Washington Post cancellations hit 250,000 – 10% of subscribers
Reader backlash against decision not to make presidential endorsement rolls on despite Bezos defense of decision
The numbers are based on the number of cancellation emails that have been sent out, according to a source at the paper, though the subscriber dashboard is no longer viewable to employees.
Bozos doesn't like you looking at how badly he fucked up.
Do Amazon next. I plan to let mine expire. Amazon video is trash.
Letting mine go. I kept it for Vox Machina, but I will acquire it other ways next season and support the team directly.
Yup, I'm not paying an extra $3/mo on top of what I pay for prime for no ads, I'll just not watch what's on your service. Not to mention, most of the filler movies/shows on all of these streaming services are garbage anyway. If it weren't for my wife, I would just have my Jellyfin server by itself.
If I lived anywhere near a city and not in the mountains, I wouldn't have prime either. It just saves too much time whereas my time is in short supply and I don't have it to make a 3 hour round trip run every few days.
Their subscriber numbers have been absolutely decimated by Bezos’ decision.
It’s down 10% which is the literal definition of decimated!
CNN talks about WaPo getting a backlash for not endorsing, but says nothing about Bezos intervention, lol.
https://lite.cnn.com/2024/10/29/media/usa-today-gannett-newspapers-endorsement-president/index.html
That's weird. I know CNN is quite familiar with dipshits intervening in coverage, so they should be able to spot it. They had one fuckface bend over backwards to give Donald an hour in front of a friendly live audience with a milquetoast moderator who was able to do fuckall against the lies.
Was there any evidence that Bozos made that decision? We’re all ready to believe it but want it just one persons allegation or something?
Just canceled prime too
Washington Toast
picture of Kelly self-insert
It's sad how much this will hurt good people who work for the Washington Post and how little this will affect Bezos.
If you still work at the Post after all this time it's kind of on you. They've had years to find employment at outlets that aren't a direct mouthpiece for Bezos.
On the one hand, I know that the newspaper had done this for decades and stopped now...
On the other hand: If a big German newspaper recommended voting a specific person, this would be a huge scandal...
We have only 2 major parties and one has been a criminal enterprise for 56 years
At this point Trump wants to form militias to round up 25M people and drag them to concentration camps and turn the military loose on anyone who disagrees.
This includes 11M undocumented workers who almost all live law abiding lives and Americans who were born here from above who are by our constitution citizens regardless of the status of their parents.
He has publically called for violence, and end to our constitution, a new era where the dictator tells the government what the law is.
It is strange for any responsible party not to oppose essentially Hitler.
The comparison doesn't work. In the US it is common practice that a newspaper gives a recommendation.
Also the US has a two party system. Compare this to Germany's multi party system. If you are undecided between to options a recommendation might help. If you are undecided whether you should vote the Greens or SPD a newspaper recommending CDU doesn't help you at all.
While it is not illegal for a newspaper to give a recommendation in Germany, it would be a scandal indeed. But the only reason for this would be that they didn't do it before. People are just complaining about changes like in this case as well
Which drives the partisanisation of the media. Bozo is right about one thing: the trust in media is at an all time low in the US and trust is build through accurate and unbiased reporting. Endorsing politicians is biased as hell.
The newspapers repudiation of a fascist in dangerous times would hit that much harder had they not endorsed other politicians in less dangerous times.
So now it's damned if they do, damned if they don't... swallow that pill they must at some point. But it would have been an easier pill to swallow after the rule of fascism in the US had been averted.
Fwiw, this was always the “op Ed” section, editorial opinion.
I do believe that most reputable news sources historically distinguished facts they reported on from their editors opinion. It’s worth the same as any other well-informed persons opinion.
Of course that also led to Fox “News” and a radically misinformed public, so it certainly went to hell
Exactly - I find the comments in this thread very confusing. A free and impartial press is one of the cornerstones of democracy.
I now understand a lot better why there is such a distrust in journalism in the US.
I now understand a lot better why there is such a distrust in journalism in the US.
Because Americans aren't smart enough to realize the difference between a news article and an opinion article?
Chump change for Bozos. Hardly a scratch
I daresay this is the outcome he hoped for. Suddenly there are a bunch of open editorial author seats to fill. Taking bets on those seats being filled by people who don't lean quite so far to the left.
And a significant loss in subscribers? That's just the principled people fleeing who weren't gonna buy his nonsense either way. The people who stick around are the ones who are okay with billionaire interference in their news source, and those are the people Bezos wants as subscribers.
😔
Damn, that's quite plausible.
And he doesn't give a shit. Subscribers don't matter, control of a well known paper that will push his interests does.
The bigger question should be: why would anyone subscribe to Bezo's paywalled garden in the first place?
Who is paying for "news" in current year?
Like everybody else I object to what Bezos did, but boycotting the paper isn't going to tangibly hurt him, financially or in any other way, and it certainly won't change his behavior. The only people affected will be staffers who get laid off or have their salaries cut because of lost revenue. But hey, at least the social justice angels get to feel good by satisfyingly lashing out, and that's what really counts, right? The fantasy that they're fighting for a better world.
