Elephants and Jackasses...

How do these things actually happen? Like how can they fuck up just so badly?

 

Quite simple the first two versions of the headline pissed of one side or the other... angry people shared the article because they were so outraged everyone had to see what the crazy media was doing. Now they got tons of clicks from both side which equals more ad revenue.... Now that everyone is stirred up settle in on a normal headline (which will probably drive more views from people going to see if they really did change the headline.

 

It has nothing to do with him being killed... Just basic click bait meant to piss people of and drive clicks. One headlines meant to piss off the right wing people who will be pissed if he is labeled anything short of the devil and the left wing who will see this as some sort of anti islamic headline that will hurt someone's feelings.

Judging by the discussion it has stirred here and likely the number of people clicking to see this headline the plan is working

 

I don’t think anyone is okay with the headline calling him a scholar regardless of political leanings. It feels pretty universally rejected.

 

You are missing the point though... that headline was meant to piss of the right wing and generate outrage from them not to get people to agree that he was some quiet religious scholar.
Neither headline was designed to generate agreement. They were both meant to piss people off and through that generate engagement which equals clicks. More clicks equals more $$$$.
They throw out a ridiculous headline to piss off one side not to get the other side to agree. They then turn around and change it to the other extreme to piss off the other side... this way both sides are outraged and engaged with this story and it generates more clicks than if they had started off with the reasonable headline they ended up with.

 

The Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos (aka Lex Luthor). They would never fuck around stories and headlines for profit, would they?

 

Honestly probably not. Bezos is so god damn rich there's no way he bought a newspaper of all things for its cash cow potential. He bought it for the prestige.

 

I'm not saying there's no agenda, just that the agenda probably isn't "let's try to squeeze a few cents out of a legacy newspaper operation." They have warehouse workers who piss in bottles for that.

 

Bezos is mostly left leaning, libertarian on economics of course because he's stupidly rich, but I don't think he has much of a hands on role as far as WAPO's reporting goes. They noticeably tread softly when Amazon creeps into the news, but that's about it. Whatever agenda WAPO promotes is the editors' agenda. Doubt Bezos actually factors in much. The only changes he's really made is improved functionality for their website.

Besides, when he wants to influence politics he does it the old fashioned way. No need to go through a publication.

 

What comes off as disingenuous about that statement is that the same can be said of every single newsletter, memo, newspaper, journal, magazine, flyer, carved hunk of stone, etc., since long before the invention of the printing press. Some of those are historically and internationally known and respected for quality journalism over generations. The Washington Post is one of those newspapers, regardless of their absurd comic book owner. Like every newspaper of reputation (and in fact every newspaper of ill repute, as well), their editors choose the facts of import to report. It turns out that educated readers and scholars from all over the world have deemed those decisions to be pretty regularly spot fucking on over a very long stretch of time.

History has shown that "facts have a liberal bias," and the "fake news" gang has totally normalized a statement accusing the Post of some "predisposition" as though that wasn't a natural and universal occurrence in every single outlet for information in the history of humanity.

Señor Data: I want to edit because I know you said this:
"They ALL have an agenda... even if it's just the decision about what story to run with.

Their reporting is pretty fair, in my opinion, but what they report on is definitely filtered a bit."

So just so I'm being clear - obviously you know and even agree with what I'm saying above, it's that feeling that it's normal to throw in that "well, but it is filtered a bit" thing that should catch our ears. What we need to do a better job of is recognizing the difference between bias that exists everywhere, and bias that literally changes the story being reported.

 

I make it a point to skip the editorial pages. For the NYTimes, too. I wonder if that gives me a different impression - I do watch BBC news, and I find it pretty similar to the Post and the Times.

 

Call me a fake news guy, but I would say it's more than "a bit" filtered. When they fact check progressives their reporting is often sparse on facts, and is a mess of misinformation. When they're caught they don't retract. I don't think opinion articles need to be held to the same standard as other reporting, but that leeway should stop well short of publishing outright lies.

True enough that they're still well respected. Proof of that is in the Pulitzer they won last year for their Russia gate coverage. The committee described it as "relentless reporting", which it certainly was, among other things.

They are very set in their beliefs of promoting a neoliberal perspective, and the facts are often quite malleable in working towards that goal.

I'm throwing out examples of WAPO at their worst, but on a given day the role of "public informer" still takes a backseat to promoting the establishment democrat zeitgeist. When are they not in lock step with this? I can't see them as being a publication that applies the same standards as the WAPO that originally built their reputation.

 

Just so you know, if I honestly thought someone was a fake news guy, I wouldn't bother to respond. It's not a conversation I'm interested in having.

Here's the funny thing - I agree with everything you've said. It's complicated, and the complexities can be really subtle. I'm what we're currently calling a "progressive," but I'm also a cynic, and genuinely seeking whatever change/growth I can get. So I sometimes find myself defending a neoliberal position, even though in a more nuanced conversation I'm horrified by it. For example, I voted for Hillary (more on that in a minute) rather than accept what we're currently living through, but only after first voting for Sanders.

Yes, WAPO is a mainstream neoliberal perspective these days, and agreed, not the same paper that broke Watergate. But post-Reagan, Democrats have largely been this bullshit "socially liberal economically conservative" (which is a thing that doesn't actually exist) in response to Republican spending, nationalism, and classism. It ain't really much different, but it's less cruel and it's far more economically responsible. And each time the GOP moves further right, the Democrats go scurrying to the new center. So even as we watch people like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez gain traction and people slowly take their (frankly, fairly centrist) positions more seriously, the "establishment Democrat zeitgeist" is all we've had in opposition to a GOP which grows more irresponsible, more racist, more corrupt by the day. For me, I'll take the Democrat and fight them for further progress, versus what we have now.

So what am I babbling about and what does it have to do with defending WAPO? This conversation started about a USAToday headline, and DangerBoy made a snarky comment about WAPO (I didn't really understand that jump, but okay), which led to a flurry of comments culminating in Dr Data's "they're good, but they have an agenda" post. That perks up my ears - because every news source has an agenda (let's keep it here in the States for the purpose of this conversation, maybe?), and yet it's not nearly so common to say that about the Wall St. Journal. More importantly, it's become the knee-jerk response to anything said or done by anyone with even the vaguest "not Republican" viewpoint. Pointing out an "agenda" in that way feels very much like our new reality of right wing talking points, playing this really fucking dangerous game in which only the opposition is expected to be responsible. And it's become so normal and common to expect so much more from the liberal perspective that they're eating themselves and often completely ineffective against what should be a slam dunk "all you have to do is outplay someone who is blatantly corrupt, criminal, insane, and stupid as a fucking stone, to boot."

I was going to return to Hillary and make a comment, but maybe I'll do that another time. I have a thought about her Gabbard comments that is likely to raise a little shitstorm, and I really gotta close this browser and go to sleep. I'd rather watch the world burn than set the fire and wander off.

 

In my not as cynical opinion, I think it's more nuanced than that. I think that the whole point of the press is to be as objective as possible and let the reader form an opinion themselves. The problem is that human beings are fallible and no matter how mindful people are, their own biases show up. In some cases, these biases are not repressed, but amplified. When a newspaper endorses a candidate, it is my fervent hope that they endorse a candidate that would serve the community in which their readers live. However, I am not naive enough to believe that this is the case 100% of the time.

Let me put it this way. I have a lot more faith in the actual press like Reuters, AP and my local news being objective than I do with any corporation like Fox, CNN and MSNBC.