Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris

Really this is a lesson in why the corporate news model is doomed to fail. Upping my contributions to serious investigative journalist organizations like ProPublica

You seem to be implying that he made a decision based on other business interests, against those of the Post, but there is no support for that in the article. Do you have a source which describes this motive?

It seems like not endorsing candidates might be good for the Washington Post's business, by improving its perceived impartiality. In addition to this, the WaPo seems to have spent much of its history not endorsing candidates, and it has been doing (financially) poorly recently; perhaps this is a return to more profitable and credible roots.

I just hope this will finally put to bed any ridiculous mentions of "liberal media bias", or that the tech sector has some liberal bias.

> Newspapers are a business and have to give their customers what they want.

This is true, but it shouldn't be viewed as unproblematic. Audience capture is a huge problem, and news organizations telling their audience what they here to the point that people get siloed in their own echo chambers is one of the main reasons why things are such a mess.

Endorsements are published by the editorial section which is specifically separated from the rest of the newspaper so to not undermine the neutrality of the journalism in the other sections.

Opinion and analysis has always been part of news publications, and plays an accepted role in adding layers of interpretation onto the raw "facts" that is crucial in making those facts interpretable by readers who aren't expert in the subject matter.

It's not automatically unethical for a journalist to advocate for something.

I guess if they entirely stopped publishing self authored editorials it might be "neutral" to not publish a particular one. But that isn't what is happening.

I actually agree with you, newspapers really shouldn't be doing this. Our major local paper in the Twin Cities basically torched its reputation by endorsing wildly unqualified candidates for city offices (like, one guy they endorsed for Minneapolis city council didn't even live in Minneapolis). They recently decided to stop doing endorsements at all, which I think is the right decision.

But that's not what happened here. The editors did their normal endorsement process, but the owner of the paper stepped in and personally overrode their process for this one particular endorsement. That's a way different story from deciding to stop doing endorsements.

I guess we need to think about what it means to be “neutral”. If half of Americans believe the earth is flat, is the neutral stance to say it’s unclear? Or is it to figure out what the truth is? In my mind there’s a difference between journalists and pollsters.

Of course with endorsements you can technically bring up the is/aught dichotomy. The facts may be what they are but that doesn’t necessitate any particular action. While this is technically true, I never see anyone complaining about the ethics of testing products and endorsing good ones. Wirecutter is basically doing the same thing with headphones and running shoes. Yet I only ever see pushback on political endorsements.

In short, umpires are neutral and fair but the fact that some teams win a lot more than others doesn’t mean they’re not doing their job.

To play Devil's Advocate to the Devil's Advocate... I would posit that journalistic neutrality isn't possible: and if that's the case I'd rather the journalist or publication wear their biases on their sleeve.

I can read a biased story, with values very different to my own, and still draw conclusions that are still meaningful. Mind you, I would expect omissions and couching that is flawed, but understanding the thinking of those I oppose is valuable and allows me to see their blind spots (or my own for that matter).

But a news organization or journalist being clear about their values and politics also disposes of the harmful notion that they've actually achieved some sort of objective reading or that they're being complete and well rounded. There's a deceptiveness in that pretense which some readers (watchers) may actually take for truth and not think more critically about what they're consuming than that.

> How does it not undermine a paper's journalistic ethics to be neutral and fair?

Where did you get this? Every news source has some bias, journalists, editors and owners of the media house are not some ideal beings. The good ones are honest about their bias.

As to endorsing a candidate, it's absolutely for the paper to decide. Endorsing a candidate might alienate some readers, not endorsing others.

I think if Bezos had announced this change in policy in, say, Feb 2021, it would have landed differently.

The editorial page runs on opinion - I expect them to opine

The endorsement lets them write why they support the candidate. Laying out the reasons is what could be convincing, and is what's also being blocked here.

This is extremely similar to the sudden announcement of policies by all the major newspapers that they were not going to publish documents that they thought were stolen by foriegn intelligence services from political campaigns: it is a reasonable position to have, and if announced well before the election season started would be completely unobjectionable. Doing it when they announced it, however, is significantly changing the rules in favor of one candidate.

Doing it after the board had already written up a document endorsing a candidate (demonstrating clearly that it was not a policy of anyone but the owner, who decided to be an utter coward at the last minute) sends a clear message that even one of the richest men in the world is scared of possible backlash against him.

Now we'll never know who the Washington Post's editorial board would have endorsed.

At least Taylor Swift was able to make her recommendation, so I know I'm all set.

It's more about how a presidential candidate has repeatedly made credible threats to go after specific media companies using the power of his office if he wins. That candidate also happens to have a terrifyingly broad idea of what those powers are. That's in the context of a 9-member Supreme Court where 3 are his own appointments and 2 are appointments from a previous president with similarly broad ideas about presidential power.

And no, not everyone knows how they're going to vote, as crazy as that seems, but I agree that newspaper endorsements are a tiny factor, especially in this election.

Probably nobody would have changed their mind.

But it exposes the fiction that Bezos allows editorial freedom at the WaPo.

