It would hurt Bezos even more if the US Govt found a way to cancel the massive use of AWS cloud services because his media arm endorsed the non-winning candidate. Given the business AWS does with the US govt, the size of his remaining stake, I can't make a good case for endorsing a candidate either.
Microsoft is always lurking around ready to push their Azure solution so not like AWS can sit back and rest easy here.
It's a free country and a guy made a decision regarding what he was willing to have HIS company say publicly. It was his call to make. His company. Privately funded. He's got the right to run it any way he sees fit. You have the right to cancel subscriptions and decline to read it. Advertisers have the right to flee. Everyone has a choice. Thats how this whole America thing works.
Besides, who was making their decision based on the Washington Post's editorial board endorsement anyhow?
The linked article is literally about people being upset about that and exercising exactly the same freedom to cancel their subscriptions, though. In which direction are you arguing?
Are you suggesting the govt should change who they did business with because one of their other businesses didn't politically support a certain candidate for President?
It's not a matter of if Trump would. He absolutely will. Donald Trump has an ego the size of the universe, and if someone slights him in any way, he will be out for blood.
Or to put a finer point on it: Suggesting that some President would abuse the powers of the office, using the government as a tool to harm others out of corrupt personal revenge.
The prisoner's dilemma here is that each group that surrenders to the potential threat makes it more likely the bad situation will actually come to pass.
>It would hurt Bezos even more if the US Govt found a way to cancel the massive use of AWS cloud services because his media arm endorsed the non-winning candidate
It didn't even take that much illegal retaliation and abuse of power by Trump to incentivise capitalists to please him.
>Given the business AWS does with the US govt, the size of his remaining stake, I can't make a good case for endorsing a candidate either.
Honestly. I am not a government contractor, but I do own a small business - and I stay the fuck out of politics. There is nothing to be gained from making any political overtures of any type. I have my own political opinions, but I don't broadcast them - I simply vote. And my opinions are not those of my company or brand - because my brand/company has no political values - it has a product.
Jeff literally has tens of billions of dollars on the line, both his own and his investors' money. Preventing his media arm, which is supposedly independent, from making a political statement is just absolutely dumb, because this draws MORE attention on him and Amazon than if he just did nothing.
If Harris wins, I wouldn't put it past her to put Lina Kahn on the case of breaking up Amazon. Dumb move by Jeff, and probably a dereliction of duty as a founder who has taken public money.
That logic would have made sense in April, or in 2022, or even earlier. Certainly not within two weeks of an election. Very clearly Bezos interceded on behalf of one specific candidate here, not out of general principle.
> I wonder how many they gained, if any significant amount
Very few, if any. WaPo already had a reputation as a liberal paper; one refusal to endorse a candidate is hardly going to convince conservatives to subscribe.
It is disappointing that the only viable alternative to "liberal bias", at least according to comments here, seems to be "conservative bias". One would hope that there'd be a sizable pool of readers who are not really taking a particular side and would appreciate honest, neutral coverage. That's certainly what I'd appreciate (and pay for).
An endorsement from the editorial desk of a paper is entirely orthogonal to neutral news coverage from the reporting desk.
One of the major reasons for concern here is that the non-endorsement was the result of executive meddling by Bezos. If he's stepping in to override the paper's editorial positions, who's to say he wouldn't also interfere if the paper were to report on something he found inconvenient?
traditional media is already losing the influence to be honest. Even big networks like CNN or Fox News are basically dying.
In the era of tiktok, twitter, podcasters and other services - traditional media is just too boring source of news. I would say that even the traditional search will die sooner or later.
they are sensationalist because they are trying to imitate the discourse like on TikTok or Twitter - some short sentence that makes people pay attention while reading the headline. It is like "click on us!!!"
And it is getting worse because media has to compete with online media.
> I'm sure some people crave the hollow mindless screaming of random influencers but there's still mindful people out there.
For sure, there are event podcasts with cool and calm discourse too. There are options.
The fairness doctrine only ever applied to broadcast TV and radio. It was considered constitutional on the grounds that these were limited public resources. It never applied to newspapers, cable TV, or web sites, which were far less limited.
It was never really the reason that news broadcasts aimed for fairness. They aimed for fairness because they were journalists, and they considered it a point of pride to be accurate and informative.
The broadcast networks (including Fox affiliates) still aim for that, despite the end of the fairness doctrine. But their markets have been eaten into by cable networks, some of which were explicitly founded as propaganda machines and discovered that people preferred it as entertainment.
That depends on what you mean by 'having a balanced news'.
Should reporting present both sides in the same light if the facts support one side more?
Does a presidential endorsement from the editorial section of a newspaper corrupt the impartiality of the reporting section of the newspaper?
> Does a presidential endorsement from the editorial section of a newspaper corrupt the impartiality of the reporting section of the newspaper?
It probably does. If your editor, boss and all your colleagues support candidate X and you come up with a story that hurts candidate X, will you really get to publish it? Will you even try to come up with such a story?
I'm not saying it's impossible to get this right, but under the current climate I don't think its possible.
Regrettably, history has shown us there is a section of business owner community that would happily vote in fascists to increase or protect their personal power and profit.
I dunno. I suspect you can only watch people vote against their own interests for so many years before you throw in the towel and decide to just support whoever is going to increase your own wealth.
Bezos bought WaPo when corporate news was a on a clear deccline, and it's consistently lost money on average. Bezos doesn't care, as you said, and it's not about making money but rather controlling a narrative.
Bezos is 100% checked out guys. Have you seen him recently? He's a non-entity [1]. He's living his best life
There is no chance he had his finger on the trigger here. He probably hasn't even noticed this controversy. I'm not saying it's beyond him to do so — I'm not vouching for his ethics — but he literally is not involved in running any aspect of his financial web. He barely even checks in on his pet projects like Blue Origin anymore.
> Shipley had approved an editorial endorsement for Harris that was being drafted earlier this month, according to three people with direct knowledge. He told colleagues the decision to endorse was being reviewed by the paper's billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos. That's the owner's prerogative and is a common practice.
