The Spark

the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist

“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx

Whose Side Are They On?

Oct 28, 2024

The head of The Washington Post newspaper just joined the head of the Los Angeles Times in refusing to endorse the Democratic Party nominee for president. Since both papers are considered “liberal media,” this decision has shocked some journalists and others who pay attention to these newspapers.

It is also a way for these rich owners, Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon and Blue Origins, a space project, or Patrick Soon-Shiong, a biotech billionaire in California, to hedge their bets, since Harris and Trump are running neck and neck in the polls. If Trump wins, then these papers will be able to argue they were not biased, as Trump has repeatedly said their newspapers are against him.

With rare exceptions, The Washington Post has endorsed Democratic candidates for decades and decades and decades. The last Republican they endorsed was Eisenhower and that was 70 years ago. In the meantime, the so-called liberal Washington Post managed to ignore the civil rights movement until they couldn’t. They ignored going against the Viet Nam war right up until the Pentagon papers were published in The New York Times. They ignored the vitriol that Senator McCarthy threw at federal government workers until Eisenhower decided enough was enough.

The Washington Post, The L.A. Times or The New York Times, the most important newspapers in the United States, are liberal when it suits the times. Right now they support a woman’s right to choose whether or not to have an abortion. How supportive were they when thousands of women had illegal abortions prior to 1972? Not very.

If they don’t want to endorse the Democrats this year, it’s because it’s certainly possible the Republicans will win, it’s all about the benjamins, that is, MONEY. How many contracts does Amazon have with the U.S. government and its branches? Amazon, owned by Bezos, delivers for the U.S. postal service. Does Blue Origin get direct research money from the federal government or from DARPA, also run by the U.S. military? Didn’t Soon-Shiong get contracts or doesn’t he expect in the future to get contracts from NIH, the branch of the government doing biotech research? What about Mr. Billionaire Musk, who endorses Trump? Will SpaceX, his company, continue to dominate the war in Ukraine with lovely profitable government contracts?

It’s about money, with the elections, as with everything else. What the population wants and needs is not what the media covers, 99% of the time.