They aren’t endorsing a presidential candidate for the first time since 1980. Are they chickenshit about a potential Trump administration clamping down on media he doesn’t like? Yeah, probably. Fascism, pre-approved by the Washington Post! The LA Times is also going down this chickenshit path.
I’m not around much today, so I thought I would just get this off my chest. I’ll try to return to the thread when I can.
And, here we thought the NY Times was too pro-Trump. They are finally pounding how dangerous a Trump administration will be, although it’s probably too late.
Anyway, fuck WashPost and also fuck the LA Times for good measure.
When the Chicago Sun Times was purchased by Chicago’s NPR station, they decided that as a non-profit they couldn’t endorse candidates any more.
Meanwhile, the Daily Herald (suburban Chicago, more conservative than most newspapers) has endorsed Harris. Don’t think the Trib has officially released their presidential endorsement yet, but in 16 and 20 they broke with their almost exclusive Republican tradition to endorse Clinton/Biden.
What the fuck? So in 2016 and 2020, Trump was so dangerous that they had to endorse his opponent, but in 2024 Trump is looking competent and sane?
Kamala is certainly nothing out of the norm and there’s no reason to refuse to endorse her, so this looks like chickenshit damage control of trying to avoid being the first against the wall when the facists come for the media. Absolutely pathetic.
This article in the Guardian contains the publisher’s full statement, along with condemnation from a former WaPo publisher calling it “cowardice”.
I agree that this is reprehensible bullshit, but realistically, I’m not sure that endorsing Harris would do much to sway anyone. Those who read and trust WaPo and similar legitimate news sources already have more than enough reason to despise Trump, while Trump’s acolytes consider such media to be precisely the “establishment” that they believe Trump is helping them fight.
Still, when the stakes are so high and democracy is literally under threat, the media has an obligation to be a guiding light even when the right choice is so incredibly obvious.
According to Wiki, WaPo has endorsed the Democrat candidate in every election since 1976, except they declined to make an endorsement in either 1988 or 2024.
It looks like it isn’t anything about the candidates themselves, its just that they newly decided this year that she should go back to their policy of some decades ago that as an independent paper they should not be in the business of endorsing candidates. To which I reply that this is a hell of an election to choose to make this change. If ever there was a case where which candidate was better was a fact rather than an opinion this was it.
Democracy dies in darkness so lets put on a blindfold.
And utterly pointless. Thin-skin Trump and his Unmerry Men don’t distinguish between editorials and unfavorable news. The only way to not be an “enemy of the people” is to quash every news story even remotely unfavorable to Trump. Including indirectly, such as implicitly acknowledging the existence of climate change.
That’s what I was wondering. Maybe Jeff Bezos (since it sounds like this was his decision) felt that an endorsement of Harris from the Post would do more to help Trump than to hurt him. Trump thrives on publicity, good or bad, and has turned every political tradition on its head. Maybe the idea here is to not give him something to complain about.
One of the Halloween episodes of The Simpsons had giant advertising mascots come to life and threaten the town. The solution was “just don’t look”.
The New York Times said in its article about this, “Some people have speculated, without any proof, that the paper’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, was being cowed by a prospective Trump administration because his other businesses have many federal government contracts.”
The article also says that Bezos wants to appeal to more conservative readers including adding more conservative writers to the editorial pages.
Unless Bezos himself is coming in to work the printers, they should publish the damn endorsement, and damn the torpedoes. Let him fire the whole staff, because at this point, they’re all neutered anyways.
I originally posted this in the Harris campaign thread in P&E, but I think it’s better here…
Pretty sure this has jack shit to do about tradition and everything to do about money.
Post owner Bezos, the Amazon founder and one of the world’s richest people, has major contracts before the federal government in his other business operations, with billion-dollar implications affecting Amazon’s shipping business and cloud computing services as well as his Blue Origin space company.
Bezos brought in Lewis, who has significant conservative bonafides, as publisher and CEO in January. Lewis held the same role at Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal; served as the editor of the London-based Telegraph, which is closely allied with the Tory party; and was a consultant to Conservative Boris Johnson when Johnson was U.K. prime minister.
Colleagues have told NPR that Bezos selected Lewis in part for his ability to get along with powerful conservative figures, including Murdoch.
Jeff Bezos doesn’t want the Post to alienate anyone on the right, because it might jeopardize business deals, and he hired a guy this year to run the paper with an eye toward placating folks on the right. That just screams integrity to me.
Great turning one of the great papers of our nation into a mealy mouthed both-siderist. I had previously respected Bezos of having an apparently hands off approach to the post. Sounds like he’s decided to get involved. I’ve been a post subscriber for around 30 years, but if it becomes clear that Bezos is calling the shots I’m out.
