I'm not sure it is as simple as all that.
Trump does have his own power and I don't think Musk and the other Techbro oligarchs can assume they have complete control of all the factions involved right now.
Bezos makes it clear he is on board for the New Gilded Age
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Trump does have his own power and I don't think Musk and the other Techbro oligarchs can assume they have complete control of all the factions involved right now.
You forgot one thing about the liberals...when the wind doesn't blow their way... they act like children and throw fits...common sense go out the window and they keep making threads just to honey dick each other until they eventually calm down and cope...watch them make another thread after this...
In some ways this is the major problem. Most news media outlets ran at a loss and were considered a public service to be subsidized. Although in war they were happy to become propaganda outlets. TV and radio made up for it with revenue from entertainment sources and divisions.
Newspapers would sell craploads of advertising, add tons of flyers etc as well. But the investigative arms and editorial arms were seperate entities.
Now however advertisers started to purposefully advertise on news casts to control content. A big example is big pharma after the Tylenol scare and several lawsuits they started to heavily advertise there to get them to direct their resources elsewhere. Add in the concentration of media ownership and suddenly you have censorship in favor of corporations.
In this case it's about influence on Washington, propaganda in favor of his interests. And losses are relative. It's a write off for him.
And there was also the idea of a neutral newswire and so on.
Notice I said "brought it back".. the conscious choice to move away from biased news reporting and project a myth of "objective news" was largely a business decision.
Yes, we agree.
And it was Fox news that showed the way with this, taking an explicitly partisan stance rather than just the generic "we have 24 hours to fill" vapidity that had already been creeping in.
But more importantly, it allows the echo chamber effect to be much more pronounced.
It also has no pretense of being about journalism.
There isn't even the tribute vice pays to virtue going on for much of it.
Since these aren't news programs, they don't even have to pretend to be about reporting anything honestly.
Yes.
This is confirmation bias and is WHY that business model is so successful.
Newspapers and TV news only ever abandoned it under narrow circumstances.
Perhaps you are saying this, but newspapers were relatively self-sufficient. Again, the Washington Post's print days are numbered. Nobody is killing the WaPo's voice. It's dying a natural death.
TV and radio news was subsidized by the entertainment division. In recent decades, legacy network's news magazines inspired by the success of 60 minutes have done well.
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You are misremembering.I seem to remember Forbes and other outlets reporting many more billionaires financially supported Harris.
Perhaps you can wear a t-shirt "These Are Not My Oligarchs".
At a certain point, more billionaires had publicly endorsed Harris.
Even Forbes admitted it had no idea whether more supported her financially, since many kept silent.
Since then we have some reporting (obviously dark money makes it more complicated).
Slightly more people who gave over 100,000 gave to Democrats.
Donor Demographics
Just a small percentage of the United State population contribute more than two hundred dollars to federal candidates, PACs, parties and outside groups. These donors give a hefty percent of all contributions. See the details.
www.opensecrets.org
The actual money totals for the two sides comes out pretty even.
Note, btw, that this is to the parties across all the elections, not just for President.
If you just go to "people who gave the most money, who did they give it to", then it becomes pretty solidly Republicans who got the money from the whales.
Who are the Biggest Donors?
Who are the biggest donors in the 2024 election cycle? See the details.
www.opensecrets.org
Again, that's by party, not just to Presidential campaign.
SuperPACs complicate the matter, because we don't get to know who contributes to them.
The WaPo is a centrist paper and one tied very much to Washington politics.
It supports a quite specific section of the Democratic coalition.
Yes, even in that infamous chart, it basically shows up as centrist.The WaPo is also deemed to skewed left on the political spectrum. Are they liberal enough for you? Maybe not.
Research Guides: News Media Across the Political Spectrum: Starting Point: 1. "The Chart"
A Selection of Resources for Social Studies 98wc, Spring 2024guides.library.harvard.edu
At the end of October, Forbes found more billionaires financially supported Harris.You are misremembering.
At a certain point, more billionaires had publicly endorsed Harris.
Even Forbes admitted it had no idea whether more supported her financially, since many kept silent.
Since then we have some reporting (obviously dark money makes it more complicated).
Slightly more people who gave over 100,000 gave to Democrats.
Donor Demographics
Just a small percentage of the United State population contribute more than two hundred dollars to federal candidates, PACs, parties and outside groups. These donors give a hefty percent of all contributions. See the details.
