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October 29, 2024 - 7:30pm
As I write this, the Washington Post has reportedly lost over 250,000 paid subscribers after choosing not to endorse a presidential candidate in this year’s election. There’s no guarantee that all of those unsubscribes are due to the decision — and the figure has come from an anonymous source — but there’s no doubt that many are fleeing the paper because they feel it betrayed their trust.
In the era of the first Trump presidency, the Post adopted the slogan, “democracy dies in darkness,” fashioning itself as a sort of check on the new president. It won thousands of subscribers by implying that its adversarial coverage would disproportionately target one man: Donald J. Trump.
So it’s hardly any surprise that bowing out of the endorsement game has cost it subscribers. Many of these paying customers had come to believe that the paper’s job was to be a partisan outlet helping them wage partisan war against their Republican foes.
When owner Jeff Bezos squashed the endorsement and took to the pages of his own paper to argue that the goal is actually quite different, they were understandably dejected. In explaining the decision not to endorse, Bezos wrote, “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.”
Bezos’s words should be taken with a grain of salt. He’s a notoriously pragmatic businessman with all kinds of interests before the federal government. Remember his embrace of Black Lives Matter in the Summer of 2020? He knows that positioning himself politically in one way or another at different times could be good for his businesses.
But it’s hard to argue with the argument he lays out. American trust in media has plummeted over the past few decades, and things are worse for Republicans — just 11% of whom told Gallup they have a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the mass media to “report the news fully, accurately and fairly.”
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SubscribeIDK why Bezos refused to endorse Harris, but the threat of losing subscribers would have zero impact on the decision. The WaPo has suffered a 50% drop in audience since 2020. Losing a few more doesn’t shift the long term outlook. The newspaper also lost $77 million last year.
So he’s either looking at a long term solution to bring the newspaper back to profitability, or he just said eff it – I don’t like Harris and I won’t endorse her. WaPo is a charity project. Full stop.
Much more likely he knew that Trump would never give government contracts to anybody who dissed him by endorsing his enemies.
If that’s the case, why wouldn’t he just sell the thing? And why would he allow it to continually publish anti-Trump news articles. Doesn’t make any sense.
People keep saying that Jeff Bezos did this to cozy up to Donald Trump as though it’s somehow self-evident. But there’s no evidence, at least that I’ve seen, and it makes no logical sense. It certainly could be true, but I question greatly your statement that it is “much more likely”. Can you support your point?
First of all: I have never read the WSJ, which makes my testimony less valuable, shall we say 😉 . But AFAIAC these are facts:
Trump will punish those he sees as his enemies, and will use the resources of the state to do it. For a start Trump says so himself – very loudly. There is nothing in Trumps past to suggest that he will just shrug and ignore a personal slight as unimportant. Then he has form: Trying to block FEMA disaster relief to California, because he does not like Gavin Newsom. Trying to block US funds to Ukraine, because Ukraine refused to help him fit up the Bidens.
Bezos has outstanding space contracts with the US government that will depend hugely on the good will – or otherwise – from the White House. This could be worth hundreds of millions of $. And there has been talks between Trump and Bezos space executives just right now. Do you think Bezos does not know this? Or that he is making a major change in WSJ policy for purely journalistic reasons, without even caring how much money it could save him?
Then, what other reasons could he have? The WSJ apparently made heavy weather of its opposition to Trump – “Democracy dies in darkness” and all. Bezos was perfectly happy presiding over that line, why would he change his mind now? At this exact moment he discovers strong journalistic principles that compel him to keep the WSJ apparently neutral? Really?
Journalistic business reason are hard to see too. As some commenter pointed out, the WSJ does not have many pro-Trump readers, and is unlikely to get them quickly. And the readers that it does have – maybe lured in by that “Democracy dies in darkness” stuff – are predictably losing confidence in the paper and leaving.
Bayesian reasoning:
If we assume that Bezos is driven by the need to keep Trump sweet and protect his space business his actions make perfect sense on the facts.
