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‘Americans Don’t Trust The News Media’: Bezos Speaks Out After WaPo Chose Not To Endorse Harris

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4 minute read

From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

 

By Mariane Angela

Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos said Monday that the Post’s decision not to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris is in response to a larger issue of media credibility being eroded.

Bezos pointed to the recent surveys on trust and public reputation, with media institutions consistently ranking near the bottom, in the article titled “The Hard Truth: Americans Don’t Trust the News Media,” published in the opinion section of the Post. This year, however, Gallup reports an even more dire verdict that journalism now holds the lowest spot in American trust, with Bezos arguing media credibility has eroded not only because of perceived biases but also due to an industry tendency to ignore public perception.

Bezos further explained that the most recent backlash surrounding the Post’s decision not to endorse Harris only highlights a growing issue that trust in the press depends on two pillars — the coverage being accurate, and it must be broadly trusted to be accurate. The choice not to endorse provoked outrage across liberal circles, but as Bezos stated in a rare public response, the decision is rooted not in partisanship but in a commitment to genuine independence.

“Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, ‘I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.’ None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one,” Bezos wrote.

Bezos acknowledged that this choice might appear strategically timed to favor one candidate over another, especially given a coincidental meeting between a top executive from Blue Origin, a company which Bezos also owns, and former President Donald Trump on the same day.

“I would also like to be clear that no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here. Neither campaign nor candidate was consulted or informed at any level or in any way about this decision,” he wrote to clarify that the decision was made internally.

Even so, Bezos is acutely aware of the larger challenges facing his newspaper and the industry at large, as the media’s credibility problem is neither isolated nor new. “Increasingly, we talk only to a certain elite,” Bezos reflected, contrasting today’s diminished public reach to the 80% household penetration WaPo achieved in the D.C. metro area during the 1990s.

“Now more than ever the world needs a credible, trusted, independent voice, and where better for that voice to originate than the capital city of the most important country in the world? To win this fight, we will have to exercise new muscles,” Bezos added.

WaPo reportedly saw a drop of over 200,000 subscriptions after CEO and Publisher William Lewis announced that, for the first time in decades, the paper’s editorial board will not endorse a presidential candidate, NPR reported. Following the decision, several staff members who supported Harris reportedly resigned in protest.

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Focal Points

Trump Walks Back His Tomahawk Tease from Zelensky

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FOCAL POINTS (Courageous Discourse)

By John Leake

The President meets with the Ukrainian dictator but prudently declines to give him the long range missiles he seeks.

Yesterday, after seeing reports of Zelensky meeting with Raytheon executives before his scheduled meeting with President Trump at the White House, I wrote an essay expressing my dismay at how the President has—since he entered office eight months ago—walked back his campaign promise to end the war in Ukraine. Instead, he has recently made statements suggesting a willingness to escalate the war, most notably by giving Ukraine long range missiles that can be armed with nuclear warheads.

Some of my readers objected to my suggestion that the U.S. government’s relationship with Ukraine is now so corrupt that Zelensky could get the missiles he seeks without following proper legal procedures. They should consider that the U.S. government has sent billions of money and weapons to Ukraine—long ruled by a money-laundering oligarchy —without any accounting.

Now comes the news that President Trump walked back his Tomahawk tease in his meeting with Zelensky. As he put it:

That is why we are here. Tomahawks are very dangerous… It could mean escalation – a lot of bad things could happen. Hopefully we will be able to get this war over with without thinking about Tomahawks. I think we are pretty close to that.

We thank President Trump for his prudence and we hope he will continue on the same path of prudence.

Yesterday, our NATO partner Poland allowed the alleged Ukrainian lead perpetrator of the Nord Stream pipeline bombing to walk free. Such is the fantastically corrupt world in which we are now living.

The war in Ukraine is yet another species of globalist, criminal humbug that in no way serves the interests of the American people. Consider that, while we constantly hear about the “existential threat” of climate change from carbon emissions, there has been no talk in the media—including the hysterical “climate change” German media—about the fact that the Nord Stream sabotage released between 150 million and 300 million cubic meters of gas—the equivalent to roughly 5.3 to 11 billion cubic feet.

