This should be the very last piece of journalism that any one takes seriously from the Washington Post.
Both them and the NYT have shown their asses when it comes to just being propaganda mouth-pieces.
We need to re-democratize our culture, and get away from this world of billionaire possession of our cultural expression. They didn’t make it, and its not something they can own if we don’t allow it. We need to stop taking outlets like WP or NYT seriously.
NYT at least made the endorsement, the LA Times were the other cowards.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/30/opinion/editorials/kamala-harris-2024-endorsement.html
It’s a bit weird that it’s behind a pay wall
I’m not really sure what the New York Times has to do with this. WaPo is owned by a billionaire trying to hedge his bets if Trump wins and decides to take vengeance by breaking up Amazon.
NYT is fully independent.
Not sure what you mean with fully independent, but Wikipedia says "Though The New York Times Company is public, all voting shares are controlled by the Ochs-Sulzberger Family Trust. "
It’s owned by a wealthy family, and it’s reflected in what they choose to report, and more importantly what not to report.
That’s not even true. It’s a publicly traded company which means it’s owned by the shareholders. Over 90% of those shares are held by financial institutions, meaning diversified investors.
I don’t know how you could believe such a bald faced lie, and if you don’t believe it then that’s even worse.
The New York Times Company is majority-owned by the Ochs-Sulzberger family through elevated shares in the company’s dual-class stock structure held largely in a trust, in effect since the 1950s;[118] as of 2022, the family holds ninety-five percent of The New York Times Company’s Class B shares, allowing it to elect seventy percent of the company’s board of directors.[119] Class A shareholders have restrictive voting rights.[120]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times#Organization
What you’ve written here is very misleading, bordering on incorrect, but does this distinction even matter? Both a singular billionaire and a collective of rich owners will manage the business to enhance their personal wealth, not for the common good of ordinary people. If Trump creates an incentive structure where businesses are penalized for going against his will, I think both types of management are rationally going to choose to obey him.
There needs to be a completely different type of management structure if we want leaders in the press to weigh things like the health of our democracy in their decisions.
Heh.
I read the times nearly every day. Not sure what you mean by this. Can you expand? I find their reporting on trump to be pretty real. Their interview with John Kelly straight up calling trump a fascist is pretty damning. So…
I can’t say for certain what they mean, but while their Trump coverage is solid, many people take issue with the way they are covering the Israel-Palestine conflict.
On another note, while I believe the John Kelly interview should be damning, if you believe it will make any difference you are living in a fantasy world.
While I don’t necessarily disagree with either of your points, neither of them have anything to do with what I was responding to.
They platform bad people with op ed, legitimizing the ideas
They don’t consume the main stream media. And that’s a great thing because then you can make up whatever you want about what they’ve said or not said in order to confirm whatever belief you have about them.
I don’t know why people would pay for the news when they aren’t on your side.
News are not supposed to take sides, they should present facts regardless of who (dis)likes them
Except news outlets get so caught up in being “neutral” and “fair” that they won’t accurately report on things when shit gets really fucking bad like now. As an example, NYT basically made no mention of the concentration camps when they were publishing during WWII, or it was relegated to back-page short articles, because they were afraid of being accused of “bias” if they reported the truth, which was “hey Germany is literally carrying out a genocide while waging this war.” You see it NOW with tons of media outlets going “Donald Trump suggests immigrants don’t belong here” when what was actually said was “we should unleash the military to drive them out by force.”
I always liked this quote from Hunter S Thompson, from his scathing eulagy of Nixon:
Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism – which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.
Someone needs to stand up and say that people like Nixion and Trump are scum human beings, are not worthy of the respect of objective journalism, and we should stop pretending otherwise.
Except news outlets get so caught up in being “neutral” and “fair” that they won’t accurately report on things when shit gets really fucking bad like now.
as the aphorism says, neutrality is not “five minutes for hitler and five minutes for jew”. if a fact is that the candidate for president is scum, that should be indeed reported. the problem in today’s journalism is the pseudo-neutrality, which in fact thwarts efforts for good reporting.
so i agree with you, but i still stand behind the fact that news should not take side. they should report facts and the problem is they are sometimes not doing that in the name of said pseudo-neutrality.
Do you think that’s what’s happening when you look out at the landscape of news reporting today? When the owner’s interests get in the way of presenting facts I believe it all goes out the window. If it was just about newsworthiness I think you’d have a point.
i see lot of problems, but “paying for news when it is on your side” is definitely not a solution. that just means you end up in some echo chamber like fox news audience.
this my reply to another comment covers the rest, so i am not going to copy and paste it - https://lemm.ee/post/45874842/15772730
OK. I’ll check it out. Thank you for your reply.
There is always a bias in what gets published and what doesn’t
Alexandra Petri is courageous, Jeff Bezos is a scared little shit, spread the news.
As one who mostly read the comics on newspapers when they were a thing, this could be the much needed endorsement for that target audience.
That’s what our readers deserve and expect: that we are saying what we really think, reporting what we really see…
This is why I cancelled my subscription and switched to NYT. I need to be able to trust my news source, and I can’t trust the post if all it took was a call from Bezos for them to bow and kneel.
And to lie about their reasons for doing so to their readers.
I found the NYT’s sanewashing of Trump irresponsible, so I took my WaPo subscription to The Guardian. It’s a sad reflection on the US when a foreign paper has better reporting than any domestic source.
