Employees outraged at ‘chicken-shit’ move that breaks 30-year precedent, alleging Jeff Bezos quashed Harris support

There was uproar and outrage among the Washington Post’s current and former staffers and other notable figures in the world of American media after the newspaper’s leaders on Friday chose to not endorse any candidate in the US presidential election.

The newspaper’s publisher, Will Lewis, announced on Friday that for the first time in over 30 years, the paper’s editorial board would not be endorsing a candidate in this year’s presidential election, nor in future presidential elections.

After the news broke, reactions came flooding in, with people criticizing the decision, which, according to some staffers and reporters, was allegedly made by the Post’s owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos.

Karen Attiah, a columnist for the Washington Post who writes a weekly newsletter, called the decision an “absolute stab in the back”.

  • dhork@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I wonder if we’ll ever find out how many subscriptions they lost because of it.

      • ThirdWorldOrder@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        Same! Now I have NYT only although they spam like crazy. Reuters is going sub now so I’ll prob pick them up since I’ve been enjoying their stuff for years now.

        • Telodzrum@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          I still have my NYT sub, I’ll be switching to games only next year though. The EIC there is a real piece of shit.

  • Rapidcreek@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Sigh…Billionaires buying America media and using it for their own ends is American as Apple pie. Hearst, Pulitzer, Luce, Murdock, now Bezos. I think the thing to say about this issue is Bezos is basically a Coward and not worth the time to think about.

    • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Add Musk and Zuckerberg to that list, too, along with the various funds/groups that own Reddit. Trump could be on the list, too, though only his cult takes his seriously.

      Social media works a bit differently but the end result is similar. Or worse, given how much things have accelerated in the couple of decades since social media made it to the main stream.

  • garretble@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I’m curious of who down the line capitulated to Bezos.

    He could say “don’t endorse!” but someone there also has to say “ok boss!”

    They could still run the endorsement. Someone may get fired for it, but Bezos isn’t down in the newsroom hitting the big STOP THE PRESSES button that shuts the whole operation down.

  • Optional@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    So the same people who spent almost a decade sanewashing trump and leaning into his candidacy for no reason other than morbid fascination and clicks are getting spanked out in public by the monster they created.

    Sucks.

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    If there’s someone here who thinks billionaires owning our news isn’t a problem then you should search the terms, USS Maine, Spanish-American War, and Yellow Journalism.

    Nothing has changed.