If it helps Blue Origin or AWS get a multi $B gov contract under a Trump admin, then the loss will be more than worth it from a purely Bezos financial standpoint.
I don't think it was that expensive of a purchase to care. In the first place it was done in order to stop bashing Bezos himself (I remember how the pivoted from saying how millionaires should not exist to millionaires are good).
Plus a lot of left leaning media hate Bezos anyway.
To be honest, I hope the greatest service Musk can do, is making electric cars somewhat acceptable to certain people, who only considered anything Diesel otherwise just by general principle.
But in general I would like my car to be as unpolitical as possible.
I love this. It's a direct contradiction of the old myth that people want "objective" journalism (whatever that's supposed to mean). People want journalism. They want an editorial angle that's relevant to the current debate. They want viewpoints and edge. They don't want some sort of detached dead "neutral" tone that just reports facts without taking a stance.
I'm not saying that's what WaPo was doing anyway, but it's the rationale used to defend blocking the Harris endorsement.
Or perhaps a neutral viewpoint could still consider many problems/issues with one particular candidate. Perhaps being objective is more important than „not taking sides“ in an unbalanced contest.
Or that people who aren't likely Trump voters don't want to give money to an organization that eventually pays out on someone who will pay into Trump's campaign. It doesn't have to have anything to do with bias. In fact you're the one who is making it about someone wanting their biases to be confirmed. Kind of like not eating Chik Fil-A.
Reporting cannot be objective. The most basic reason is the framing problem: deciding what facts about the world are relevant to the story being told. The things left in, the things left out. How much history do you include? How great is the geographic scope? Whose grievances matter, and whose do not? Every decision you are forced to make about such questions moves you, inch by millimeter, away from any conventional definition of "objective reporting".
Absolutely. I should have said "strive to be objective" as I did in another comment. And the solution is to have more news sources, more organizations, each with their own set of biases and perspectives that, when taken together, offer people a more diverse view of the world and what's happening in it.
But we've been moving in the opposite direction, with media outlets being bought up or going out of business, while others become nakedly hyper-partisan with little reporting and tons of ultra-biased opinion. Many "news" sources these days just make shit up and post straight up lies and conspiracy theories. It's a bad scene. Which is why so many people are pissed to see the Washington Post, one of the last bastions of reputable journalism, succumbing to political pressure.
I wonder if this is also a indication how much people actually value their WP (and by extension other major newspapers) subscription? And how much paying for subscription is kind of charity for them (support of independent journalism, etc.)?
So you think they pay for a subscription to get independent journalism, but cancel that subscription if the independent newspaper does not endorse their candidate? That's funny, don't you think?
The point isn't that they didn't endorse a particular candidate, it's that this decision was made in a way that was completely antithetical to independent journalism.
How is not endorsing a candidate “antithetical to independent journalism”? I understand that Bezos stepped in to perhaps overrule an endorsement but in what sense is maintaining neutrality antithetical to independent journalism?
That reputation is more or less fabricated in order to shield the right from genuine critic. WP is not very left-leaning, I would consider them center. It's just that in the past 8 or so years the right has gotten much more radical, so it doesn't always seem that way.
My take is that WaPo has been exceptionally gentle with Trump, not at all holding him to the same standards they held Biden and Harris. From headline framing, to article vocabulary, to count of articles, fact checking, to associated photos, they've treated Trump quite hospitably.
I didn't say not endorsing a candidate is antithetical to independent journalism. I said the way this decision was made was completely antithetical to independent journalism, i.e. the decision not to endorse was not made by journalists independently. Rather the opposite - the journalists' decision was overruled.
How is endorsing a candidate journalism? Sure journalists will have opinions on candidates, but that's not journalism. From what I've read this is from the opinion section of the paper, so it's not journalism in the classic sense anyway.
Independent journalism isn't "whatever journalists want". It means unbiased. Endorsing candidates is by definition biased. They were corrected in their ways because the editorial board became too biased.
they changed the policy of endorsing a candidate by fiat from above at the last minute before one of the most important elections in American history... do we really need to spell out for you how this isn't about endorsement but about how the decision played out?
They cancel their subscription when the newspaper makes it clear they are no longer independent.
The Post won a Pulitzer for their coverage of Jan 6. The fact they were prevented from endorsing a candidate means Bezos didn’t want them to endorse Harris.
The 1619 Project won a Pulitzer, even though the book was full of factual errors on the border of lies and the hatred in the book is batshit crazy. So, I'm not sure how Pulitzer still means anything.
Notably they can still endorse other candidates, and the specific candidate they were barred from to (not) endorsing has immense influence on the businesses run by the owner, and the owner was directly meeting with him. It seems like an obvious quid pro quo from Bezos to Trump, hence the outcry.
The editor wanted the endorsement and got spiked by the billionaire owner after said owner's closed-door meeting with the other candidate. That's supposed to be journalistic independence?
nobody wants independent journalism. never wanted. people want something that aligns with their point of view.
that's why streamers, podcasters and subgroups are so successful - you find like-minded folks there that agree with you. And that's why you often have forums and discord groups that literally ban people left and right.
> nobody wants independent journalism. never wanted
This is too cynical. I know I do. I don't even mind biased analysis or perspective as I believe everyone has their perspectives grounded on certain assumptions or "biases". But it does pains me to see that journalists would rather invent hoaxes than reporting facts. It also pains me to see that all medias simultaneously use the same peculiar phases like "testy interview" or "sharp as tack", which does seem imply outside influence to the journalists.
Jeff Bezos intervened directly in what was promised to be an independent editorial process. That quite directly breaks the trust in both editorials and d news.
For me, it explained WaPo's very careful treatment of Trump's age, versus the aggressive treatment of Biden's age. So I cancelled. I can't trust editorial choice or news editing and framing from a media source where The Owner just busts in and changes things.
Anything can be funny without effort of thinking. It is funny for you, because you are skipping really short context: endorsement was already written. Owner of the newspaper dictating what can't be published means that it is not independent work is it?
The key detail here is that the endorsement was quashed by the billionaire owner of the paper and not the editorial board. That undermines any sense of independence that people might have felt they were paying for.
