3 ms·
> When it comes to the appearance of conflict, I am not an ideal owner of The Post. Every day, somewhere, some Amazon executive or Blue Origin executive or some
by embedding-shape 1y ago
> When it comes to the appearance of conflict, I am not an ideal owner of The Post. Every day, somewhere, some Amazon executive or Blue Origin executive or someone from the other philanthropies and companies I own or invest in is meeting with government officials. I once wrote that The Post is a “complexifier” for me. It is, but it turns out I’m also a complexifier for The Post. - https://archive.is/flIDl https://archive.is/flIDl
It kind of shocks me how someone seemingly can understand those things, but then continue to try to helm the ship. You know you're having a negative impact, why stay at that point, unless you have some ulterior motive?
I don't feel like Washington Post becoming a shadow of itself is any surprise, when even the owner is aware of the effect they have on the publication, yet do absolutely nothing to try to change it.
Disclaimer: former subscriber, part of the exodus that left when the publication became explicitly "pro-capitalism" under the guise of "personal liberties" or something like that.
- JohnMakin 1y agoIt’s part of the centi billionaire class power grab playbook. each one of them for the most part has some major media interests. if you can control and dictate the narrative, for a while no one can protest you, and maybe they won’t notice for a while that their futures are being robbed to enrich a handful of extremely vain white men. by the time they do, it’s likely too late.
- AndrewKemendo 1y agoThis is called “managing the narrative” It’s a classic hallmark technique of advanced psychopaths wherein you agree with reality but don’t change it because as long as you acknowledge it, most people assume you’ll “do your best.” So all you have to do is acknowledge it, and as long as there’s nobody who can force you to do anything then there’s no obvious way to address it without escalation - that escalation being the reason then for claiming you’re attacked and then you have carte blanche to “simply defend yourself” Do that long enough and people get tired and move on and you just cemented your place further
- jacquesm 1y agoThat's because even if he realizes the conflict of interest having a massive media outlet at your disposal is just too powerful a temptation to ignore for these fat cats.
- morkalork 1y agoI think they took the wrong lesson from that Mark Twain quote >Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel
- flatline 1y agoThe Post is a plaything to him that has a disproportionate impact on the rest of the world. We’ve created systems that allow a few individuals to control resources beyond the wildest dreams of the monarchs of days past. Whether it is about power, control, self-aggrandizement, or simply a special interest to him, there is no accountability at the end of the day, and we are all excellent at justifying and rationalizing our decisions to ourselves. I don’t think there has to be an ulterior motive per se, it’s simply human nature.
- bigbadfeline 1y ago> We’ve created systems that allow a few individuals to control resources beyond the wildest dreams of the monarchs of days past. That didn't happen without vigorous help from the "servants of the people". > I don’t think there has to be an ulterior motive per se, it’s simply human nature. It's both, of course. Ulterior motives and human nature aren't mutually exclusive, in fact they overlap quite a lot given the chance.
- afavour 1y agoYeah, this was always the tell. If he truly cared about journalism and wanted to use his money to support it he could very easily place WaPo in some sort of trust he has no power over. And yet, despite publicly admitting the conflict of interest, he hasn’t. Only one reason why you do that and it's because you intend to make the most of your control.
- nickff 1y agoIt seems like the problem with WaPo is that it’s constantly losing money, and has been since well before Bezos bought it. This makes it difficult to be hands-off for (at least) two reasons: he can’t just put it in a conventional trust, because he has to constantly give the organization money (which is abnormal for such a trust), and (secondly) in order to be sustainable, WaPo needs to be significantly changed so that it stops hemorrhaging money.
- embedding-shape 1y agoIt's almost like trying to run a newspaper the same way you run a for-profit online marketplace isn't the greatest of ideas. Who could've known...
- kridsdale3 1y agoComing Soon: WaPo Marketplace. Search for a story and get 10000 results from writers in China like LIOPOSFO and XIGISNN that look almost like the genuine article!
- summa_tech 1y agoFortunately, they all come from the same LLM article factory as the western-branded ones. So, no loss.
- terminalshort 1y agoNo, they will come from Deepseek and have very different opinions on Taiwan
- heroprotagonist 1y agoThere was an ulterior motive and the impact was deliberate. Further down the article: > O'Neal was brought in by Bezos this summer after the corporate titan tore up his paper's opinion section. > Bezos said he wanted a tight focus on two priorities: personal liberties and free markets. The top opinion page editor resigned. A raft of prominent columnists and contributors resigned or departed as well. Some were let go.
- terminalshort 1y agoIt's not ulterior if he said it
- HPsquared 1y agoDon't ask what you can do for your property; ask what your property can do for you.
- IT4MD 1y ago[dead]
- pessimizer 1y ago> Washington Post becoming a shadow of itself The Post was always terrible, always extremely conservative, and always blatantly mixed editorial in with its news reporting (unlike most other outlets in the past.) A bunch of anti-Trump people decided it was movement liberal because it didn't like Trump (like every other Republican and Republican outlet until people started voting them out over it.) WaPo was the most right-wing non-tabloid major paper in the country other than the WSJ before Bezos, the only thing that changed afterwards was that the headlines became more linkbait (5 minutes earlier than every other paper) and their coverage of Bezos properties became lighter. The idea that the WaPo was ever anything but rabidly capitalist is nonsense.
- senderista 1y ago> always extremely conservative You have a pretty idiosyncratic definition of "conservative"
- platevoltage 1y agothe definition of conservative has changed drastically over the last couple decades.
- jandrese 1y agoIn the past the articles were reasonably objective. The editorial section was always to the right of Attila the Hun.
- terminalshort 1y agoWho knew that Attila the Hun was basically the ancient version of Elizabeth Warren?
- terminalshort 1y agoThe typical "we have two right wing parties." It's a stupid pedantic thing people on the left like to do.
- ratelimitsteve 1y agothe temptation is to take him at his word for what he wants and then ask why he doesn't do the obvious thing to get it. try something different: assume he wants what he gets and then ask yourself why he might want that. it's shocking how often that tends to make things very clear.