The Guardian is my next choice if NYT doesn’t impress. That said, I tip The Guardian very often, so I probably send more money their way than if I had a subscription.
This is why I cancelled my subscription and switched to NYT. I need to be able to trust my news source
Guess you’re ignoring their genocide apologia and their constant pro-cop propaganda, then…
Oh oh, don’t forget about vocalization of anti-transgender viewpoints: https://www.poynter.org/commentary/2023/new-york-times-bias-reporting-transgender-people/
I need integrity.
Carrying water for a fascist apartheid regime committing genocide is indicative of a lot of things. Integrity isn’t one of them. Same goes for repeating whatever cops tell them to say.
I also respect a bad take far more than silence and cowardice in the face of adversity
There’s honest bad takes and there’s spreading deceptive misinformation. When it comes to Israel, cops, and other things that the establishment likes much more than the population in general, the NYT is constantly doing the latter at refusing to issue corrections.
As I have commented before, subscriptions are easy to cancel. I iust got this one, I’ll read it and make my own mind if it is for me or not. For the moment, the only thing I have to make my decision is the irrefutable fact that the LA Times and the Washington Post both knelt down and ate the ass of their billionaire owners on request.
One good thing in a pool of right wing talking points.
“‘He might forget’ is not enough to hang a country on.”
Its extremist views like this that are going to destroy our nation. ;p
‘He’s learned his lesson’
He’s a fuxking grown ass adult that hasn’t been held accountable for his actions. Fuck Susan Collins and all of his stupid ass enablers.
Then you can go fuck yourself you genocide supporter
Why don’t you go fuck yourself you fascist genocide enabler.
Don’t you people get tired of arguing in bad faith?
That’s his m.o. his real motive is most likely to get Trump elected.
I don’t normally respond to things like this because it rarely leads to any good faith arguments but I feel like I should so here goes:
Yes I’m not fond of the US involvement of what is currently going on with Israel. It’s absolutely horrific. But here’s the thing. Whether you like it or not there are two choices we currently have for president: Trump or Harris. Trump has very recently encouraged Netanyahu telling him to “do what you have to do” and expressed support for Israel’s military operations in Gaza and Lebanon. I’m sure Trump wishes he do something similar here. While Harris’ response could be a lot stronger she acknowledges the devastating humanitarian situation in Gaza, noting “so many innocent lives lost” and the “heartbreaking” scale of suffering.
And I’m not even going to get into the multitude of fascist and authoritarian things Trump has said recently, well because there are just way too many.
But supporting Harris does not mean you support genocide. It means you want this country to continue, pure and simple. Because Trump will very likely destroy it otherwise, since that is likely what he is being paid to do.
So either you are so short sighted and naive as to see this election as a response to a very single minded issue, or your primary goal is to sow distrust and create chaos. This election is too important for this kind of rhetoric.
Your distaste for the genocide that is indeed occurring in the middle east is not unwarranted. But we have two choices: reasonable and unreasonable. Which would you pick?
Happy to burn your own country to the literal ground because of what’s happening halfway around the world, I see.
Reading through the comments I am curious… why do people think somebody gets into the news business, especially today? One doesn’t become a media tycoon for reporting objective news. They never have. They never will. They get into the business to control the message. Why is anybody surprised by this?
I read the times. Does it have bias? Yes. Literally impossible for any journal to not have bias. Objectivity is a myth. I think it’s more important to be able to see where that bias is, and then seek a counter balance to it.
Don’t read a single source. Otherwise you’re just another Fox News viewer.
Nothing will be perfect, but there’s an editorial process. Journalists do their work trying to speak truth to power, the editors make sure their claims are fact checked and well presented. Investors cash in on sales and can (unfortunately) have a say on strategic decisions of direction and hiring and firing, but they stay out of the editorial process.
The problem here is not who “gets into the news business”. The WP had already written and approved the endorsement. Their journalists got into the industry to do journalism. It’s a job many people dream of, not a huge mystery.
The problem is who has the money to buy a newspaper. And when the asshole billionaire ends up doing it, how do they interfer with the editorial process.
the problem is who has money to buy a newspaper.”
Yes. That is what I was referring to.
This is flat out wrong. There are absolutely more biased and less biased sources, and practices/values held by outlets with integrity to reduce bias.
Mixing them all into one pot so you can say everything is equal to Fox News and you can’t trust anything is some serious propaganda intended to weaken the idea that there is an objective reality.
Get out of here with that nonsense.
I never stated there wasn’t a scale of bias. Nor did I mix them all into a single pot. Now did I say everything is a bad as fix news. Nor did I say you can’t trust anything. I agree with all of what you just said.
What I said was that there is no such thing as objectivity. It is impossible for a multitude of factors. The best we can achieve is an attempt at balance. And because of that you should never get your news from a single source.
How is that “propaganda” and “nonsense?”
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Washington Post - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
Information for Washington Post:
MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: Mostly Factual - United States of America
Search topics on Ground.News
This article is literally proof that WaPo is right-wing propaganda and this stupid bot is still allowed to spam and call it leftist. Mods? Admins? Anybody?
It’s also important the bot point out that it might be “center left” in the US. But what is “center left” in the US may be considered really right wing in many other countries.
The mods get really defensive about the bot.
WaPo is not, Bezos maybe? Or it could be he’s scared of a Trump presidency breaking up Amazon if he’s seen as an enemy. Right/Left doesn’t necessarily enter into it.
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