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Imagine: a newspaper suddenly remembers that its job is not to be a propaganda organ for the Democrat party and the hard-left, but simply to report the news as honestly and objectively as it possibly can. In this day and age! Why, it’s an outrage! The establishment media has in recent years grown ever more open and unapologetic about being the primary means by which the left’s spin on current events gets to the American people. After all, it’s all about saving “our democracy” — remember, as the Washington Post reminds us, “Democracy dies in darkness” — from the focus of evil in the modern world, Mr. Donald J. Trump.
There is more. Read the rest here.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Good for them, and good luck finding new jobs
That said, I don’t expect LA Times to rebound, given that excepting geezers, nobody reads newspapers any more: the bulk of people get their news from the internet. Maybe if the LA Times trimmed down to just reporting events in its backyard of Southern California or even just LA County, they might do better. Get rid of all the editorials and just have news reporting – be it car chases on Santa Monica Blvd or the latest outrages in tent cities in Skid Row
Just that! Nothing else
Rarely says
Many, if not most, newspapers have slanted towards various political philosophies and inevitably supported a particular political party. It is unusual when a paper doesn’t. Publishers hire editors whose opinions reflect their opinions and so forth down the chain. Naturally this creates criticism. If you don’t like it then quit. It’s what these folks did — nothing unusual.
The next time I see a newspaper that just “reports the news” without an opinion or a slant it will be the first.
Westman says
Jeff Bezos owns the WaPo and realizes Harris will likely lose. He can’t afford to alienate the incoming government with which Amazon will have new and ongoing contracts. He stopped a pro-Harris, anti-Trump, already prepared, endorsement. Smart man – losing a lefty editor who demanded Bezos’ endorsement was a benefit.
It has always been the case that editorial writers(bigger heads than you can imagine) believe the newspapers make their money due to news content. It is actually advertising that pays the bills and that reality has asserted itself as video and online classifieds have stolen what was once a monopoly on local/regional advertising. Now the big Political News Guns, NYT, WaPo, and LAT must be subsidized to maintain their political power. Bezos owns a newspaper for influence, not profit.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
If you recall, during the last administration, Amazon’s bias against the Right in general cost them. They were counting on major government contracts for AWS, which is what the Crystal City headquarters was all about. The Trump administration just shut them out altogether, giving the project to Microsoft Azure. (I was a tad critical of that, as Microsoft is just as woke. The government could easily have rolled its own Cloud service for internal use using the legions of FOSS software, and monetized it for customers/clients willing to use them)
Given that experience, he doesn’t wanna alienate Republicans completely any more, so looks like reading his employees the riot act. Not that it’ll persuade me: I’d look at other services whenever it comes to picking Cloud. Parler, which started coming into its own in 2020 during the post-election contests, was deplatformed by Amazon, and took years to barely come back, by which time, Gab & Gettr had grown (Gab too had undergone the same experience w/ Azure as Parler did w/ AWS), and Twitter got taken over by Musk. But it does make sense that he’s trying to mend fences w/ the Trump movement. Same seems slightly true about Zuckerberg, who’s not providing ballots this time all over the place, and who regretted censoring the Hunter Biden story in a Congressional hearing
࿗Infidel࿘ says
USA Today has now made it 3 to not endorse
Will this be a new trend this year?
James Lincoln says
Whenever a newspaper endorses a particular candidate – whether Republican or Democrat – it loses what little credibility it previously had.
Newspapers:
Just present the news in an unbiased fashion – and let the readers make their own decision about who they will vote for.
Rarely says
Historically newspapers take sides — a fact of life.
A newspaper that is “objective” is simply one that supports my side of things. i.e, what’s objective for one side is biased to the other. — another fact of life.
The next time both sides see a newspaper as unbiased will be the first time.
James Lincoln says
Rarely,
Thank you for your reply, and, admittedly, it is nearly impossible for a news organization to be completely unbiased.
The problem with most newspapers is their historical “culture” and current hiring practices. If newspapers were at least trying to be objective, their staff editors / reporters would be roughly 50% liberal and 50% conservative in order to achieve some kind of balance.
Currently, mainstream news sources are heavily weighted in favor of liberal hires – and it shows in their news coverage.
Rarely says
All true BUT newspapers are not trying to be objective and never have tried. The reporting of “facts” will usually be more or less accurate although somewhat slanted. The editorials and op eds will be in line with the publisher’s prejudices. Editors and reporters are hired dependent on their bent — almost never 50/50 liberal/conservative.
Naturally it is frustrating to conservatives when msm is heavily weighted in favour of the liberal side and it doesn’t seem fair.
Fortunately some papers (maybe most) are not so deeply invested that they can’t change their bent when circumstances make it clear that this should happen.
gravenimage says
Traditionally OP-Ed has been considered separate from reporting–but so oftne reporting is also slanted.
James Lincoln says
Thank you for your replies Rarely and gravenimage.