The ideal is that a good newspapers' jobs are to provide unbiased facts, not to tell people how to think.
Not endorsing a candidate, but instead focusing on the facts, and on what they genuinely think will be of the most public interest in selecting content, is in fact closer to that ideal.
It is the biased presentation of information, and the corresponding polarisation and information void that lead to the success of candidates using deception to get elected.
So while Washington Post has many biases, this particular decision seems like a step in the right direction process-wise.
For context: "Washington Post didn't endorse in White House race for first time since 1980s"
So, for the first time in 40+ years ... did they share a philosophical stance for why they are not doing it - one that we could point to and argue about?
Traditionally, newspapers have editorial boards that are separate from reporting. And traditionally, editorial boards make political endorsements. This is in addition to printing editorials and opinion pieces from a variety of perspectives.
All of that is separate from reporting, which strives to be objective. Both coexist within most media organizations. Fox News pioneered the blurring of those lines, but the lines remain clear at most traditional major media outlets.
This is a case of a major paper deviating from the norm and succumbing to political pressure, which is outside of the established norms in a society with a free press.
Bezos says you're wrong and that he's changing the Post because of the polls that show nobody trusts the media anymore. The Post loses large sums of money because its costs are so high relative to its fairly small circulation, a problem that affects the entire US media business. He simply doesn't care what the "norms" of the newspaper business are because those norms have destroyed the industry. He seems particularly to be annoyed that podcasts/social media have outcompeted his paper.
The idea that this was a noble decision would be way more credible had it not occurred a few days before the election. They should have said this months, if not years ago.
Newspapers provide facts and also editorial analysis. It's shocking that people don't know that. This event is novel.
An editorial board publishing their opinion isn't telling you how to think. It's presenting a viewpoint. Contextualize it however you want with other sources and then make up your mind. But exposure to different opinions is important just like different presentations of facts.
The Post employees (including acquaintances of mine) are begging subscribers not to leave. They insist that Bezos doesn't interfere with the news reporting, only with the op-ed pages.
I feel for them, but I don't see how they can justify that. This was a big, obvious incident, but it's impossible to imagine that it won't spread out from there. Every editorial decision is suspect.
I don't see how the paper survives this. The news business is marginal at best, at least for organizations that want to do actual journalism. The Post was one of the few remaining papers originating national-scale reporting. They eked out a living on a reputation of doing good work. All of that gets thrown away in one decision.
It's an astonishing hail-mary. Trump and Bezos get exactly one shot at this. I suppose Bezos imagines that the odds are good enough that Trump will win and he'll avoid whatever negative consequences were promised to his other business. But he will have literally destroyed this business in the process.
Not that it was ever going to be a major revenue source for him. But whatever goal he wanted from owning a newspaper, this is all he'll get.
> The Post employees (including acquaintances of mine) are begging subscribers not to leave. They insist that Bezos doesn't interfere with the news reporting, only with the op-ed pages.
Even if you plan to resubscribe in the future, cancelling is the only action subscribers can take that will make any difference in the future.
If one would like to subscribe to a national paper owned by a billionaire who supposedly only interferes with editorial and not reporting, the Wall Street Journal is cheaper.
Given that WSJ broke the Theranos thing (in which Murdoch was made to look very silly) one might even be inclined to think there’s more evidence for its independence at this point…
The employees are lying, then. Bezos has written a very clear article about his reasoning just yesterday, and he states as clear as day that it has nothing to do with Trump and is part of an entire mindset shift. The proximate decision was apparently made by their new editor and not Bezos, but clearly it was done with Bezo's full approval. He says it's part of a longer term strategy to try and fix the sub-zero trust in journalists. He doesn't care if it "destroys this business" because in his view it's already been destroyed and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. In this he is correct: their new editor told the staff back in June that "nobody is reading your stuff" and "we're losing a lot of money" [1]. Nor is he alone, Pierre Omidyar came to a similar conclusion recently and simply dumped The Intercept which he had been subsidizing for years.
In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress. But in this year’s Gallup poll, we have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working.
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. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion. It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility (and, therefore, decline in impact), but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.
Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, “I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.” None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one. Eugene Meyer, publisher of The Washington Post from 1933 to 1946, thought the same, and he was right. By itself, declining to endorse presidential candidates is not enough to move us very far up the trust scale, but it’s a meaningful step in the right direction. I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it. That was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy.
I would also like to be clear that no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here. Neither campaign nor candidate was consulted or informed at any level or in any way about this decision. It was made entirely internally. Dave Limp, the chief executive of one of my companies, Blue Origin, met with former president Donald Trump on the day of our announcement. I sighed when I found out, because I knew it would provide ammunition to those who would like to frame this as anything other than a principled decision. But the fact is, I didn’t know about the meeting beforehand. Even Limp didn’t know about it in advance; the meeting was scheduled quickly that morning. There is no connection between it and our decision on presidential endorsements, and any suggestion otherwise is false.
...
While I do not and will not push my personal interest, I will also not allow this paper to stay on autopilot and fade into irrelevance — o...
> Bezos has written a very clear article about his reasoning just yesterday, and he states as clear as day that it has nothing to do with Trump and is part of an entire mindset shift.
My kids try this shit with “yes, I brushed my teeth”. Unfortunately for them, I can smell their breath.
Why? He says he should have planned ahead like that to try and head off obvious criticisms, but it's clear this was a decision sent to him for review. Endorsements tend to happen before elections, so the timing wasn't chosen by him.
I don't know why anyone would disbelieve this. The justification as written is fully rational and not unexpected.
It rings false because of the timing. Bezos knew perfectly well the editorial board was going to endorse a candidate, which they've done every election since 1976.
Most people probably agree with his reasoning (personally, newspapers endorsing candidates has never sat right with me), but that's not what people are reacting to.
Bezos, with his response, has managed not only to make WaPo seem less trustworthy, but himself as well. Just another oblivious billionaire carelessly and cynically manipulating American society for his own motives.