When the thing you enjoy and rely on is privately owned, the only way you can express your disappointment is to vote with your dollar.
Edit - the Post has always been too neolib for me to read regularly. I am not a subscriber
Who says it’s to hurt him? The man has billions and billions. If he lost nearly all his wealth he’d still be filthy rich. It’s about not consuming news that’s being blatantly influenced by people with power and money.
So do nothing and continue to financially support something you disagree with? Are you a cuck or something?
I for one agree with besos.How tf is this a wrong thing to do ? The press should not tell you to vote for someone. It should report news. Sure it can shit on one person more than the other due to various circumstances. In case of this particular election it would probably be donald trump. Mostly beacuse its hard not to in his case. But the press itself should not endorse someone. But even if they are biased they should be biased in articles they create so that you can at least blame the particular reporter ( because pepole are biased and you cant really avoid that ). Company itself should not endorse certain politiicians.
The only thing i think besos should do better is do it( and annouce ) after this election or somewhere between election cycles. That was a very poor timing on his part.
Editorial boards are independent from newsrooms. They publish all sorts of opinions. That’s the point of the op ed sections of new outlets.
Back when news agencies were trusted, it was very common to respect the opinion of the editorial board as a well considered well informed source. I may not agree with it but I’d know it to have a good argument. It was also always distinct from news. In an “Opinion” section.
I don't really understand. A news outlet shouldn't be engaging in bias.
So it's unethical and propaganda when one endorses your opponent and just as much so when one doesn't do the same thing for yours?
In other countries, we call that hypocrisy or a 'doible-standard'. I believe I've heard Americans say something similar as, "Rules for thee but not for me."
The only thing that should be done is reporting on the other news outlet breeching journalism ethics or influencing in an election, because that's the news here.
Newspapers have a long history of publishing editorials and opinion pieces. Newspapers are rarely, if ever, pure, objective news. Endorsements fall under the editorial content. They are an established tradition.
When the owner dictates that no endorsement should be made because it conflicts with his views, that’s a problem. It’s not the editors with domain knowledge making the call but the self-serving business-man doing it. And it’s not for the good of the paper, it’s for his business interests and personal ideology.
That is the problem.
Not even just that, if this decision had been made last January, this wouldn’t be news, but the fact that it was made in the last few days in the run up to the election means that no matter how altruistic their decision was, it’s gonna be viewed in the light of the current moment.
Every previous election for a long time wapo has endorsed a candidate. The only reason they aren't is because of the second richest man in the world told them not to.
This clown has done an insurrection, says he's allowed to kill political opponents, promises to be a dictator, says Haitians are eating cats. Among other things, that's nowhere near a comprehensive list. Any news outlet that is not explicitly saying "this is the worst choice for the country" is biased. It is an objective fact that Donald is the wrong choice.
This clown has done an insurrection, says he's allowed to kill political opponents, promises to be a dictator, says Haitians are eating cats. Among other things, that's nowhere near a comprehensive list.
It should have been over for him the moment he mocked disabled journalist Serge Kovaleski in November of 2015 in any reasonable society.
Some more links if anyone needs resources to share with people (don’t give up hope):
Uhh, stating that Kamala Harris would make a better President than Donald Trump is a factual statement, not a biased one.
There is no objective measure to assess the performance of a President where Trump would exceed Harris.
Just so you know, Saltesc has made a string of bad faith comments that are pro right-wing bs.
I don't disagree at all. Trump is an absolute madman, and it's amazing to me that he's even in the conversation for running for president.
But, facts need to be cited, always. If a newspaper endorses Harris and says she's a better candidate than Trump, they had better explain with evidence why this is the case. Not doing so would be just as biased, and one of the cornerstones of a Democratic campaign is truth.
So freedom of speech really is just a cudgel the right uses against the left? It's not really something they believe in.
Every news organisation is biased. The content they choose to emphasize, the time they spend on a subject, who they interview or what they say is all bias. How often they return to it or when it gets covered also show bias.
Bias in news is not automatically bad. Lying or false representation is. Somewhere in the recent past we swallowed some sort of pill making us think news agencies can't have a stance.
Democracy dies in darkness
I think what I look for is not being unbiased, but being independent. i.e. no conflict of interests, no direct relation with any political entities, not vested in the success of either side. And WaPo has failed that.
And stop pretending both sides are equal. Endorsing Trump is unethical.
I believe not wanting to put the guy back in who did nothing as the Saudi's bone sawed one of your writers falls into; common sense.
Bozo thought his own op ed was more important than the journalism of his "editorial board", people who he presumably pays to write opinions. People who are journalists.
He thinks he's an astronaut and a journalist because he can buy rocket companies and papers, but he's a clown demonstrating his own lack of understanding of bias in plain English, his paper is worth but the circus music following him.
I don’t really understand. A news outlet shouldn’t be engaging in bias.
I don't really understand. A commenter shouldn't so obviously have bad faith takes on their profile.
All journalism has bias, it's literally impossible to not have a bias. It's how the journalist corrects that bias that is important. But understanding that might require nuance that you don't yet have.
