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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   30526 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024

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The LA Times editorial board was going to endorse Kamala for president, but the owner prevented it (Archive). An Editorial Chief resigned in protest.

This situation made me remember a section of an article that Yarvin wrote a while back (it's about AI risk, but the section about using money for political power is what I keep coming back to in response to claims of money in politics)

What can Jeff Bezos do with his two hundred billion dollars? Well, it turns out, he can buy the Washington Post, the world’s second most important newspaper. That ain’t nothing. But… can he tell the Post what to say? As though he was W.R. Hearst? Lol.

Jeff Bezos does not really own the Post. He sponsors it, as if it was the Indy 500. If he sponsored the Indy 500, and decided the cars should have five wheels and a rocket exhaust, and also it should go farther and become the Indy 2500, they would tell him to go pound sand. If he started telling the news desk what to write and cover, like Hearst, or even like “Pinch” Sulzberger, they would laugh at him and quit. (Pinch’s heir, sadly, seems to have ceded that power to the NYT’s Slack—like many a weak monarch of a waning dynasty, letting his authority decay into an oligarchy. Hard to get it back, bro.)

Jeff Bezos could destroy the Post. Since journalism is redundant and the Post is only #2, this would have zero effect on the world. There is no way he can use the Post. Anyone talking about the “Bezos Blog” is either ignorant, or a fool, or a fraud.

The LA Times situation is still only a few days old, so more people could quit in protest in the days to come, vindicating Yarvin. But as of now, it seems that an owner can control their newspaper to a certain extent. Yes, telling the editorial board to not endorse someone is a different category of control than telling the news desk what and what not to cover, but Yarvin didn't make those caveats and I suspect if you asked him about this scenario when he wrote the article, he wouldn't distinguish it and would say journalists would resign in both scenarios. In fact, he even says, "There is no way he can use the Post", which is a very strong claim.

Potential Yarvin defenses and rebuttals

It's an endorsement, it doesn't really matter. That's why there haven't been mass resignations. If the owner told them what to cover, there would be mass resignations

Many individual news articles don't really matter or only barely push the needle, yet Yarvin still made the blanket statement. He didn't say "Bezos can use the Post for minor things, but for anything major, people would resign." He said, "There is no way he can use the Post"

It's the LA Times. If it was the Washington Post or the New York Times, they would resign

Possible, but now the argument is no longer that you can't use money for power. It's that you can't use money for power at the biggest, most prestigious organizations, but you can use it elsewhere. This is a much weaker claim. Plus, it's not like the LA Time is some middle of nowhere town's local rag.

This situation has changed the strength of my belief in that Yarvin argument about using money for political power. I will be going back to it less frequently.

Now it seems Bezos actually stopped the Post from endorsing Harris. It will be interesting to see what the fallout is.

I instantly thought of my post on this when I saw the news. The second of my "potential Yarvin defenses" is even weaker now, assuming we don't have mass resignations at WaPo.

As well as the fallout from this, I'm also interested in how this decision was made. Very rich people all generally know each, so I wonder if the LA Times owner and Bezos spoke about this and coordinated in any way. Or maybe they spoke and one convinced the other? Or maybe they didn't speak at all and did it completely independently from each other? Or maybe they didn't speak at all, but Bezos saw the LA Times owner do it with only minimal fallout (so far), so he thought he could do it as well?

The chances of mass resignation from either paper go much higher if there was any coordination between the two. Also, I'd guess that if one paper mass resigns, the other will probably be inspired to mass resign as well.

Maybe the owners have been looking for a way to shake up their newsrooms, maybe reduce bias or introduce more AI content.

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