If we assume that this has nothing to do with his relationship to Trump and is driven purely by journalistic principles, his actions seem a lot less likely.
What should we conclude?
Why are you talking about the WSJ?
Because I am a fool and I was mixing up the names (I never read either, and they both start with ‘W’, right?). It should have be WaPo. I would fix it if I could get to edit the post.
Ok I’ll forgive you!
I’m not a Trump supporter but it does seem to me that most of Trump’s enemies richly deserve to be punished. The sheer corruption and dishonesty of the current generation of Democrats is breathtaking.
He said on Joe Rogan that he didn’t and wouldnt go after Hillary, though she definitely should be locked up! That said, he was specifically talking about politicians.
The WaPo is a business and a journal of the left. There is a conflict where there should not be. the owner has the last word, it is his, Bezos’ money on the line. Choosing a preferred candidate should not be a do nor die nor unsubscribe moment. It just illustrates the coddled nature of it’s readers. Most of the journos are still straight up lefties. These indulged public servant luvvies need to calm down. Btw, this is a sure sign that Trump is going to win, the readers are scared about losing their inflated salaries.
It’s a measure of how far to the right the framing of reality has moved over the last few decades that people refer to corporate media outlets as “left.” They’re liberal outlets, of course.
‘. In explaining the decision not to endorse, Bezos wrote, “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.”’
An unbiased newspaper that just reports news, in America. That sounds very refreshing I might have to start reading it.
‘ just 11% have a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the mass media to “report the news fully, accurately and fairly.”’
Increasing that number would require mass media interested in actually important global events and real news, and actually holding the nutters that run the governments to account, delivered based on facts without enormous idealogical bias. Surely they can only do this properly if they aren’t biased. It sounds like there might be hope if Bezos and others are embracing this idea. I don’t understand why people are upset and unsubscribing really.
‘But are newspapers really supposed to just tell people what to think,’
I thought newspapers were supposed to report news. It’s in the name. Perhaps they could move away from the idealogical stuff everything is dripping in and culture wars just a bit and stop telling us what to think. Maybe cover some real news.
If only someone would tell the BBC this ….
Yes indeed. I shall take a keen interest in WaPo if so!
Dying dead-tree press club member tries desperately to stay alive by deciding to print news not propaganda…prognosis: treatment too late to be effective.
Hallelujah
Papers of record must strive for unbiased reporting. While it may not be possible to remove every shred of personal or professional bias it’s in the striving that the truth is best served…
What a mess the legacy/mainstream/traditional media have got themselves into.
According to Wikipedia, in 2023 (before this miniature non-endorsement drama) the WaPo had 135,980 print subscribers and 2.5 million digital subscribers.
Compare that to the 38 million views on YouTube that the Joe Rogan podcast with Trump got in just 3 days and you see where this is going.
People want to hear their politicians talk, not be subject to one “gotcha” moment and pseudo-factcheck after the next. That this realisation only seems to be kicking in now is proof of what echo chambers these old platforms have become.
Sometimes reality strikes back
It’s interesting how some of these people seem to behave as if they – and not Jeff Bezos – own the newspaper and should decide what it does. I’m not in favour of an owner telling a newspaper what to say, he does at least have a little more right to do so than they do. And in this case, he’s actually saying nothing (in the sense that he’s pushing no agenda).
This is much the same pattern as the boycotts and intimidation used by the so-called “progressives” to try to silence their opponents – like the advertising boycott campaigns of organisations they happen to disagree with.
This has nothing whatever to do with protecting democracy and free speech. Quite the reverse.
If they’re not happy, there’s nothing to stop them starting their own newspaper.
And yet they never do. Never put up their own money. They prefer spending other people’s money – until it runs out.
People seem to be focusing on Jeff Bezos’s decision not to endorse Kamala Harris. More interesting to me is his decision to hire more conservative opinion writers. That’s the more important way to correct bias. A presidential election endorsement is made once every four years. Opinion columns appear in the Washington Post every day.
