WaPo readers have been decrying the content of the Post for quite some time. Bezos' stepping in at the 11th hour to withhold the endorsement of Harris was the last straw - not just a temper tantrum over a single issue. I have been a subscriber for years and can affirm that the vibe of the paper is getting more right wing. It's not the newspaper of Woodward and Bernstein, not any more. Democracy is dying in the daylight.
Insightful column, Mr. Inskeep. I respect the spirit of this so very much. I am hopeful that someday we have newspaper owners who understand the responsibility of this privilege.
Baloney. A hard-hitting expose on Elon Musk is extremely far from a hard-hitting expose on, say, Jeff Bezos. What the Post did was lie about Bezos’s role in killing the already written endorsement and then when the lies weren’t holding water they gave Bezos a platform in which to defend his bad decision. I never subscribed to the Post (or any other paper) to support journalists, I did it because I value credible news and wanted to have access to it. And we have been clearly shown that credibility is not a thing we can reliably expect from the Washington Post.
Look, I’ve been a steady follower of the WaPo since the eighties and I think it is a paper with many fine journalists and a less heavy editorial hand forcing the BOTH SIDES ARE ALWAYS EXACTLY EQUAL message that is de rigeur with the NYT, my subscription to which I cancelled a long time ago without regrets.
That said, today I saw a perfect example in the Post of what so infuriates me and others about the legacy (dinosaur?) media. In a piece on the rape charges against Pete Hegseth, Sen. Lindsay Graham made a cheap shot alluding to allegedly similar charges against Biden. The Post then repeated those charges with ZERO context - e.g., they didn’t mention that the woman who levelled those charges was a very sketchy, longtime open admirer of Putin who actually fled to Russia and sought Russian citizenship. So, as always, the mainstream media lets the right wing drive the conversation rather than letting the news be driven by, well, acutal facts in context. This de facto slant just always gets worse and never better, and so it’s no suprise when the pathological liars win, with a big assist from the press and social media.
Canceling your Wapo subscription is the easy part, because there are so many more credible sources out there that don't have owners who want to do business with fascists. The hard part would be sacrificing your Amazon membership to really hurt the billionaire owner on his wallet. I choose to do that instead.
Nothing any of us do will hurt the billionaire's wallet. Canceling Amazon is a good idea for a number of reasons, but the point of dumping the Post is that it cannot be trusted in the hands of an owner so cowed, so willingly submissive to a corrupt authoritarian potential.
The count is up to 250,000+ who dropped the WAPO. Me too. The Post has drifted to the right and has always been suspect. This is the Nation’s existential moment and the Post and Besos has failed miserably. Your analysis is one more intellectual equivocation of the current election. I’m subscribing to The Guardian.
I guess the timing of my cancellation comes down to on poor planning. It was an unfortunate coincidence that my decision coincided with the decision to not publish the endorsement that had been worked on for weeks and was close to ready to go.
The fact that silence is the verbal version of darkness, and that they have said that democracy dies in darkness can have something to do with it. That along with longstanding editorial and journalistic decisions to use very different measures for what is acceptable for different presidential candidates.
I am still happy to pay for good journalism like what I read in The Guardian and other places. WaPo is no longer one of them.
Well said. I came close to hitting the cancel button but was talked out of it by one of my fellow News Media Guild members. Your thoughtful essay helps assure me I made the right decision. Plus, I’d miss Alexandria Petri’s column a whole lot.
So, you feel you can trust a staff of reporters who barely made a peep when their endorsement in the most important election of our lifetimes was pulled? I don't think the Post realizes that if Trump wins, their jobs will go away with our freedom.
Wish those who left would band together with those who left the LA Times and some of the really great independent reporters out there-- Aaron Rupar, Brian Buetler, etc. and give us a paper that recognizes the danger we're in.
I also am maintaining my subscriptions to WaPo, NYTimes, the Atlantic, the Guardian and a wonderful assortment of Substack subscriptions. I believe we have to continue to support those who work hard to keep us informed.
I stopped my subscription when Will Lewis became publisher. I follow enough UK news to know that he is lacking in what I consider to be good morals. I’m sorry to lose some of the information from the Post, and some of their very fine writers, but if he is at the top, I will not trust them. I have since subscribed to the Guardian.
The fact that they pulled the endorsement shows they are not independent from Bezos. The fact is the Post is not a money maker for Bezos, pulling that endorsement most likely helped Bezos ensure support for Blue Origin and possibly limit ongoing FTC antitrust complaints in the Trump administration. All it cost him was a few million dollars in subscriber money and the reputation of an investment that probably means pretty little in his portfolio. Not a bad deal for one of the richest men in the world.