Maybe the silver lining is that billionaires and large corporations might look less favorably at owning newspapers when it's seen as a net negative and a lever for someone to use against them.
If Bezos didn't own WaPo, it wouldn't be a bargaining chip to get Trump to the table with Blue Origin, and wouldn't suffer in this way because of that causing him a loss.
No newspaper can claim to be independent. The WaPo's slogan is "Democracy Dies in Darkness". This, in and of itself consists of multiple political statements (ex: Democracy is important, information is crucial to the health of a democracy).
The idea that one candidate on the ballot is more significant than another is in fact an opinion. It may be very, very well grounded, but it is an opinion, not a fact.
Which is kind of the point. You are sort of arguing that the things you personally are comfortable with are good and that newspapers should do them, and the things you do not like are bad, and they shouldn't do them. But you are making value judgments, not spitting truths.
They don't necessarily publish them in pairs but they do in fact publish pro-Trump and anti-Harris pieces. They have conservative columnists and even a libertarian columnist who they regularly publish.
An independent paper shouldn't give two shits on your opinion on what it should or should not be doing. Nor should it be caving to pressure from owners/investors to not endorse either. That's the point of independence. People seem to have forgotten what the word means.
See, the whole independence thing is pre-requisite on no one the fuck else influencing you. Which means that yeah, sometimes you get up to things others wish you wouldn't. Without a Press willing and capable of muckraking where everyone who funds them/makes their work possible wishes they wouldn't, there is literally no capital P Press. It is no longer a thing. Period. The machine and company, and assets might be there. Journalists might be running around, but it isn't fulfilling the purpose of the Free Press.
Which isn't, btw, being a mouthpiece for funders. It's keeping everyone aware of what's going on. Even in spite of people really wishing you wouldn't.
So there's no value for a community for a newspaper to publish a letter to the editor saying that the municipality should do a better job removing garbage from a commercial district?
Because that's what the absolute position you are taking is. The editorial board of a newspaper isn't different in that sense than a letter to the editor.
A newspaper's owner should never be suppressing their editorial board's endorsements out of fear of retaliation from public officials (or potential ones).
I don't think you want to hear my opinions on what the left wing thinks is obvious :-)
Also, I am neither left nor right wing, as I'm a libertarian. I believe in the principles in the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the system of checks and balances set up by the Constitution.
Since you believe in checks and balances, do you believe Trump should be disqualified for running for office, for using violence, intimidation and lies to attempt to change the results of the last election? As a principled libertarian I'm sure the peaceful transfer of power is at the height of your concerns.
This is a repeated habit from supposedly principled people (who often complain about Democrat standards of behaviour) that are going to vote for Trump.
"The greatest damage to democratic norms since the Civil War? Who cares?!?! He says he'll end all the wars and he'll get rid of the immigrants and end inflation! I couldn't POSSIBLY comment on Trump's political history though."
You're right of course but this isn't really the place to do it.
Libertarians are, first and foremost, cowards. Trying to get them to actually tell you their political views is like trying to extract sugar from a stick of gum. There's no point in trying, just assume they're being dishonest about their positions on democracy and assume they'll vote for the candidate who threatens democracy.
This election is already, more or less, completely fucked. Nobody is really approaching it in a reasonable way. Everyone, even on the left to an extent, just pretends that Trump hasn't repeatedly and continuously tried to threaten democracy. Instead, we're talking about who cackles more or how black Kamala is. So, at this point don't bother. Those who understand the threat to the US' legitimacy understand it, and those who don't, don't.
I don't see how answering their question would require a Trump vs. Harris debate. It was a question on whether doing what he did in 2020 should disqualify him from office regardless of who his opponent happens to be in this election.
Their question would have been the same if they had asked it a a year ago before Trump was even the Republican nominee for President.
Would you have said then you want to spare everyone from a Trump vs. Nikki Haley debate? Or a Trump vs. Ted Cruz debate? Or a Trump vs. Ron DeSantis debate?
There are three reasonably obvious possibilities: (1) Bezos is afraid of the consequences for his businesses if WaPo endorses Harris and Trump goes on to win; (2) Bezos disagrees with Harris' policies; (3) Bezos dislikes Harris at a personal level.
You are assuming the explanation must be (1), but how can you know that it isn't (2) or (3) or both instead?
Because 2 and 3 aren't sufficient reason to overrule the decisions, and ~60 year old traditions, of your extremely prestigious newspaper, causing a LARGE drop in subscriber numbers.
Just because something is or isn’t a sufficient reason in your mind, doesn’t mean it is or isn’t one in the mind of Bezos. He’s making decisions based on different information, evidence, advisors, life experiences, values, etc. Also, you are judging it with the benefit of hindsight
> and ~60 year old traditions,
It isn’t a 60 year old tradition. Regular endorsements only started with their 1976 endorsement of Carter, which was only 48 years ago. And WaPo didn’t endorse either candidate in the 1988 election, which was only 36 years ago. It also endorsed Eisenhower in 1952 (72 years ago), but that was more of a once-off (they endorsed neither Truman nor Dewey in 1948; and despite endorsing Eisenhower over Stevenson in 1952, WaPo endorsed neither in their 1956 rematch.)
> causing a LARGE drop in subscriber numbers.
I don’t think Bezos was expecting that. I’m sure he was expecting some blowback, but I suspect he wasn’t expecting it to be this big. If he had foreseen it, would he have made a different decision? I don’t know.
From what I’ve read, it sounds like Bezos and his WaPo executives had been planning a move like this for a while, but the disagreement was over timing - the executives wanted to wait until after the election to discontinue the tradition of presidential endorsements, Bezos decided he didn’t want to wait.
For this reason alone they have a good logical reason to endorse Harris.
Also, in this day and age it's impossible to be politically neutral. Especially the extreme-right makes such absurd claims that any serious paper would not publish them because they're simply untrue. This automatically pushes them into the other camp.
Anyway I think it's very poor showing that they caved to pressure from Bezos, however it's pretty clear which way the Washington Post leans. They don't need to endorse a candidate because we already know their opinion (especially in light of the list they have made above).
