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Jeff Bezos is muzzling the Washington Post’s opinion section. That’s a death knell.
(www.theguardian.com)
right-wing hypocrisy is so common that pointing it out is a cliche, but I still think it's important to highlight here
in 2020, the NYT published an op-ed from Tom Cotton saying Trump should send in the military against the protests after George Floyd's murder
it caused a huge and predictable backlash, and the editorial editor published a defense of why they did it
We published Cotton’s argument in part because we’ve committed to Times readers to provide a debate on important questions like this. It would undermine the integrity and independence of The New York Times if we only published views that editors like me agreed with, and it would betray what I think of as our fundamental purpose — not to tell you what to think, but to help you think for yourself.
this was always the excuse for platforming the right-wing in supposedly "liberal" newspapers. we need to listen to different viewpoints. have the debate. teach the controversy. marketplace of ideas. if you don't like it, then you're "close-minded" or live in an "echo chamber" or whatever.
(the NYT's long history of publishing transphobic bullshit comes to mind as well)
but then the ratchet clicks one notch tighter, and you have Bezos announcing that they will only publish op-eds that are in favor of "personal liberties and free markets". they won't publish competing viewpoints, because you can always find those elsewhere on the internet.
this argument would have applied equally in 2020, of course. Tom Cotton was a sitting Senator. he can publish his opinions on his Senate website, he can easily hold press conferences, etc. there was no need for the NYT to publish it.
when it's a supposedly "liberal" newspaper, they claim they have an obligation to also publish the "respectable" conservative voices. but when a paper decides to be explicitly right-wing, they don't even pay lip service to claiming they're publishing "both sides".