Hiring more conservative opinion writers is a change I would like to see at all newspapers. And while they are at it, I would like to see less bias in news reporting as well. I read the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal every day. The closer the election gets, the more biased even their news reports get. They now read like Pravda did, spouting the Democratic party line.
As I understand it, the mission of UnHerd is to avoid bias in its articles by giving voice to writers with a variety of views, mavericks as well as more herdish writers. That’s a good thing, in my opinion, and increasingly rare.
But even here at Unherd the herd instinct seems strong, and getting stronger. A person on Substack said he had finally decided to drop his subscription to the Guardian, and was asking for people to recommend a new newspaper. He considered UnHerd, but he said it had drifted into being a right-wing rag, and the reader comment section, he said, was like 1930s Germany.
I can see what he means. An innocuous article here by Lee Seigel today got a lot of readers hot and bothered, writing furious comments and cancelling subscriptions. Maybe the person on Substack was right on both counts.
Which article is it that you are referring to, friend? By the way, I’ve been guilty of the above, but specifically for me, this is due to poorly written propaganda. Badly written propagandistic writing makes me stupider AND attempts to convince with bad arguments. I can stand a man who disagrees with me, but he should do so smartly.
Unherd leans right, no question, but it does publish left leaning stuff as well.
Interesting take on the general response to a lot of your comments. Unherd probably does lean right in its readers, but most of the heated comments are not about leftist positions but blatant untruths and distortions or just very poor journalism.
So someone (another vague fact, see how it’s done) said Unherd had become a “right-wing rag” and the comments section was like “1930s Germany”, which of course it’s not.
So Seigel’s article got people “hot and bothered”. About what? Stop playing the game and make yourself clear.
Unherd commentary leans right, but it is generally polite and informative. In fact the commentary is more interesting sometimes than the articles themselves. What is not ever tolerated is poorly written pieces or blatant propaganda. We have enough of that coming from main stream media.
Well said.
I completely support the Washington Post and the LA Times refusing to endorse a candidate and am really appalled that journalist from both papers walked off in protest. If anything, I would have dueling endorsements for national candidates, almost like a proper debate. But when a legacy paper endorses a candidate, it immediately raises my suspicion and erodes my trust that the collection and reporting of the news, the consideration of what to cover and what to ignore, is in depth and unbiased. Just like so many politicians today, journalists seem like a bunch of 5 year olds, throwing tantrums and holding their breaths until they get their way.
Giving endorsements goes perfectly well with a commitment to telling the truth, to curiosity, to evidence and good arguments. Consider ‘The Economist’. Very high standards, combined with a clear and consistent viewpoint (pro-capitalism, basically). Who they choose to endorse and why is a piece of useful information, not something that anybody is foolish enough to swallow willy-nilly.
Anyway, you cannot even try to tell the truth in a way that all sides are happy with. Is COVID a hoax? Is Q-Anon? Is climate change? Is electoral fraud a major problem in practice? Did Trump lose the last election? How likely is he to make a good president? If your facts (combined with your opinions) do not lead to some kind of conclusion on those questions, you are not saying anything worth listening to.
There are papers who drop their standards enough that they only make sense to the converted (like the Guardian, most of the time). I do not know if the Washington Post is one of them. But neither the American media nor anyone else need a newspaper that has nothing to say – either way – about what kind of president Trump is likely to make.
As long as that assessment is based on a truthful account of what he actually did in his four years in power and then accurately compares and contrasts that with KH did in her 4 years as 2IC. I have never read any account of either that isn’t obviously partisan after the first paragraph.
What we need is an assessment of what they are likely to do in the future, not what they did in the past. Kamala Harris was never in a position to actually do anything, and Trump was limited in his actions by having to work through a professional state apparatus that was not willing to obey just anything. As with stocks, past performance is not a reliable guide to future performance. As for the common claim that Trump presided over no wars, the samme could have been said about Neville Chamberlain or Mussolini. Until the point where it couldn’t.