Yes. In the editorial sections, the paper's bias becomes more obvious. The reporting section is overseen by the same people, and the same bias is quite visible to the discerning reader.
That's very true in WaPo's case. They treated Trump extremely carefully, and also published very pro Trump editorials by Hugh Hewitt and Marc Thiessen. Their treatment of Biden, and then Harris, has not been so charitable.
learn a bit of the history of journalism, and specifically of the history of american journalism and its connection to politics and voting, i dare you.
News media keeps making this mistake - "if we go centrist enough the right-wing will join us!" It never works. Even Fox News is losing viewers to further-right outlets.
Nothing the WaPo does is going to please the MAGAs - certainly not to the point of paying for a newspaper! - but they can piss off their existing readership (and staff).
> And if taking no stance makes your audiences leave
Taking no stance after taking a stance every election for almost fifty years is a choice.
> News media keeps making this mistake - "if we go centrist enough the right-wing will join us!" It never works.
There are right-wingers who read the NYT for Ross Douthat.
> Even Fox News is losing viewers to further-right outlets.
Fox News is rather low-brow, and further right stuff like OANN is even more low-brow. Not the kind of thing who attracts the more intellectual right-winger who reads First Things, Commentary (in its current neoconservative incarnation, not decades ago when it was still left-leaning), The American Conservative, Compact (which isn't purely conservative, more a strange medley where you'll find a Marxist on one page and a Catholic theocrat on the next), even National Review. But they might read NYT for Douthat.
WaPo has Jennifer Rubin, but she seems much less conservative nowadays that Douthat does. Rubin's current output seems to be mainly targeted at liberals who are looking for a conservative who agrees with them.
Unless they derive some other benefit from paying him; insurance against attacks from conservative politicians might be worth paying a few right-wing columnists.
> And if taking no stance makes your audiences leave, it might just be a symptom of an existing condition.
This is not why I or anyone else I know cancelled. We cancelled because the owner of the Post overruled the editorial board, which is extremely concerning
Who would join? All the staff is the same as before; if you didn't like their journalism before, why would you like it now? The only difference is that we now know that Bezos has the editorial board on a leash.
Would the anti-Trump crowd flock to Fox News if it came out the Murdoch's killed a Trump endorsement? Not likely.
Wouldn’t bet on many subscribing because of this. Subscriptions to quality newspapers is a niche enough business, and in that world ‘ownership controls editorial policy’ is not a good look; that’s more of a tabloid thing traditionally.
Like, even in Murdoch-land, while I don’t think anyone believes the tabloids have editorial independence, the WSJ was able to do its Theranos investigation (Murdoch was an investor in Theranos).
Well, way more people are aware of the intended endorsement than would have paid any attention if it had been published as expected. Nobody was going to be surprised about WaPo endorsing the democratic candidate.
As a major media organization they definitely should have known better with the timing but I suppose they weren't expecting their employee's to turn it into a major story.
I've never been a fan of news organizations making endorsements. However, the idea that such an endorsement is being suppressed because of an owner's fear of reprisal against their other businesses by a candidate should they win the election is very very very bad. Intimidation of a free media is how fascist regimes begin and thrive. As Timothy Snyder wrote: Do Not Obey in Advance.
In general politics is to be avoided on HN, but I will sacrifice every point I have to for my fellow Americans (international viewers, apologies for the American centric writing).
1)Russia is at war with the United States of America.
2)The goal of this war is to destabilize America.
3)The battle-ground is here at home.
4)The weapons in this war include pervasive laundering of Russian money into a) bend the minds of Americans through pervasive propaganda, b)direct corruption of U.S. citizens with money in return for favors or for promoting propaganda (e.g. influencers), c) corruption of politicians with promises of power, d) our divisions and our platforms for communication.
Too few Americans accept or appreciate the veracity of points 1 thru 4, and this makes us weak. We have a free and open internet, and while this is great, it means that U.S. citizens are accessible, viable targets to any foreign-influence campaign, which can be all the more effective given the amount of data accumulated on each individual, and the ease at which these attacks can be individualized at scale. The United States does not protect its citizens from these attacks. Its hard to do right, and it poses difficult questions about freedom of speech, and freedom more generally. Nevertheless, we are exposed and blind, and in a war, that is asking for defeat.
Offense is a form of defense. Why not take it back to Russia? Maybe we are. I do not know. But there, free-speech is dangerous, and the rebellious mind gets crushed quickly. China has the great firewall, and for all the terrible things this allows, it does protect their citizens from easy targeting to influence campaigns. Could the West do the same?
Is it time to imagine an internet that excludes Russia, one which only includes liberal Democracies, partners and allies?
The US will stay the country that voted for Trump (and is close to doing this again) and the Washington Post will stay the newspaper where the billionaire owner decides what is published.
I have no use for a weak willed news product. Endorse Trump, Kamala, or a third party, but if your tagline is “democracy dies in darkness” and you’re embracing that slogan in the opposite direction, I’m just going to cancel.
Still, someone has to say no to the pressure. If that's up to the subscribers then so be it. Let their money go to media that isn't beholden to Trump's threats.
For sure Bezos handled this badly. But the problem in my opinion is not his management skills or even his civic valor, but apparent fear of business and public people of retributions for supporting a wrong candidate.
So is this so-called loyalty that is not absolute is absolutely no loyalty? Joke aside, I don't believe such rage is necessary. Do you still like the writing of WaPo? If you do, why not just continue the subscription? Heck, I still read WaPo even though I believe they are too biased towards the left and sometimes become hysterical and dishonest, as I still value their perspectives.
It leaves you wondering what other WaPo coverage is being edited by Bezos. Erodes trust in the publication.
You can agree or disagree with the endorsement they were going to make, but the fact that the owner blocked them from making it means that they lack journalistic independence.
Traditionally, quality broadsheets, even where owned by a person or company rather than a trust (the latter model is often preferred) have editorial independence. “Owner controls editorial policy” is more of a tabloid thing, so consumers looking for a quality broadsheet will likely go elsewhere.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 235 ms ] threadMicrosoft is always lurking around ready to push their Azure solution so not like AWS can sit back and rest easy here.
