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.

We have only 2 major parties and one has been a criminal enterprise for 56 years

• Nixon Watergate
• Reagan: sold drugs to buy guns for guys Congress said not to buy guns for because they were mass murderers
• Bush Sr US: helped with above
• Bush Jr faked evidence for a war which killed half a million people and cost 6 trillion dollars also illegally tortured
• Trump do I even need to do this one?

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

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.

And he doesn’t give a shit. Subscribers don’t matter, control of a well known paper that will push his interests does.

It’s down 10% which is the literal definition of decimated!

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.

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.

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.

So freedom of speech really is just a cudgel the right uses against the left? It’s not really something they believe in.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Do Amazon next. I plan to let mine expire. Amazon video is trash.