Veteran WaPo columnist Philip Bump sums it up well regarding Jeff Bezos’ massive interference with the paper’s editorial content: “what the actual fuck”???
“I’m writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages. We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” Bezos said.
“We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others. There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.”
So…of course the WaPo can have – and very much DOES have! – content from a conservative/”personal liberties and free markets” perspective. But at this point, the WaPo’s owner, Jeff Bezos, has put his thumb HEAVILY on the scale both FOR his own preferred political views and AGAINST those he doesn’t like (“viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others”). Well, ok, it’s his paper and he can do whatever he wants with it, but that doesn’t mean that any of us have to: a) subscribe to it; b) share content from it; c) treat it as anything but Jeff Bezos’ personal rag. Instead, what Democrats should be doing is sharing/amplifying independent media, pro-democracy media, etc., and NOT doing that with oligarch-owned, anti-democracy crap like what Bezos is doing with the WaPo…
With that, see below for some more reactions, including:
Re: Jeff Stein’s comment, it’s just completely false that there’s no “encroachment” on the “news side of coverage”; in fact, there VERY MUCH has been for years, certainly since the WaPo’s relentless sliming of Hillary Clinton in 2016, their whitewashing/sanewashing of Trump since 2016 (at least), their constant “both sidesism” and false equivalence, just this morning their reference to supposed House “moderate Republicans” (of which there are none, proven by their votes last night for the horrific, far-right-extremist House budget)…
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