Besides, who was making their decision based on the Washington Post's editorial board endorsement anyhow?
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Which is a strange thing to support though, but it often happens anyway.
The prisoner's dilemma here is that each group that surrenders to the potential threat makes it more likely the bad situation will actually come to pass.
It didn't even take that much illegal retaliation and abuse of power by Trump to incentivise capitalists to please him.
Honestly. I am not a government contractor, but I do own a small business - and I stay the fuck out of politics. There is nothing to be gained from making any political overtures of any type. I have my own political opinions, but I don't broadcast them - I simply vote. And my opinions are not those of my company or brand - because my brand/company has no political values - it has a product.
Jeff literally has tens of billions of dollars on the line, both his own and his investors' money. Preventing his media arm, which is supposedly independent, from making a political statement is just absolutely dumb, because this draws MORE attention on him and Amazon than if he just did nothing.
If Harris wins, I wouldn't put it past her to put Lina Kahn on the case of breaking up Amazon. Dumb move by Jeff, and probably a dereliction of duty as a founder who has taken public money.
Unless Trump wins and Bezos benefits from the secret deals that were just made behind the curtain.
I wonder how many they gained, if any significant amount
Very few, if any. WaPo already had a reputation as a liberal paper; one refusal to endorse a candidate is hardly going to convince conservatives to subscribe.
One of the major reasons for concern here is that the non-endorsement was the result of executive meddling by Bezos. If he's stepping in to override the paper's editorial positions, who's to say he wouldn't also interfere if the paper were to report on something he found inconvenient?
In the era of tiktok, twitter, podcasters and other services - traditional media is just too boring source of news. I would say that even the traditional search will die sooner or later.
I prefer a good writeup like the guardian does. Not every fart needs to be "BREAKING NEWS".
I'm sure some people crave the hollow mindless screaming of random influencers but there's still mindful people out there.
And it is getting worse because media has to compete with online media.
> I'm sure some people crave the hollow mindless screaming of random influencers but there's still mindful people out there.
For sure, there are event podcasts with cool and calm discourse too. There are options.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine
It was never really the reason that news broadcasts aimed for fairness. They aimed for fairness because they were journalists, and they considered it a point of pride to be accurate and informative.
The broadcast networks (including Fox affiliates) still aim for that, despite the end of the fairness doctrine. But their markets have been eaten into by cable networks, some of which were explicitly founded as propaganda machines and discovered that people preferred it as entertainment.
It probably does. If your editor, boss and all your colleagues support candidate X and you come up with a story that hurts candidate X, will you really get to publish it? Will you even try to come up with such a story? I'm not saying it's impossible to get this right, but under the current climate I don't think its possible.
> This might be bad if the point of owning a newspaper was to make money.
Which implies that owner bought it not to make money but to have influence.
The savings in tax go into the billions at least.
There is no chance he had his finger on the trigger here. He probably hasn't even noticed this controversy. I'm not saying it's beyond him to do so — I'm not vouching for his ethics — but he literally is not involved in running any aspect of his financial web. He barely even checks in on his pet projects like Blue Origin anymore.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/27/technology/jeff-bezos-was...
> Shipley had approved an editorial endorsement for Harris that was being drafted earlier this month, according to three people with direct knowledge. He told colleagues the decision to endorse was being reviewed by the paper's billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos. That's the owner's prerogative and is a common practice.
- https://www.npr.org/2024/10/25/nx-s1-5165353/washington-post...
Plus a lot of left leaning media hate Bezos anyway.
funny how large amounts of money corrupts one's own values
But in general I would like my car to be as unpolitical as possible.
I'm not saying that's what WaPo was doing anyway, but it's the rationale used to defend blocking the Harris endorsement.
Many people seem to not grasp this fundamental aspect of journalism.
Reporting cannot be objective. The most basic reason is the framing problem: deciding what facts about the world are relevant to the story being told. The things left in, the things left out. How much history do you include? How great is the geographic scope? Whose grievances matter, and whose do not? Every decision you are forced to make about such questions moves you, inch by millimeter, away from any conventional definition of "objective reporting".
But we've been moving in the opposite direction, with media outlets being bought up or going out of business, while others become nakedly hyper-partisan with little reporting and tons of ultra-biased opinion. Many "news" sources these days just make shit up and post straight up lies and conspiracy theories. It's a bad scene. Which is why so many people are pissed to see the Washington Post, one of the last bastions of reputable journalism, succumbing to political pressure.
I do appreciate your honest reply! Thank you!
The Post won a Pulitzer for their coverage of Jan 6. The fact they were prevented from endorsing a candidate means Bezos didn’t want them to endorse Harris.
that's why streamers, podcasters and subgroups are so successful - you find like-minded folks there that agree with you. And that's why you often have forums and discord groups that literally ban people left and right.
It has always been the case.
This is too cynical. I know I do. I don't even mind biased analysis or perspective as I believe everyone has their perspectives grounded on certain assumptions or "biases". But it does pains me to see that journalists would rather invent hoaxes than reporting facts. It also pains me to see that all medias simultaneously use the same peculiar phases like "testy interview" or "sharp as tack", which does seem imply outside influence to the journalists.
I stopped reading after that. What a bizarre take
For me, it explained WaPo's very careful treatment of Trump's age, versus the aggressive treatment of Biden's age. So I cancelled. I can't trust editorial choice or news editing and framing from a media source where The Owner just busts in and changes things.
Not endorsing a candidate, but instead focusing on the facts, and on what they genuinely think will be of the most public interest in selecting content, is in fact closer to that ideal.
It is the biased presentation of information, and the corresponding polarisation and information void that lead to the success of candidates using deception to get elected.
So while Washington Post has many biases, this particular decision seems like a step in the right direction process-wise.
So, for the first time in 40+ years ... did they share a philosophical stance for why they are not doing it - one that we could point to and argue about?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/25/washingto...
All of that is separate from reporting, which strives to be objective. Both coexist within most media organizations. Fox News pioneered the blurring of those lines, but the lines remain clear at most traditional major media outlets.
