/7 insane itching due to a health condition (not an allergy). Also, I no longer own a car, and the alternative locations are tough to get to.
You can’t buy that medication from Amazon without a Prime membership?
Do you ever get cramps from trying to argue both sides of an issue serially?
Most investors, especially institutional investors or those who have good financial planning guidance, do not have three quarters of their net worth invested in one company.
Stranger