<- Back
Comments (190)
- IIAOPSWIts impressive how well Bezos has convinced everyone to stop trusting WaPo rather than WaPo convincing everyone to trust Bezos. A paper owned by a wealthy financial interest was hardly unique or novel at the time he took them over, and no one would have been more concerned about it than they already were, and all he had to do was not be overt in his influence and bias of it, but he couldn't refrain.
- davisrIf you think this kind of reporting is cool, you should donate to https://fair.org.Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) has been exposing two-faced news for decades. They are worthy of your attention.
- coliveiraThe ideal solution is to stop reading newspapers/sites owned by Bezos. I give the WP zero credibility for anything that is not factual. Even then they will distort the facts with opinions that are aligned to Bezos.
- anonundefined
- 11101010001100This is the sort of stuff that happens when someone who had one good idea long ago has run out of good ideas.
- mhbI’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust.https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-tru...
- embedding-shape> When it comes to the appearance of conflict, I am not an ideal owner of The Post. Every day, somewhere, some Amazon executive or Blue Origin executive or someone from the other philanthropies and companies I own or invest in is meeting with government officials. I once wrote that The Post is a “complexifier” for me. It is, but it turns out I’m also a complexifier for The Post. - https://archive.is/flIDlIt kind of shocks me how someone seemingly can understand those things, but then continue to try to helm the ship. You know you're having a negative impact, why stay at that point, unless you have some ulterior motive?I don't feel like Washington Post becoming a shadow of itself is any surprise, when even the owner is aware of the effect they have on the publication, yet do absolutely nothing to try to change it.Disclaimer: former subscriber, part of the exodus that left when the publication became explicitly "pro-capitalism" under the guise of "personal liberties" or something like that.
- morshu9001Article start mentions WaPo not endorsing Harris, as if they're supposed to. I was glad hearing it, but turns out it's only because they have a new master due to Bezos-Trump ties.Wonder about LA Times too, they used to also endorse Dems.
- axpy906I am both bemused and disappointed that the top comments are all political. Kind of plays into what Billionaires like Bezos would want - the commoners bickering and not united.
- clircleDo we really hold editorials to the same standard as the rest of the news? These are opinion pieces, you should expect bias, no?
- ideonexusThe Saturday editorial "Trump's undertaking is a shot across the bow at NIMBYs everywhere," was the final straw for me. I can forgive an editorial defending Trump's actions--no matter how misguided, but the fact that the WaPo did not disclose Bezos' personal interests in the matter infuriated me bitterly. According to NPR, they corrected the omission on Sunday, but I'm done.That subscription money now goes to my local NPR station. Anytime NPR covers anything related to Microsoft, they always provide the disclosure of receiving funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That is what legitimate news sources are supposed to do.
- antegamisouAny billionaire-regulated (N"P"R my ass) major news media company accusing other billionaire-owned major news media companies of bias is being hypocritical.
- webdoodleCitizen's United destroyed journalism by making it for profit propaganda for the wealthy, but its always been under attack.Journalism has always been under attack from the wealthy robber barons of the time. Rockefeller famously bought out the magazine/newspaper that muckraker Ida Tarbell wrote for after she wrote a damning book about Standard Oil. However, it only hardened her and other muckrakers, who later led to the break up of Standard Oil, term limits, and other restrains on the abuse of power.I find the parallels between then and now quite striking. Except today's boogeymen have rebranded and call themselves tech billionaires. They got ahead of muckrakers by owning journalism, media, and social media, and have used there Pinkertons (Trust and Safety Teams) to censoring anyone who speaks out against them.There are good journalists out there though. I think a modern equivalent of Ida Tarbell may be Whitney Webb for writing One Nation under Blackmail about the Epstein Files.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Tarbellhttps://unlimitedhangout.com/
- coliveiraI 100% agree, but need to add that npr also has financial ties to very powerful oligarchs that need to be disclosed. For example, here is what I get when researching the largest donors to npr: "NPR's largest single donor was the estate of Joan B. Kroc, who left a bequest of over $200 million in 2003. Other major donors include foundations like the Rockefeller Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which have contributed millions to specific projects, as well as the Gates Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation"
- placardloopThe title makes it seem like this is a major or systemic issue, but the article content essentially says this was a one-off, potentially a mistaken omission that was fixed within 24 hours. The article itself even states that the Post routinely discloses its ties to Bezos in its reporting and this was an anomaly. I used to read the Post (I’m not a subscriber anymore) but I do distinctly remember seeing such a disclosure all over the place. Is this an attempt at outrage clicks?Edit: people saying I didn’t read the article apparently didn’t read it themselves. From the article:> The Post has resolutely revealed such entanglements to readers of news coverage or commentary in the past … since 2013, those of Bezos, who founded Amazon and Blue Origin. Even now, the newspaper's reporters do so as a matter of routine.So at minimum the article disagrees with itself, but it seems the outrage bait is working hook line and sinker.Edit 2: To try and be a little clearer here: the article is trying to (but in my opinion doing a really poor job of) make a distinction between the disclosures that the non-editorial WaPo authors do, and the disclosures that the editorial authors do, with the assertion that the editorial authors are worse at it.
- skybrianMy initial reaction to the White House ballroom was “the next president should tear it down and put it back the way it was, just on principle.” I was surprised by that editorial and thought it made a good (or at least arguable) point that it’s needed and the next president will be glad to have it, instead of doing large official gatherings in tents.I’m more neutral on it now. I don’t really know what facilities the White House needs, but think the case should be made on practical grounds. Perhaps some other writer could go into that in more depth? But as editorials go, it didn’t seem like a bad one, and I don’t think adding a disclaimer about a conflict changes that much.Separately, raising money through corporate “donations” seems like a huge loophole for corruption.
- fdschoenemanI agree that Bezos should have disclosed his links to the construction through Amazon, but I also think every single reporter for NPR, including and especially the one who wrote this, should disclose their personal, family, and political relationships to political parties and politicians before reporting on them.One standard.