The actual money totals for the two sides comes out pretty even.
Note, btw, that this is to the parties across all the elections, not just for President.
If you just go to "people who gave the most money, who did they give it to", then it becomes pretty solidly Republicans who got the money from the whales.
Who are the Biggest Donors?
Who are the biggest donors in the 2024 election cycle? See the details.
Again, that's by party, not just to Presidential campaign.
SuperPACs complicate the matter, because we don't get to know who contributes to them.
Kamala Harris Has More Billionaires Prominently Backing Her Than Trump—Jeff Bezos, Ken Griffin Weigh In (Updated)
"Even though I have plenty of disagreements with their platform...I am voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz," Schwarzenegger, the former Republican governor of California, wrote Wednesday.
www.forbes.com
All other things you said are basically true. There is too much money in politics. However, both Harris and Trump has plenty of money and I don't think it changed the outcome.
I think that's your progressive bias. I'm not sure any widespread media outlet could survive on appealing to progressives alone.
Bezos can do whatever he wants with his paper.
That's the point of buying one.
He clearly thinks making this move now is to his benefit.
It's not like he is a journalist or believes in journalism or objective news or anything.
He bought the paper for his own reasons and it was never his primary concern.
It was just a perk of being rich.
I don't think most newspapers were run at a loss until maybe recently.
At some point that probably became true, especially as they became parts of media groups of some kind.
Television and Radio news absolutely were run at a loss, though. That's very true.
This is what I mean about they weren't run at a loss. They had circulation money and ad money and that worked for them until the ad money massively dried up.
Sorry I will clarify. Newspapers did make money, even small town ones, due to flyers, Wednesday and Weekend inserts, cash boxes/retail sales and home delivery. Obviously internet killed them. Banner ads just couldn't make up the physical sales loses.
The subsidized media was TV mainly. Networks took a loss as a public service(and on corporate ledgers that wasn't a bad thing).
I either misremembered or they added in money later. (Since they were updating continuously.)At the end of October, Forbes found more billionaires financially supported Harris.
Kamala Harris Has More Billionaires Prominently Backing Her Than Trump—Jeff Bezos, Ken Griffin Weigh In (Updated)
"Even though I have plenty of disagreements with their platform...I am voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz," Schwarzenegger, the former Republican governor of California, wrote Wednesday.
Fair enough.
Weird they never did the obvious follow-up piece though, since they even comment they won't know the real numbers until the FEC filings in December.
You would think they would have done an update about how it played out in the end.
(I suppose if one had the list of all 700 or so billionaires and proper time on open secrets, you could figure it out.)
There is a limit on how much money can shift things, absolutely.
There is clearly a law of diminishing returns there.
Also, lots of help is less quantifiable. (Musk's control of X and so on.)
No.
I wouldn't expect something like the Washington Post or the New York Times to be anything other than vaguely centrist.
But it sounds like you are romanticizing places like Vietnam, where a journalist was just sentenced 6 months for an article critical of the government.
Also like Russia.
Why would you want that?
Which is what we see more of here, DoFo is killing the per vote subsidy, or lowering it massively. That means parties have to rely on donors, not voters.You are misremembering.
At a certain point, more billionaires had publicly endorsed Harris.
Even Forbes admitted it had no idea whether more supported her financially, since many kept silent.
Since then we have some reporting (obviously dark money makes it more complicated).
Slightly more people who gave over 100,000 gave to Democrats.
Donor Demographics
Just a small percentage of the United State population contribute more than two hundred dollars to federal candidates, PACs, parties and outside groups. These donors give a hefty percent of all contributions. See the details.
The actual money totals for the two sides comes out pretty even.
Note, btw, that this is to the parties across all the elections, not just for President.
If you just go to "people who gave the most money, who did they give it to", then it becomes pretty solidly Republicans who got the money from the whales.
Who are the Biggest Donors?
Who are the biggest donors in the 2024 election cycle? See the details.
Again, that's by party, not just to Presidential campaign.
SuperPACs complicate the matter, because we don't get to know who contributes to them.
It used to be that the difference in funding for campaigns wasn't as massively different.
We really should return to that.
So the answer to losing money is to stop reporting on politics? That's just what the fascist Trump wants. If we all get our info from internet liars connected to Trump, it would make the killing of democracy much easier. I guess you want that too?
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