Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris, paper reports
The Washington Post planned to endorse Kamala Harris over Donald Trump before owner Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder, decided against it, the newspaper reported.
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Can some explain this to a non American? Why care about who a newspaper endorses? Why shouldn't a newspaper even be allowed to endorse anyone - should they at least pretend to be independent journalists? The whole thing is truly baffling to me, and I don't remember any such thing from past years.
Media is supposed to be objective, endorsements are a long standing tradition here in the US, ostensibly and hopefully based on a non-partisan analysis of the candidates' policy positions, record and overall character.
Having the choice between an aspiring fascist dictator and convicted felon versus the sitting Vice-President and the decision being “neither” is indeed shocking and disappointing. The Post used to have massive credibility, especially on politics. This is an embarrassment.
I agree with what you say. However, given that indeed journalists should in theory be objective, I would expect that newspapers would give the analysis of policies, positions, etc of the candidates. I would not, however, expect the newspapers to connect the dots and draw the conclusions for the audience, but rather the audience should do it for themselves. This is why the whole endorsement things seems a bit strange to me.
The intent of an endorsement is “on this basis we recommend candidate X” - it's an argument not a dictate but I understand your point.
A quick civics explainer for you:
Journalism is one of the checks and balances on a democratic system - IE the 'Fourth Estate'. For a healthy system, we NEED them to hold the rich and powerful to account.
Yet somehow the rich and powerful have managed to convince a lot of people that journalistic independence means treating both sides the same. IT IS NOT. True independence is having the freedom to speak honestly about the most important issues of the day.
That means not only is it important but imperative to make an endorsement and sound the alarms when a corrupt unhinged disconnected traitor of a billionaire has a real chance of taking command again and running democracy into the ground.
The "somehow" in your statement, unfortunately, is that the rich bought all of the media and Regan killed the fairness doctrine in the late 80s.
Do newspapers in your country not publish opinion columns or editorials?
They do, but they don't practically tell you to go vote for XYZ.
If you actually care to understand, go back and read the past endorsements from 2016 and 2020 - read those former articles where the paper did not endorse trump in those elections. You'll see how they present their position and then you can decide if it's a measured, careful statement of objective fact (which, objectively, trump is unqualified, unfit and literally a convicted criminal many times over) or something that feels very biased and presents an unfounded argument to you.
You could have done that, you can do that now, I don't think you will though... I think you're begging the question and not actually interested in the answer.
And to your statement of "should the paper even be allowed to endorse?" I'm genuinely curious if you're living in a dictatorship right now, because in theory, we have a free press in America. So when you say "allowed" who/what would stop them?
