OK, fine — but WHY are they just doing it NOW?

Bezos explains why WaPo dropped presidential endorsements

Backing specific candidates reinforces a sense of bias in the media, the newspaper owner has claimed

The Washington Post has abandoned its decades-long tradition of endorsing a US presidential candidate to earn back the trust of the American public, the newspaper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, has said. The billionaire explained his reasoning in an op-ed published by the Post on Monday after facing a backlash from current and former staff.

The newspaper had endorsed candidates since 1976, but announced the suspension of the practice on Friday, prompting several editors to resign. The Post’s editorial board endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. According to CNN, the newspaper’s staffers had drafted an endorsement of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris ahead of the election next month, but it was ultimately not approved by the management.

Bezos began his op-ed by citing a recent Gallup poll, which found that nearly 70% of Americans have little or no trust in the media. “Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working,” the entrepreneur wrote, adding that “most people believe the media is biased.”

“Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election,” he continued. “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.”

The founder of Amazon and aerospace manufacturer Blue Origin admitted that the decision to drop endorsements so close to Election Day on November 5 was the result of “inadequate planning.” At the same time, he insisted that neither campaign had affected his decision-making, and that the move to abandon endorsements was not connected to last week’s meeting between Republican candidate Donald Trump and top Blue Origin executives in Austin, Texas.

A total of 21 of the Post’s opinion columnists signed a statement describing the non-endorsement as “a terrible mistake.” They argued that “this isn’t the right moment, when one candidate is advocating positions that directly threaten freedom of the press and the values of the Constitution.”

Three of the newspaper’s ten-person editorial board have since stepped down. More than 200,000 people – or about 8% of the Post’s paid subscribers – had canceled their digital subscription by midday on Monday, according to NPR. The decision to end endorsements was criticized by many prominent journalists, including the Post’s former longtime executive editor Marty Baron.

Last month, Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong announced that the newspaper would also not be making presidential endorsements. The move faced a similar backlash, with editorials editor Mariel Garza resigning in protest.

Throughout his campaign, Trump has blasted “the lying media” for what he said was a long history of unfair coverage of him and his time in office. The Harris campaign and allies have similarly accused pro-Trump media outlets of amplifying “disinformation.”

https://www.rt.com/news/606657-bezos-explain-wapo-non-endorsement/

Trust in US news media hits record low – poll

Only 31% of Americans say they have confidence that the press reports news fairly and accurately

Less than a third of Americans trust US news media, a record low figure, according to a new Gallup poll published Monday.

This year’s poll showed a 1 percentage point drop of Americans who believe the media reports the news fully and accurately from last year. The trend has been on a downward trajectory since 2018.

For the third consecutive year, the number of Americans who claim to completely distrust the media remained higher than those who trust it. The new poll, however, demonstrated a slight drop, with 36% of respondents expressing complete distrust versus 39% in 2023.

Meanwhile, those having “not very much” confidence in the media grew to reach 33% this year.

A large gap remains between Republicans and Democrats, with only 12% of the former expressing trust in media reporting against 54% of the latter. However, the partisan gap has actually been narrowing in the last couple of years. According to data aggregated by Gallup, in 2022, for instance, some 70% of Democrats expressed confidence in the media.

The pollster sampled 1,007 adult Americans living across the country. The survey was conducted over the first two weeks of September via phone interviews. Respondents were picked randomly for the survey.

Gallup first asked Americans the question back in 1972 and has conducted the media trust poll on an almost yearly basis since 1997. While in the 1970s, the trust rate hovered around the 70% mark, it had deteriorated to around 55% by the late 1990s, and has continued to drop over the past two decades.

https://www.rt.com/news/605764-us-media-trust-drops/

Yer talkin to a bot!

Majority of social media users unable to identify AI – report

Growing use of artificial intelligence is outpacing media literacy, a report in Australia has found

Adult media literacy is not keeping pace with the rapid advancement of generative artificial intelligence (AI), according to research published in Australia on Monday. The trend is leaving internet users increasingly vulnerable to misinformation, the authors of the research have warned.

The AI industry exploded in 2022 after the launch of chatbot and virtual assistant ChatGPT by US AI research organization OpenAI. The sector has since attracted billions of dollars in investment, with tech giants such as Google and Microsoft offering tools such as image and text generators.

However, users' confidence in their own digital media abilities remains low, according to the ‘Adult Media Literacy in 2024’ paper by Western Sydney University.

In a sample of 4,442 adult Australians, respondents were asked how confident they were to perform a series of 11 media-related tasks that required critical and technical abilities and/or knowledge. On average, respondents said they could complete just four out of the 11 tasks with confidence.

The results are “largely unchanged” since 2021, when previous research was conducted, the paper noted.

The ability to identify misinformation online has not changed at all, as per research data. In 2021 and in 2024, only 39% of responders said they were confident they could check if information they found online is true.

The recent integration of generative AI into online environments makes it “even more difficult for citizens to know who or what to trust online,” the report stated.

The slow growth in media literacy is particularly concerning given the ability of generative AI tools to produce high-quality deepfakes and misinformation, according to associate professor and research author Tanya Notley, as cited by the Decrypt media company.

“It’s getting harder and harder to identify where AI has been used. It’s going to be used in more sophisticated ways to manipulate people with disinformation, and we can already see that happening,” she warned.

Combatting this requires regulation, although this is happening slowly, Notley said.

READ MORE: Meta to flag AI-generated content

Last week, the US Senate passed a bill designed to protect individuals from the non-consensual use of their likeness in AI-generated pornographic content. The bill was adopted following a scandal involving deepfake pornographic images of US pop singer Taylor Swift that spread through social media earlier this year.

Australians now favor online content as their source for news and information as opposed to television and print newspapers, the report noted, adding that this represents a “milestone in the way in which Australians are consuming media.”

https://www.rt.com/news/602794-ai-research-australia-deepfake/

>>21853810

right

makes a lot more sense than believing a lying crook who says he is trying to do "the right thing"

>>21854000

and

>>21854023

second

>>21854011

>>21854026

second

This woman has never voted in a Presidential Election other than for Donald Trump in 2020

While reviewing her voting history it seems Democrats have been voting for her in the last 3 elections