I didn’t know this.
Scorched earth policy
Comments
11 responses to “Scorched earth policy”
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So what does Trump have on Bezos? Or is this just a spontaneous, obedient, currying of favour?
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Did he literally buy the Post in order to destroy it? Is it that simple?
If he did, he took his sweet time. He bought the Post back in 2013, and while there were some buyouts and other cost-cutting measures over the years (losing the magazine and Outlook, for example), he pretty much stayed out of the way through the first Trump administration and most of Biden’s presidency. But at some point over the past two or so years he decided that sucking up to Trump was more important than running a world-class newspaper.
Here’s a good rundown of his history at the Post, and how he’s changed over the years.
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Who needs photographers when you have AI-generated deep fakes, especially when the former keep failing to produce evidence that the people gunned down by ICE were engaging in domestic terrorism and were killed in self-defense…
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I don’t think Bezos bought the Post in order to destroy it. I think he bought it to use as a resource to curry favor with whatever government would be in power, in whatever way would please them the most. If Kamala Harris had won, the WaPo would toe the liberal line perfectly and provide an employment service for unmotivated relatives of Democratic politicians. What Trump likes is newspapers going down in flames, so Bezos is burning down the Post.
He hopes to catch Trump’s attention by encouraging democracy to die in darkness so that Trump may concede favors to his other companies, specifically Blue Origin. Bezos thinks Musk and Trump are on the skids and figures he can slide in with some subtle bribery and get some sweet no-bid government contracts for space boondoggles. Think school girls at lunch, but with 75 million dollar “documentary” grifts instead of my little pony pencil cases.
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Apropos of nothing, really – I am not sure who said this first, but it seems like sound advice:
Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising billionaires.
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It’s worth noting that photojournalism has been in decline for awhile, now–it’s been a decade-ish since the Chicago Sun-Times basically fired all their in-house photogs, with the expectation that reporters would use their cell phones to take pictures, and that any others could be obtained from wire services if needed.
This of course led to a LOT of very dull pictures in stories–for instance, just about all governmental hearings were illustrated just with basic headshots. It’s genuinely very sad.
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Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising billionaires.
As usual, Timothy Snyder puts it better than most.
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Tim Miller interviewed Marty Baron (former executive editor of the Washington Post) on the Bulwark yesterday. Very interesting.
https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/the-bulwark-podcast/id1447684472?i=1000748426942
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Bjarte @7: How is it possible that I missed that video? I’ll be thrown out of the Timothy Snyder fan club for sure, having missed that one.
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Harald #5. This may have originally have been specifically targetted at Larry Ellison: https://simonwillison.net/2024/Sep/17/bryan-cantrill/
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Good find, thanks!
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