The Washington Post Goes Dark

[ysabetwordsmith]

The Washington Post, a formerly reliable newspaper, is owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos. For the first time in decades, the newspaper will not endorse a presidential candidate, because the rich man who owns it forbade them to endorse Kamala Harris. This is the kind of thing I mean when I say that America is not a democracy, but a plutocracy. It is not "freedom of the press."

Unsurprisingly many readers -- including my partner Doug -- have decided that their money is better spent elsewhere. After all, if he's censoring this piece that we know about, what else is he censoring or adulterating that we don't know about? If you have a subscription, you might want to reconsider that choice in light of this offense against journalism. Among my favorites is In These Times. (which is vigorously promoting Kamala Harris).

The masthead then and now.

This is not a fluke. Many other newpapers are suffering the same fate. They are stepping back from endorsements at a time when free and responsible press is most needed to counter propaganda and outright disinformation. Use your folding vote, folks. Support good journalism while we still have some.

Comments

Re: Newspapers

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> So, even with the internet, ask

-What's their bias?
-What are they trying to sell? (That could be an idea, but is often advertising space.)
-Who benefits if I believe this article? Top of that list should be ME, but seldom is.
-Can I find reliable sources that contradict this? How many?<<

Those are good ideas.

>> Which makes thinking about "the news" into a lot more work than most people are willing to put in! <<

I tend to skim much of the time, until something seems questionable enough to need corroboration. If I want to read a source regularly, then I tend to research some of its articles to see how reliable it is. Once I've determined it's reliable, I don't need to keep checking every piece unless something seems suspicious. If I'm researching a topic, though, I look across multiple sources and try to see which things correlate or contradict.

Re: Newspapers

[dialecticdreamer]

I skim, of course, but there's always SOMETHING that catches my attention to the point of spending time to dig in and research for a bit.

Then again, I'm still trying to figure out if there's a correlation between GDP in a country and the gap in CEO pay from the workers'.