She has loudly and firmly stated that she aligned with all of Joe Biden’s decisions and was part of the decision making.
As far as I can tell, the Economist has decided not to endorse this election as well, giving no reasons for that decision. So per your last sentence, we don’t need the Economist? The Wall Street Journal does not endorse a presidential candidate. So we don’t need the Wall Street Journal?
The trend over the past few elections is that more and more newspapers are deciding not to endorse a presidential candidate. The Minnesota Star Tribune did so rather quietly in September:
Since the press is overwhelmingly liberal the press doesn’t like this trend, as we have seen. But it’s a good trend, in my opinion, long overdue.
Because as I have written here yesterday in another comment, we need to stop thinking like the Manichaeans did millennia ago that the world gives us just a choice between good and evil. Choices aren’t that binary.
One can choose Donald Trump and not be choosing evil. One can choose Kamala Harris and not be choosing evil. No one should be condemned as evil for making either choice.
You are right: ‘The Economist’ funked out this time – I had not noticed. They have given those recommandations for decades, but this time they refused. I see that as a major disservice to their readers. Whether they had endorsed one, or the other, or refused to decide, their reasoning would have been very illuminating about the nature of the two candidates.
At least in their case there is an understandable motive that is not just Trump-appeasement. They surely have a lot of readers in either camp, and they must have decided that it is impossible to write a truthful evaluation of what is going on in the US election without half the readership getting furious and switching off. I shall think the less of them – in the future I will know that there are things they think it impossible to write or discuss honestly about, and evaluate their coverage accordingly – but hopefully I can still trust that they try to be honest in the things they do write.
For a political publication not to have an opinion on the relative merits of Trump and Harris is rather like a health journal not having an opinion whether COVID is real, or about the usefulness of homeopathy. The Minnesota Star declaration sounds like they see politics as a kind of religion – something beyond rational discourse. They will not give an opinion on campaign behaviour, because apparently they think that there is no such things as an ‘acceptable norm’, just rival faiths.
‘If your facts (combined with your opinions) do not lead to some kind of conclusion on those questions, you are not saying anything worth listening to.’
I feel like you are missing the point.
It’s not about telling a truth that all sides are happy with. Its about being able to tell the truth without having to cleave to one political idealogy over another.
So an unbiased outlet should be better at this because they aren’t restricted by endorsements and political idealogy one way or another.
They can still publish views from both sides.
So an unbiased news outlet would then be able to come to that conclusion and publish it, without worrying about what that conclusion is. So you get a conclusion that hasn’t been contorted to fit a certain bias. And a better balance of news coverage also.
The difference:
non biased outlet – is taking those facts and opinions, coming to your conclusion and being able to be honest about it and publish it regardless of the conclusion.
Biased: taking those facts and opinions, and in the instances you come to a conclusion that contradicts the bias/ candidate/ party the news outlet has endorsed, then having to contort your conclusion to fit the idealogical bias of the news outlet, or endorse a certain candidate, or otherwise not publish a story, if it goes against the bias/ candidate the outlet has endorsed.
And Q anon was pretty much a hoax.
You can be biased and still respect the truth (even if that is rare). ‘The Economist’ is a good example. They do respect the truth, but knowing where they are coming from actually makes it easier to get information from them. You may not agree with all their judgements, but it is still helpful to know what they are.
Consider ‘The Economist’. Very high standards,
… and invariably wrong about everything.
An endorsement is not ‘telling people what to think’ it is an argument for one candidate or another which the reader may accept or reject.
The reason that Bezos has pulled the endorsement is because of threats to his business interests from Trump, should Trump win.
Bezos the oligarch is looking after his financial interests, so much for independent journalism.
Huh? The guy has literally lost hundreds of millions propping up a failing establishment newspaper. WaPo, like many regime media outlets, would not exist without billionaire benefactors.
Well maybe he should just let it fail, just a tax write off for him, on the other hand he probably has other political objectives in keeping it going.
But what American media needs is something quite different: the curiosity of good reporting,
Tell that to Unherd.