The Washington Post Is Dying a Death of Despair | The demise of an independent press in the United States might not look much like what readers expect.
The demise of an independent press in the United States might not look much like what readers expect.
Thanks for the reminder to cancel my subscription. It's done
I don't think they have really been independent for a while now. At least since he bought them.
They were once independent of the President. That's not really allowed anymore.
I cancelled back when Bezos pulled the Harris endorsement and have yet to look back.
We used to have laws against this sort of thing...
The primary goal of the law was to "let anyone enter any communications business – to let any communications business compete in any market against any other."[2] Thus, the statute is often described as an attempt to deregulate the American broadcasting and telecommunications markets due to technological convergence.[3] The Telecommunications Act of 1996 has been praised for incentivizing the expansion of networks and the offering of new services across the United States.[4] At the same time, it is often criticized for enabling market concentration in the media and telecommunications industries.[5][6]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996
But then modern neoliberalism showed up and put an end to that....
Like, are you mad Sinclair Broadcasting bought up local TV stations and force them to read identical scripts?
They couldn't have done that until 1996, and there was a reason those regulations existed prior.
Capitalism always ruins everything in the end
It was supposed to be its own way to make money, as a counterpoint to other interests by selling juicy information. It breaks when its captured to further those interests’ agendas instead.
Not really. The wealthy classes had no issue making money under mercantilism. The issue was, no matter how much money they made. They were denied a level of power and control gate kept by monarchs. Economic liberalism did away with the divine right of kings and rule by bloodlines. Replacing it with something ultimately, arguably worse.
As inbred and shitty as most monarchies were. Oftentimes they at least attempted to be educated and trained to be decent rulers despite generally failing. All capitalism ultimately did was simply redefine who gets to be a monarch. And do away with any pretense of being trained or educated to be a decent ruler. Now we simply promote the least qualified most mentally ill and unscrupulous people possible.
In fact the average person stands to make a far more money under any system that doesn't tolerate monarchs, oligarchs, or vanguards. As opposed to capitalism for Marxist leninism which does.
I'm conflicted. I feel like I should stop stealing their content, but isn't that what they want?
The problem is that the Washington Post is pocket change for Bezos. To hurt him, you need to move off AWS and stop buying from Amazon
What definition of "independent press" are they using here? Bozo bought it over ten years ago.