This is a case of a major paper deviating from the norm and succumbing to political pressure, which is outside of the established norms in a society with a free press.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/28/jeff-bezo...
An editorial board publishing their opinion isn't telling you how to think. It's presenting a viewpoint. Contextualize it however you want with other sources and then make up your mind. But exposure to different opinions is important just like different presentations of facts.
I feel for them, but I don't see how they can justify that. This was a big, obvious incident, but it's impossible to imagine that it won't spread out from there. Every editorial decision is suspect.
I don't see how the paper survives this. The news business is marginal at best, at least for organizations that want to do actual journalism. The Post was one of the few remaining papers originating national-scale reporting. They eked out a living on a reputation of doing good work. All of that gets thrown away in one decision.
It's an astonishing hail-mary. Trump and Bezos get exactly one shot at this. I suppose Bezos imagines that the odds are good enough that Trump will win and he'll avoid whatever negative consequences were promised to his other business. But he will have literally destroyed this business in the process.
Not that it was ever going to be a major revenue source for him. But whatever goal he wanted from owning a newspaper, this is all he'll get.
Too bad for the employees, though.
Even if you plan to resubscribe in the future, cancelling is the only action subscribers can take that will make any difference in the future.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/28/jeff-bezo...
In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress. But in this year’s Gallup poll, we have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working.
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. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion. It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility (and, therefore, decline in impact), but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.
Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, “I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.” None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one. Eugene Meyer, publisher of The Washington Post from 1933 to 1946, thought the same, and he was right. By itself, declining to endorse presidential candidates is not enough to move us very far up the trust scale, but it’s a meaningful step in the right direction. I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it. That was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy.
I would also like to be clear that no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here. Neither campaign nor candidate was consulted or informed at any level or in any way about this decision. It was made entirely internally. Dave Limp, the chief executive of one of my companies, Blue Origin, met with former president Donald Trump on the day of our announcement. I sighed when I found out, because I knew it would provide ammunition to those who would like to frame this as anything other than a principled decision. But the fact is, I didn’t know about the meeting beforehand. Even Limp didn’t know about it in advance; the meeting was scheduled quickly that morning. There is no connection between it and our decision on presidential endorsements, and any suggestion otherwise is false.
...
While I do not and will not push my personal interest, I will also not allow this paper to stay on autopilot and fade into irrelevance — o...
My kids try this shit with “yes, I brushed my teeth”. Unfortunately for them, I can smell their breath.
I don't know why anyone would disbelieve this. The justification as written is fully rational and not unexpected.
Most people probably agree with his reasoning (personally, newspapers endorsing candidates has never sat right with me), but that's not what people are reacting to.
Bezos, with his response, has managed not only to make WaPo seem less trustworthy, but himself as well. Just another oblivious billionaire carelessly and cynically manipulating American society for his own motives.
If Bezos didn't own WaPo, it wouldn't be a bargaining chip to get Trump to the table with Blue Origin, and wouldn't suffer in this way because of that causing him a loss.
No newspaper can claim to be independent. The WaPo's slogan is "Democracy Dies in Darkness". This, in and of itself consists of multiple political statements (ex: Democracy is important, information is crucial to the health of a democracy).
No article is ever free of bias. But endorsing candidates means they don't even try.
An independent news outfit would publish editorials in pairs - one on each side. Wouldn't you find that more interesting? I would.
Like the old "Firing Line" TV show.
I'm not sure how to politely say more.
True, but there's value in making an effort. And in this particular case, there are only 2 candidates that matter.
> I'm not sure how to politely say more.
Feel free to be as rude as you like.
Which is kind of the point. You are sort of arguing that the things you personally are comfortable with are good and that newspapers should do them, and the things you do not like are bad, and they shouldn't do them. But you are making value judgments, not spitting truths.
See, the whole independence thing is pre-requisite on no one the fuck else influencing you. Which means that yeah, sometimes you get up to things others wish you wouldn't. Without a Press willing and capable of muckraking where everyone who funds them/makes their work possible wishes they wouldn't, there is literally no capital P Press. It is no longer a thing. Period. The machine and company, and assets might be there. Journalists might be running around, but it isn't fulfilling the purpose of the Free Press.
Which isn't, btw, being a mouthpiece for funders. It's keeping everyone aware of what's going on. Even in spite of people really wishing you wouldn't.
Because that's what the absolute position you are taking is. The editorial board of a newspaper isn't different in that sense than a letter to the editor.
By way of word count, I expect the average editorial board is much more evenly divided than the crank letters that they choose not to publish.
Now you're arguing the definitions of words, pretending to not understand. No thanks.
Also, I am neither left nor right wing, as I'm a libertarian. I believe in the principles in the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the system of checks and balances set up by the Constitution.
Libertarians are, first and foremost, cowards. Trying to get them to actually tell you their political views is like trying to extract sugar from a stick of gum. There's no point in trying, just assume they're being dishonest about their positions on democracy and assume they'll vote for the candidate who threatens democracy.
This election is already, more or less, completely fucked. Nobody is really approaching it in a reasonable way. Everyone, even on the left to an extent, just pretends that Trump hasn't repeatedly and continuously tried to threaten democracy. Instead, we're talking about who cackles more or how black Kamala is. So, at this point don't bother. Those who understand the threat to the US' legitimacy understand it, and those who don't, don't.
Many people have complained here about my political views, and dang has appealed to me to dial it down.
Their question would have been the same if they had asked it a a year ago before Trump was even the Republican nominee for President.
Would you have said then you want to spare everyone from a Trump vs. Nikki Haley debate? Or a Trump vs. Ted Cruz debate? Or a Trump vs. Ron DeSantis debate?
You are assuming the explanation must be (1), but how can you know that it isn't (2) or (3) or both instead?