This was the largest single industrial release of natural gas, which is largely composed of methane, widely characterized as a potent “greenhouse gas.” Bill Gates is always prattling on about the need to get rid of cattle because the ruminants release methane. I haven’t heard him say a word about Nord Stream.

If I were President Trump, I would tell Zelensky the following:

1). You and your predecessors should have never listened to the idiot U.S. foreign policy establishment of my predecessors—an establishment that has ruined every country it has touched since Vietnam. Every single blowhard Neocon foreign policy wonk in this city is a total retard.

2). I am going to use my executive power—provided by the U.S. Constitution—to end the reckless and criminal foreign policies of my predecessors, including their insane policies with respect to Russia and Ukraine since the Cold War ended in 1991.

3). The United States has always maintained elections, even in wartime, and I was elected to end U.S. involvement in your war against Russia.

4). The American people I represent have no quarrel with the Russian people, and they therefore object to American weapons being used to kill Russians. To give you long range missiles to use against Russia would significantly elevate the risk of the Russians eventually using their long range missiles to strike American targets.

5). I am bound by my oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution to serve the American people, and not the interests of warring parties 5,000 miles away, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

6). I will assist you in peace negotiations with the Russians, but I will not escalate this conflict in a gambit to extract better concessions from Russia. Such an escalation will only result in more needless death and destruction, and it risks spinning out of control—a scenario deemed to be unacceptably risky during the Cold War.

7). I intend to inaugurate a new era of friendship and cooperation between the U.S. and Russia, based on the interests of our people, and not the U.S. national security state and Military Industrial Complex that President Eisenhower warned about in 1961. This Establishment has doggedly maintained a state of enmity with Russia for its own selfish interests.

8). I will offer Russia numerous incentives to give Ukraine a fair deal in peace negotiations, but effective immediately, I am terminating all military aid to Ukraine, as well as all military intelligence and targeting assistance.

9). Here’s a $7,000 cash gift from me to you as private pals. Please stop by Anderson & Sheppard tailor in London on your way back to Kiev and get fitted for a suit. You look ridiculous in that silly outfit and you’ll need a suit for our Budapest summit with Vladimir.

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International

Poland’s president signs new zero income tax law for parents with two children


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From LifeSiteNews

By Emily Mangiaracina

Polish president Karol Nawrocki presented the new law as a way to help families financially and encourage a higher birth rate.

Poland’s president has signed into law the cancellation of personal income tax for parents who are raising two or more children, in an effort to support and encourage families and boost the economy.

The newly enacted bill removes the income tax obligation for families earning up to 140,000 zloty (€32,973, or $38,486) a year. The average Polish family is expected to keep in pocket an extra 1,000 zloty (€235 or $274) per month as a result of the tax break.

Polish president Karol Nawrocki, who was sworn into office in August, presented the bill before it was approved by Parliament as a means to financially help families as well as encourage a sustainable birth rate in a country suffering, like most others, from birth rate decline.

“Financial resources must be found for Polish families,” said Nawrocki while presenting the bill. He highlighted the fact that Poland is suffering from a birth rate crisis. Last year, the number of births in Poland fell to a new low. Poland’s birth rate is one of the lowest in the world, at 1.1 by 2024, far below replacement rate. Only eight countries have a birth rate lower than Poland’s according to the Population Reference Bureau.

Public consultations about the law before its passage found that the tax break is very popular among Poles. About 76 percent of respondents said the law was “definitely needed,” and only 16 percent were strongly opposed to the bill, EuroNews reported.

Demography experts such as data analyst Stephen Shaw, the creator of the documentary “Birthgap,” are skeptical about whether economic incentives can reverse the trend of population decline. He has noted that even the Roman Empire, in its later stages, enacted policies aimed at increasing birth rates, including taxing the childless.

According to Shaw, “No society in history has been known to come out of” the “spiral” of population decline.

In his film “Birthgap,” he has documented how declining birth rates in the U.S. and around the world are being driven by an “explosion” in childlessness as opposed to smaller family sizes.

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