WaPo readers have been decrying the content of the Post for quite some time. Bezos' stepping in at the 11th hour to withhold the endorsement of Harris was the last straw - not just a temper tantrum over a single issue. I have been a subscriber for years and can affirm that the vibe of the paper is getting more right wing. It's not the newspaper of Woodward and Bernstein, not any more. Democracy is dying in the daylight.
Insightful column, Mr. Inskeep. I respect the spirit of this so very much. I am hopeful that someday we have newspaper owners who understand the responsibility of this privilege.
Baloney. A hard-hitting expose on Elon Musk is extremely far from a hard-hitting expose on, say, Jeff Bezos. What the Post did was lie about Bezos’s role in killing the already written endorsement and then when the lies weren’t holding water they gave Bezos a platform in which to defend his bad decision. I never subscribed to the Post (or any other paper) to support journalists, I did it because I value credible news and wanted to have access to it. And we have been clearly shown that credibility is not a thing we can reliably expect from the Washington Post.
Look, I’ve been a steady follower of the WaPo since the eighties and I think it is a paper with many fine journalists and a less heavy editorial hand forcing the BOTH SIDES ARE ALWAYS EXACTLY EQUAL message that is de rigeur with the NYT, my subscription to which I cancelled a long time ago without regrets.
That said, today I saw a perfect example in the Post of what so infuriates me and others about the legacy (dinosaur?) media. In a piece on the rape charges against Pete Hegseth, Sen. Lindsay Graham made a cheap shot alluding to allegedly similar charges against Biden. The Post then repeated those charges with ZERO context - e.g., they didn’t mention that the woman who levelled those charges was a very sketchy, longtime open admirer of Putin who actually fled to Russia and sought Russian citizenship. So, as always, the mainstream media lets the right wing drive the conversation rather than letting the news be driven by, well, acutal facts in context. This de facto slant just always gets worse and never better, and so it’s no suprise when the pathological liars win, with a big assist from the press and social media.
Canceling your Wapo subscription is the easy part, because there are so many more credible sources out there that don't have owners who want to do business with fascists. The hard part would be sacrificing your Amazon membership to really hurt the billionaire owner on his wallet. I choose to do that instead.
And also boycott Whole Foods.
Nothing any of us do will hurt the billionaire's wallet. Canceling Amazon is a good idea for a number of reasons, but the point of dumping the Post is that it cannot be trusted in the hands of an owner so cowed, so willingly submissive to a corrupt authoritarian potential.
Thank you, Steve, for your thoughtful, hopeful column.
The count is up to 250,000+ who dropped the WAPO. Me too. The Post has drifted to the right and has always been suspect. This is the Nation’s existential moment and the Post and Besos has failed miserably. Your analysis is one more intellectual equivocation of the current election. I’m subscribing to The Guardian.
I guess the timing of my cancellation comes down to on poor planning. It was an unfortunate coincidence that my decision coincided with the decision to not publish the endorsement that had been worked on for weeks and was close to ready to go.
The fact that silence is the verbal version of darkness, and that they have said that democracy dies in darkness can have something to do with it. That along with longstanding editorial and journalistic decisions to use very different measures for what is acceptable for different presidential candidates.
I am still happy to pay for good journalism like what I read in The Guardian and other places. WaPo is no longer one of them.
Well said. I came close to hitting the cancel button but was talked out of it by one of my fellow News Media Guild members. Your thoughtful essay helps assure me I made the right decision. Plus, I’d miss Alexandria Petri’s column a whole lot.
So, you feel you can trust a staff of reporters who barely made a peep when their endorsement in the most important election of our lifetimes was pulled? I don't think the Post realizes that if Trump wins, their jobs will go away with our freedom.
Wish those who left would band together with those who left the LA Times and some of the really great independent reporters out there-- Aaron Rupar, Brian Buetler, etc. and give us a paper that recognizes the danger we're in.
Do not obey in advance. Canceled.
Being “principled” is like being humble. If you feel compelled to tell people how much you are, you’re probably not.
Thank you Steve for a great, thoughtful post.
I also am maintaining my subscriptions to WaPo, NYTimes, the Atlantic, the Guardian and a wonderful assortment of Substack subscriptions. I believe we have to continue to support those who work hard to keep us informed.
I stopped my subscription when Will Lewis became publisher. I follow enough UK news to know that he is lacking in what I consider to be good morals. I’m sorry to lose some of the information from the Post, and some of their very fine writers, but if he is at the top, I will not trust them. I have since subscribed to the Guardian.
Poor decision….but you’re part of the problem.
The fact that they pulled the endorsement shows they are not independent from Bezos. The fact is the Post is not a money maker for Bezos, pulling that endorsement most likely helped Bezos ensure support for Blue Origin and possibly limit ongoing FTC antitrust complaints in the Trump administration. All it cost him was a few million dollars in subscriber money and the reputation of an investment that probably means pretty little in his portfolio. Not a bad deal for one of the richest men in the world.