As everyone on the internet noticed, all of a sudden last week the Washington Post newspaper decided that for the first time in a few decades they weren’t going to endorse a candidate for the presidential election.
This has not gone down well. It doesn’t help that the paper adopted the tagline “democracy dies in darkness” a few years ago. Cue statements such as:
So much for “Democracy Dies in Darkness”. This is the most hypocritical, chicken shit move from a publication that is supposed to hold people in power to account.
from Susan Rice, former US ambassador to the UN.
This is cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty.
from Marty Baron, a former Washington Post executive editor.
The paper I’ve loved working at for 47 years is dying in darkness.
says David Maraniss, a reporter and editor at the Post.
Today has been an absolute stab in the back. What an insult to those of us who have literally put our careers and lives on the line, to call out threats to human rights and democracy.
says Karen Attiah, WaPo columnist.
The Post’s editorial board just won a Pulitzer Prize for calling out authoritarianism and defending democracy around the world…How sad is it that we can’t do that at home?
as an anonymous “senior Post staffer” told The Guardian.
A union with many WaPo employees in, the Washington Post Guild, expressed its deep concern at the decision.
What is particularly disgusting about the manoeuvre is the reason that it happened. It wasn’t that the editorial writers had nothing to say on the subject, that the reporters didn’t think they knew enough to have an opinion, or that it was decided sometime between 2020 and now that the Opinion section of a newspaper must never in fact contain any Opinion. In fact the Washington Post team had already written an endorsement for Kamala Harris. It had already been approved by the editorial page editor, David Shipley.
But then, the Washington Post owner - who is none other Jeff Bezos, who, most famously, founded and CEOd Amazon along with all the catastrophe that that particular enterprise unleashed upon the world - ordered them to pull it at the last minute. Ergo it was censored it out of existence, never to see the light of day, destined to die in darkness.
Yes, once again one of the weird tech billionaires is interfering with the standard practice of democracy, seemingly for nothing other than peculiarly selfish and small-minded reasons.
Platformer summarises the likely reasons as including basically being out of fear that if Bezos was even vaguely connected to something that might be read as criticising President Trump then Trump might take it out on him later if, heaven forefend, he became president. Which doesn’t seem like an unreasonable fear based on Trump’s previous behaviour. But, come on, we are talking about Amazon billionaire Jeffrey Bezos. I think he might just survive. He’ll be able to pay his bills (or, more likely, pay someone to pay someone to pay someone to avoid having to pay his bills).
Another possible reason might be payback to the current Democrat administration who have been overseeing a surprisingly strong - well, in a relative sense - pushback against some of the Big Tech monopolists, pursuing antitrust cases against a slew of companies including Bezos' own Amazon.
To be fair Bezos isn’t alone in this. His other weird tech billionaire pals are also cosying up to the disgraced ex-president, just in case.
Per Wired, Google CEO Sundar Pichai apparently called Trump so congratulate him on his bizarre “I work at McDonalds” stunt. Apple’s Tim Cook has also been on the blower plenty. Meta’s Zuckerberg called him up, presumably to congratulate him on being a “badass”, after the first assassination attempt, something that Bezos also did before the Washington Post incident.
The WaPo wasn’t the only newspaper to have its presidential endorsement story burned by its owner. It seemed to generate a bit less publicity, but eagle-eyed readers of the LA Times endorsement list last month might have noticed the distinct absence of a presidential endorsement. So in a way this is even weirder; they’ve no problem with the concept of political endorsements. There’s plenty on that list. They just decided to not publish one for the position that comes with the most impactful amount of political power going.
Well, I say “they”. Again the blocking of an endorsement wasn’t a “they” decision. The team had already decided that they were going to endorse Kamala Harris. It was a “he” decision.
Once again the article itself was blocked pre-publication, apparently the decision to censor was made by the paper’s owner - Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong.
In reaction to their article being blocked by the paper’s owner, the editorial editor Mariel Garza felt compelled to resign
“I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not OK with us being silent,” Garza said. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”
In a strong parallel to the WaPo’s equivalent, the LA Times Guild Unit Council & Bargaining Committee reported that it was:
…deeply concerned about our owner’s decision to block a planned endorsement in the presidential race.
In case Dr. Soon-Shiong’s sensibilities aren’t clear, he’s not a newspaper man by trade. Rather, he is - can you guess? - a (bio)tech billionaire who in the past has been seen “palling around” with Donald Trump, begging him for a job.
He may be the richest doctor in the world, but is nonetheless a man so delusional that following one such dinner with the president-at-the=time he publicly shared that it was an:
Incredible honor dining w/Pres-elect @realDonaldTrump last night. He truly wants to advance healthcare for all.
“For all”. Hmm.
That said, the New Yorker profile of the good doctor makes it clear that he does have certain lifestyle similarities to Trump. For example, they’ve both been repeatedly taken to court over various violations.
“He gets very enthusiastic, and sometimes he might exaggerate,” Hentz said. “He can embellish a little.” Outcomes for his diabetes treatment were disappointing, and one case ended tragically.
While pursuing this therapy, he also began researching chemotherapy. At the center of his fortune is a cancer treatment that costs more than a hundred times as much as another drug, available as a generic, that is prescribed for some of the same conditions.
Soon-Shiong has been repeatedly accused of financial misrepresentation, self-dealing, price gouging, and fraud. He has been sued by former investors and business partners; he has been sued by other doctors; he has been sued by his own brother, twice; he has been sued by Cher.
Let’s not even get started on Elon Musk - the richest master-performer of self-cringe that ever lived - who is now acting as Trump’s pet, literally (but awkwardly) jumping for joy, or whatever the Musk form of that emotion may be, on a public stage during his campaigning. As it happens, in between occurrences of this “I’m not just MAGA - I’m dark Maga” buffoon upwardly prostrating his body into some form akin to a broken X-shape for Likes, he’s also quite possibly breaking voter bribery laws.
These people - each of whom has more access to power and resources than any human should ever have, and have vastly benefited from so many aspects of the very systems of governance that Trump threatens to derail - are each presumably somewhere on the scale between MAGA-pilled ideologue true believers and selfish, spiteful, cowards.
Casey Newton sums it up well:
This is not, of course, a moral case for business leaders supporting Trump. There is no moral case for business leaders supporting Trump. Trump is an openly corrupt 78-year-old fascist, twice impeached and on 34 felony counts convicted, who attempted to stop the peaceful transfer of power in 2021 and now promises to further undermine the democracy of the United States if he manages to assume power again.
But a democratic emergency like the one we are now living through is not necessarily a business emergency. In the billionaires’ view, it could actually be an opportunity — to bring an end to the antitrust cases, to block further regulation of Big Tech in Congress, and to pursue their dreams of superintelligence in peace.