After Trump won the presidency in 2016, I subscribed to the digital versions of the New York Times and Washington Post. For about $15 a month each, I figured this was money well spent to support some of the best journalists in the country.
You know, those who Trump calls "the enemy of the people." Or more recently, "the enemy within." (That category includes many others as well, including Democratic politicians and liberal activists.)
For almost eight years I've enjoyed both newspapers. But today I went to the Subscriptions section of my iPhone settings and unsubscribed from the digital Washington Post. I'm paid up until the middle of next month, so the Post won't notice I'm missing until they fail to get $16.99 from me on November 15.
My reason? A story in yesterday's edition, "The Washington Post says it will not endorse a candidate for president," tells the annoying tale.
The Washington Post’s publisher said Friday that the paper will not make an endorsement in this year’s presidential contest, for the first time in 36 years, or in future presidential races.
The decision, announced 11 days before an election that most polls show as too close to call, drew immediate and heated condemnation from a wide swath of subscribers, political figures and media commentators. Robert Kagan, a longtime Post columnist and editor-at-large in the opinion department, resigned in protest, and a group of 11 Washington Post columnists co-signed an article condemning the decision. Angry readers and sources flooded the email inboxes of numerous staffers with complaints.
...An endorsement of Harris had been drafted by Post editorial page staffers but had yet to be published, according to two people who were briefed on the sequence of events and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The decision to no longer publish presidential endorsements was made by The Post’s owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, according to four people who were briefed on the decision.
So the Post's billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, followed in the footsteps of the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, who also ordered that his newspaper not make a presidential endorsement this year, which also would have been Kamala Harris. The Post story says:
The Post decision marks the second time this week that a major media organization has declined to issue an endorsement in the race between the Republican nominee, former president Donald Trump, and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, after years of making such endorsements. Earlier this week, Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, blocked a planned endorsement of Harris, prompting the resignation of the newspaper’s editorials editor.
I can't stand billionaires who acquire a media company (Elon Musk is another example, with Twitter) and then turn it into a vehicle for their right-wing views. It would be bad enough if this was based on their sincerely-held conservative political beliefs, but worse is what seems to have happened with the tankings of a Harris endorsement by the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times.
Namely, that Bezos and Soon-Shiong wanted to avoid making Trump angry at them and their newspapers if he defeats Harris for the presidency and then embarks on his promised revenge tour against those who opposed his campaign. To me this is the most likely reason for the non-endorsements of Harris.
If Bezos and Soon-Shiong had merely wanted to stop the practice of making presidential endorsements, which other papers have done for decent reasons, they could have done this months ago, well before the November election.
Instead, they ordered a stop to a Harris endorsement just a few days before November 5, which makes the decisions reek of narrow self-interest, given the stakes involved in who succeeds Biden as president. That's why I sent this message to the Washington Post after cancelling my digital subscription. I used a Contact feature that offered help with subscription problems.
I don't need any help, as I just cancelled my digital subscription. I did this because Bezos squashing the paper's endorsement of Harris showed me that I can no longer trust that the Post is neutral when reporting on politics. You guys apparently want to rely on subscriptions from Trump supporters. Good luck with that. Trump calls journalists the enemy of the people. It saddens me that the Post cares more about sucking up to Trump than being a factual reporter of the news and fearless when it comes to endorsements.
Bezos assumed ownership of the Washington Post in 2013. WAPO (Bezos) endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in the 2016 election. There's no evidence that Donald Trump's administration took revenge on Bezos while he was president from 2016 to 2020. There's no evidence Donald Trump took revenge on anyone while he was in office.
I read the WSJ, and I confess I can't stand their one-sided support of Israel's war on Palestinians. Most of their op-eds are written by neocons who never saw a war they didn't love. But I remind myself I support free speech and democracy.
Posted by: sant64 | October 27, 2024 at 04:07 PM