This feels like a serious fuck up for the western media. They handwave the existence of their billionaire owners by saying that they don't determine what gets printed , even though that's an obvious lie , but now they're on record with the billionaire owner putting his foot down for Trump.
Liberals will say it's no biggie. Their nonsense argument will be that liberal billionaires should start buying newspapers.
With libs feeling betrayed, I hope I can set some of them on the leftist pipeline by offering them the writings of Thomas Frank.
The whole “good rich” that liberals cozied up to was never meant to last.
I actually support the libs that unsub from wapo, not because i care about them not endorsing kamala but because this will hurt the journalists in wapo that have been posting genocide denial stories in the paper for months
this will hurt the journalists in wapo that have been posting genocide denial stories in the paper for months
I think their jobs are secure. If cutbacks are needed - the paper will fire the people least important and/or who make the least amount of money.
They're just going to move on to another paper that does genocide denial on the same level
imagine paying for news.
next imagine paying for news baked with pro-capitalist propaganda.
now imagine cancelling that subscription because the capitalist propaganda wouldn't praise the blue capitalist.
Liberals: Love getting all my objectively correct information from unbiased news sources, I sure do hate propaganda!
Also liberals: I hereby condemn this "news" source for not explicitly endorsing my preferred candidate! I WILL DRAG THEM TO HELL!!!
so they're ok with genocide denial and getting all their info straight from the CIA but not ok with them not endorsing Harris?
I didn't put this in the dunk tank because I assume Bezos doesn't care at all. He uses the paper to advertise Prime etc. His bigger toy cost him twice as much - his $500m yacht. Also - he's clearly betting on a Trump win and he'll recoup any tiny WaPo losses via juicy federal contracts that come his way.
Trump calling stuff fake news and saying journalists are the enemy (
) caused liberal trust of the media to skyrocket. They had more skepticism though not enough before that. Compared with conservatives, liberals claimed higher levels of trust of everything including literal right wing propaganda outlets since Trump. Conservatives basically only trust Fox News which is just about the only right wing propaganda that liberals didn't trust. So I hope they wake up to the fact that all media is owned by capitalists and there's apparently a lot of value they see in being able to influence public opinion.Conservatives have even started turning against Fox because "It's not conservative enough." They were pissing and shitting all over themselves when Fox announced Biden won in 2020.
I always thought newspapers endorsing candidates was cringe anyway, tbh. I'm sure Bezos' motives were not altruistic, but I feel like people are making a bigger deal out of this than it really is.
They definitely are… WaPo could have easily just done and said nothing and no one would have been the wiser, but instead they drew attention to it.
No they couldn't have. Several people quit, they cried about Bezos blocking them from endorsing Kamala, other news outlets reported it.
All Bezos could have done in that situation would have been to say nothing but people would absolutely have been the wiser about it being blocked by him and they'd probably lose as many subscriptions as from this. I doubt his statement wins or loses him any meaningful number of subscribers, it's just cover so he doesn't have to come out and say actually he'd rather stay on Trump's good side in case he wins and/or maybe he thinks Trump is better for his interests but of course would prefer associating with someone so uncouth.
You are right, I was trying to agree and say that news media could/should just not endorse. I didn’t articulate that tho.
I agree tho, the cat was out of the bag on this situation when people started quitting over it.
Seriously, what kind of thoughtless husk subscribes to a newspaper? What kind of void entity cancels their subscription to said newspaper because of electoralism?
I feel like I already consume too much news through internet exposure alone.
Say what you want about propaganda under socialism, but westoids are so cucked they actually pay for the privilege of being brainwashed
I’m lazy and don’t care all that much about Beezer facts but how much of his money is derived from the newspaper, versus everything ele? Because realistically unless that is a major source of it, I can’t see this doing much of anything. There’s A, plus AWS, which make him bank. Those two things need to be what people call up and cancel if they’re gonna call up and cancel anything.
What do you call this, just token liberalism or something?
Only people this is going to effect is the staffers at the
magazinenewspaperI think Bezos believes, with some reason, that it would hurt his name among some ghoul circles to be associated with an endorsement of Kamala over Trump (and the reverse is also true). It has basically nothing to do with the amount of money the paper makes (as OP demonstrates, this was actually bad for WP making money) and everything to do with Bezos's reputation.
It's better than nothing. For the wrong reasons, but...meh
He actually runs WaPo at a loss. He subsidizes the newspaper to print propaganda. Libs are just mad that it is not the propaganda they want.
https://subium.com/profile/joshuajfriedman.com/post/3l7o5ckrjya2y
Mr. Bezos sir - you are canceled.
Yesterday @apocalypticanow.bsky.social used the word "decimate" to describe what Bezos had done to his newspaper and that prediction is now made real and literal.
Wait newspapers are supposed to endorse presidential candidates? i thought they pride themselves to be "politically neutral" or some stupid liberal concept.
Every Canadian local newspaper will endorse the conservative candidate without fail
Because every Canadian newspaper is owned by PostMedia. Our media landscape is bleak.
So the reason this is controversial is that the Washington post almost always does and when the editors room said, "we want to endorse Harris," Jeff Bezos went, "we don't endorse candidates starting now."