I know at least one person who votes based off a publication. As for changing minds, I have no idea if this person even considered who to vote for until the publication releases their endorsements.

It's east to think that way but if it didn't matter, Bezos wouldn't have squashed it.

This really is an interesting question. You are asking it rhetorically, and it's not like I'm going to argue with the implication, that it "basically doesn't matter", but then one could ask the same about Trump working at McDonald's as a part of his campaign, and pretty much about everything these guys do. Unless it's a major fuckup, it almost doesn't matter, because it doesn't convert anybody but one hypothetical guy who says "you know what, I'll pick a random newspaper right now, and the first guy I'm gonna see, I'll vote for him!"

At some level of approximation it doesn't even matter who the candidate is at all. An established trend in the USA is that the public is divided pretty much 50/50 between 2 colors, and hardly sways no matter what happens. Which makes it all pretty laughable way to make the choice (seeing votes as weights, and God makes a choice using these weights to make a decision) on an important question. If we assume the elections in the USA are "fair", it's pretty much flipping a coin every time. (But then, most people are already settled on the idea that it isn't an important choice, hence the "giant douche and turd sandwich" joke is so relatable.)

So while it largely doesn't matter indeed, at some low enough level any small detail might matter. I don't imagine who is that guy who was going to vote Kamala based on WP endorsement, but, well, maybe there is one. Really, I have no idea.

I'm sure you're mostly right, but there are no doubt a few still on the fence, which can only either be people who have not been exposed to the truth about Trump (e.g. people who only watch Trump sane-washed sources like Fox), or republicans who are well aware of the danger he poses, but are having a hard time accepting that the responsible thing to do is vote against him.

For the few that are still on the fence, then more straight shooting reporting, from any source, can only help.

To me this is a total cop out, and very irresponsible, for the Washington Post to not want to "take sides" and express an opinion. I guess they would've let Hitler win election too, rather than want to "take sides" and say anything bad about him. It's like not wanting to express an opinion on whether a grizzly bear or a hamster would be a better pet for a 5 year old, because you're afraid of upsetting the grizzly bear.

"What is truth?" asked the powerful man two millennia ago, and we still don't know. What is "neutrality" for a university? Is creationism "neutral"? It was a huge political deal in the US for decades (though it seems to have died down recently), but in the 1980's, 1990's, and into the 2000's there were plenty of people who wanted creationism taught in science classes, or at least to "teach the controversy." Was picking sides on that topic in science class "neutral"?

Is the superiority of phonics based literacy approaches "neutral" or criticism of teachers unions? If a economics professors research indicates that, say, supply-side economics doesn't work under current circumstances, is it "neutral" for her to tell her class that? If a law professor thinks that judges only make ad hoc arguments to achieve whatever ends they desire, can they teach their class legal nihilism?

"Neutral" is the sort of thing that someone who has never actually tried to teach or inform can think is reasonable, until you actually try and do it and realize that there are people out there who strongly want to contest whether the earth is round, and that either you throw up your hands and accept epistemological nihilism or you accept that you have to pick sides, and try and do a good job of picking the right sides.

Endorsements come opinions editors, a special part of the paper where the paper prints opinions, not news.

I agree that it would be nice if news outlets tried to always be neutral, but a lot of TV news channels in the US would have almost nothing to say if you stopped their opinion reporting.

There is no neutrality in the face of evil.

Journalism and journalists are not supposed to be neutral, but impartial.

Ethics are pretty universal.

The concept of neutrality is a mind hack used by those who have already been hacked. It's also used by nefarious actors who know full well what they are doing and think, usually incorrectly, that nobody knows they are doing it.

Once upon a time, I believed that the phrase "all actions are political" was incorrect, and unfairly foisted partisanship onto people. I've learned better than this in retrospect.

So, I believe that Bezos's "being neutral" was in fact a political act, and as such demonstrated where he thinks his bread is buttered. A directive to not endorse Kamala is in-effect a directive to endorse Trump. There is no neutral outcome here.

If you consider the facts of these candidates lives in contrast, there is not a balanced scale here. You have to pick a side, and Bezos's is showing his cowardice by meddling in the news. It's hard to think that he doesn't know how lop-sided this election is, so the naive notion of "neutral" should not be applied to his behavior.

When folks like Bezos and Musk and so on buy media properties, you know it's not because they want to support journalism.

So if quality news outlets no longer provide journalism when we need it most (breaking down candidate platforms, keeping candidates honest, …). Then it shifts to a variety of unverified sources (ie, TikTok, Fb, Telegram, et al) for those that couldn’t find anything credible.

The population already struggles with determining fact from fiction. Taking away the power from journalists because a _billionaire_ wants to ensure his wealth remains high.

Being neutral in an unbalanced situation means you are purposefully ignoring things that should be said and not putting on the table things that should be there. Not publishing relevant opinions pieces is part of that.

To get some distance, imagine being neutral to every candidates during Russia's last elections, and refusing to publish well researched and argumented opinions people have about the leading candidate.