Just because something is or isn’t a sufficient reason in your mind, doesn’t mean it is or isn’t one in the mind of Bezos. He’s making decisions based on different information, evidence, advisors, life experiences, values, etc. Also, you are judging it with the benefit of hindsight
> and ~60 year old traditions,
It isn’t a 60 year old tradition. Regular endorsements only started with their 1976 endorsement of Carter, which was only 48 years ago. And WaPo didn’t endorse either candidate in the 1988 election, which was only 36 years ago. It also endorsed Eisenhower in 1952 (72 years ago), but that was more of a once-off (they endorsed neither Truman nor Dewey in 1948; and despite endorsing Eisenhower over Stevenson in 1952, WaPo endorsed neither in their 1956 rematch.)
> causing a LARGE drop in subscriber numbers.
I don’t think Bezos was expecting that. I’m sure he was expecting some blowback, but I suspect he wasn’t expecting it to be this big. If he had foreseen it, would he have made a different decision? I don’t know.
From what I’ve read, it sounds like Bezos and his WaPo executives had been planning a move like this for a while, but the disagreement was over timing - the executives wanted to wait until after the election to discontinue the tradition of presidential endorsements, Bezos decided he didn’t want to wait.
For this reason alone they have a good logical reason to endorse Harris.
Also, in this day and age it's impossible to be politically neutral. Especially the extreme-right makes such absurd claims that any serious paper would not publish them because they're simply untrue. This automatically pushes them into the other camp.
Anyway I think it's very poor showing that they caved to pressure from Bezos, however it's pretty clear which way the Washington Post leans. They don't need to endorse a candidate because we already know their opinion (especially in light of the list they have made above).
BTW, I do not think Bezos needs npr to remind him the financial consequences.
Do you really think that is why people are leaving?
The story is newsworthy. I seriously doubt people at NPR are trying to...communicate directly with Jeff Bezos via...journalism?
News media keeps making this mistake - "if we go centrist enough the right-wing will join us!" It never works. Even Fox News is losing viewers to further-right outlets.
Nothing the WaPo does is going to please the MAGAs - certainly not to the point of paying for a newspaper! - but they can piss off their existing readership (and staff).
> And if taking no stance makes your audiences leave
Taking no stance after taking a stance every election for almost fifty years is a choice.
There are right-wingers who read the NYT for Ross Douthat.
> Even Fox News is losing viewers to further-right outlets.
Fox News is rather low-brow, and further right stuff like OANN is even more low-brow. Not the kind of thing who attracts the more intellectual right-winger who reads First Things, Commentary (in its current neoconservative incarnation, not decades ago when it was still left-leaning), The American Conservative, Compact (which isn't purely conservative, more a strange medley where you'll find a Marxist on one page and a Catholic theocrat on the next), even National Review. But they might read NYT for Douthat.
WaPo has Jennifer Rubin, but she seems much less conservative nowadays that Douthat does. Rubin's current output seems to be mainly targeted at liberals who are looking for a conservative who agrees with them.
Sure. Shades of Tobias in Arrested Development, though; “there are dozens of us!”
And they've been doing so for about 15 years now.
NYT wouldn't be paying him if they didn't think he was attracting readers.
This is not why I or anyone else I know cancelled. We cancelled because the owner of the Post overruled the editorial board, which is extremely concerning
Who would join? All the staff is the same as before; if you didn't like their journalism before, why would you like it now? The only difference is that we now know that Bezos has the editorial board on a leash.
Would the anti-Trump crowd flock to Fox News if it came out the Murdoch's killed a Trump endorsement? Not likely.
Like, even in Murdoch-land, while I don’t think anyone believes the tabloids have editorial independence, the WSJ was able to do its Theranos investigation (Murdoch was an investor in Theranos).
"I can't believe the journalists did that to us"
In general politics is to be avoided on HN, but I will sacrifice every point I have to for my fellow Americans (international viewers, apologies for the American centric writing).
1)Russia is at war with the United States of America. 2)The goal of this war is to destabilize America. 3)The battle-ground is here at home. 4)The weapons in this war include pervasive laundering of Russian money into a) bend the minds of Americans through pervasive propaganda, b)direct corruption of U.S. citizens with money in return for favors or for promoting propaganda (e.g. influencers), c) corruption of politicians with promises of power, d) our divisions and our platforms for communication.
Too few Americans accept or appreciate the veracity of points 1 thru 4, and this makes us weak. We have a free and open internet, and while this is great, it means that U.S. citizens are accessible, viable targets to any foreign-influence campaign, which can be all the more effective given the amount of data accumulated on each individual, and the ease at which these attacks can be individualized at scale. The United States does not protect its citizens from these attacks. Its hard to do right, and it poses difficult questions about freedom of speech, and freedom more generally. Nevertheless, we are exposed and blind, and in a war, that is asking for defeat.
Offense is a form of defense. Why not take it back to Russia? Maybe we are. I do not know. But there, free-speech is dangerous, and the rebellious mind gets crushed quickly. China has the great firewall, and for all the terrible things this allows, it does protect their citizens from easy targeting to influence campaigns. Could the West do the same?
Is it time to imagine an internet that excludes Russia, one which only includes liberal Democracies, partners and allies?
[1] Do not obey in advance. Lesson 1, first page, by Timothy Snyder's pamphlet "On Tyranny." https://snyder.substack.com/p/on-tyranny
None of this can be repaired for a generation.
To me it is looks a lot like punishing the victim.
The primary victim here is WP whose employees didn't do anything wrong in this situation and didn't have much of the choice.
Even Bezos, at worst, is the person who didn't manage to stand under pressure put on him.
Still, someone has to say no to the pressure. If that's up to the subscribers then so be it. Let their money go to media that isn't beholden to Trump's threats.
For sure Bezos handled this badly. But the problem in my opinion is not his management skills or even his civic valor, but apparent fear of business and public people of retributions for supporting a wrong candidate.
Also I don't get it why people left (no pun intended). The pinnacle of journalism has always been the AP, AFP, Reuters etc.
The 5 W (what, who, when, why, where) delivered in a fast manner. No speculation or anything, no partisan BS.
If anything this move brings the WP close to the aforementioned agencies and thus more worthy of consideration.
You can agree or disagree with the endorsement they were going to make, but the fact that the owner blocked them from making it means that they lack journalistic independence.