By Ray Rivers
October 26th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
Yesterday I cancelled my subscription to the Washington Post. In this, I’m joining many other journalists upset at the decision of the Post’s owner Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to ignore the advice of his editorial staff and make a political statement by pulling the plug on the decade’s long established practice of endorsing a candidate for presidency of the United States of America.
There is an argument, with which I agree in principle, that the news media should remain neutral and not be picking horses. But that stable burned down decades ago when former president Ronald Reagan scrapped the ‘fairness doctrine’ requiring broadcasters to be somewhat balanced in their reporting.
That opened the door and unleashed talk-radio for hate mongering rants, and Fox and MSNBC to promote their respective partisan sides; and eventually paved the way for the various social media to broadcast ‘alternate facts’ and repeat them as if they were true. And all this has made partisan politics in America as nasty and solidified as it is today.
Bezos claiming he is reverting to neutrality is a thin excuse. And the timing of the 11th hour decision to override and shut down the editorial folks at the Post, who had already sculpted their endorsement, stinks to high heaven. The Post’s announcement comes on the heel of a similar policy change at the Los Angeles Times prompting their editorial chief to resign in protest.
Were these decisions, at this late date, made because the race has become a coin toss with Trump now gaining the momentum? Was fear of recrimination should he win the real reason why these American publishing giants chickened out? Both of these papers have been very critical of the Trump candidacy in their coverage – primarily because of his incessant lies, the nasty, crude personal attacks and because he was outed as a fascist.
After all, Trump had ranted about revoking the broadcasting license of CBS just because he didn’t like the 60 minutes episode featuring VP Harris. So what would he do to the Post and its owner if he wins? Recall that Trump has been given carte blanch immunity by his Supreme Court for whatever he chooses to do once elected president. And journalists feature high on his enemies list.
Trump is the candidate of the rich and famous, promising further tax cuts as he clings to the false promises of Ronald Reagan’s trickle down economic theory. Isn’t that why Elon Musk has come to his side, bringing his wealth and the weight of his X social media platform with him? Trump demands and rewards personal loyalty.
Harris is a law and order, rules based, candidate who has talked about breaking up the large corporations and conglomerates and further taxing the wealthy. She argues that good fences make better neighbours and good regulations are good for the economy and us all. In essence, she has promised to steal from the rich and give to the (working) poor, the middle class, a modern day Robin Hood. That is a noble mission but it is easy to understand why Bezos’s, like Musk could be having second thoughts.
History informs us of what happened to the free press when Hitler took power in Germany. Would an American fascist with unlimited power want to do the same thing? I guess American voters will have to make that call. And this time without the endorsement of a candidate by the Washington Post. As is the Post’s motto, Democracy dies in darkness.
Ray Rivers, a Gazette Contributing Editor, writes regularly applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking. Rivers was once a candidate for provincial office in Burlington. He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject. Ray has a post graduate degree in economics that he earned at the University of Ottawa. Tweet @rayzrivers
Background Links:
Washington Post Endorsement More Post Fairness Doctrine –
I’ve never thought newspaper endorsements ever meant anything, at least in this country. After all, despite relentless negative stories and political bias in election endorsements, the Toronto Star has never stopped a Conservative government from being elected or implementing NAFTA.
Ray the king of sour grapes has spoken from his liberal perch. The poles suggest that the race is a dead heat. Why should a newspaper put its thumb on the scale. He says Kamela is a law and order candidate after she let 20 million illegals into the the US. He needs to do more research before he puts out fake news.
George,
Ray is only “stretching a bit calling himself a journalist? LOL Ray is a political hack who is like Andrew Coyne in that their world view no longer exists.
….and where is Canada’s “brick wall of journalistic independence and integrity” in our paid for media.
All week we hear from all media outlets that Canada is slashing immigration by a whopping 20%. Slashed, seriously?
Come what may I plan to still regularly visit our southern neighbour whose retail prices equal our wholesale prices.
On the Rivers piece – First he is fundamentally correct and there are several extremely good analyses of Bezo’s real reasons for stopping endorsements. But I think that Ray is stretching things a bit when he calls himself a “journalist”. Perhaps, a ‘regular opinion contributor’ would be closer to the mark.
My major complaint, though, is that he missed the fundamental irony of the fact that it was Ben Bradlee and The Washington Post that held fast against a similar tyranny by Richard Nixon. The latter banned the Post from White House press conferences and would not engage with the paper – he blackballed it. All because of the Post’s continued reporting of Watergate. Nixon threatened similar treatment for any paper that followed the Post’s lead.
In the end, all major papers carried Bradlee’s editorials and provided a ‘brick wall of journalistic independence and integrity’. Where is that wall today? How things change over the course of years.
Who said freedom of expression would come with no downside. Look no further than “X” now owned by a genius screwball and now Trump puppet master. Someone once alerted me to look for the weakness within a strength and the opposite. You have to look for both but they are there. We are now within a whisker of having a neighboring country democratically elect a fascist. I doubt an endorsement of KH by the WP would make a tinkers damn of a difference as our societal system was highjacked by social media long ago.
Couldn’t agree more….fear seems to be the ultimate winner….will not be travelling to the US….holds nothing of value to me.