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Speaker 1: It kind of odd. I thought that it took Jeff

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Speaker 1: Bezos to explain what I would have thought was the

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Speaker 1: bleeding obvious. So there is, as if you were listening

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Speaker 1: to Richard Arnold earlier, a to do in the US

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Speaker 1: election among the elites over a couple of newspapers not

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Speaker 1: endorsing a candidate. Now this is a very American thing.

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Speaker 1: We don't do it here, Thank god, we're very wise

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Speaker 1: not to. It started with the Los Angeles Times, who

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Speaker 1: decided no endorsement would be made. This led to one

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Speaker 1: of the editorial board quitting and a lot of whining.

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Speaker 1: Then came the Washington Post, this is the paper Bezos owns.

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Speaker 1: The editor said it was their call not to endorse.

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Speaker 1: This was disputed, several board members walked in, allegedly a

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Speaker 1: couple of one hundred thousand subscribers as of yesterday quit

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Speaker 1: the paper. And to Bezos, who wrote a couple of

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Speaker 1: self explanatory things. Firstly, he wished that no endorsement move

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Speaker 1: had come earlier, not in the heat of the battle.

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Speaker 1: He then pointed out, quite correctly, not a single undecided

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Speaker 1: voter ever anywhere had their mind made up by a newspaper.

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Speaker 1: And then most importantly of all, he suggested, once again

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Speaker 1: quite correctly, the media is not trusted by the American public.

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Speaker 1: In wandering around pretending to be neutral while endorsing peer

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Speaker 1: people is not going to help their reputation. Not surprisingly,

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Speaker 1: both papers were going to endorse Harris, of course, and

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Speaker 1: whether from a point of view of true balance or not,

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Speaker 1: a media already seemed to be hopelessly left leaning and

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Speaker 1: in the Democrats pocket, was not going to tilt the

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Speaker 1: balance their way by further enhancing the reputation as anti Trump.

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Speaker 1: The endorsement business comes, of course from a different age,

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Speaker 1: an age when paper is actually matted. Some still do,

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Speaker 1: but not many, and as the media is diluted, it

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Speaker 1: matters less and less. The problem with the problem, of course,

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Speaker 1: is those in the middle of it still clearly suffer

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Speaker 1: from another age old problem of the media. Too many

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Speaker 1: take themselves too seriously. I bet many of them actually

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Speaker 1: believe that people don't make up their mind until they're

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Speaker 1: told to. Many of them will think an endorsement swings

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Speaker 1: the race or moves the needle. Many of them will

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Speaker 1: think that Abezos as owner really doesn't get to make

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Speaker 1: the calls when guess what he does the upside might

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Speaker 1: just be that a tired old habit ie endorsement by

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Speaker 1: news paper might just have died in the race of

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Speaker 1: twenty four. For more from the mic Asking Breakfast listen

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Speaker 1: live to News Talks it B from six am weekdays,

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Speaker 1: or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio