[DenisM]

That's not how editorial pressure works. Chomsky detailed it quite well, but in a few words:

The advertisers react to "wrong" coverage by withdrawing support, the chief editor is very attuned so he assigns the right people to the right jobs before trouble starts, and the journalists so assigned naturally work quite sincerely. No actual orders to publish or withdraw articles need to happen.

[ethbr0]

Unfalsifiable conspiracies are my favorite kind!

There's got to be a natural law that, for any given situation, one can compose a scheme whereby no proof of anything would actually exist, but evil would still be done.

[DenisM]

I believe the term you're looking for is "plausible deniability".

[srean]

That's not unfalsifiable. A verifiable leak will suffice. Perhaps what you meant is "what has not been falsified yet"

[ethbr0]

> The advertisers react to "wrong" coverage by withdrawing support

Easily attributable to business decisions / climate.

> the chief editor is very attuned so he assigns the right people to the right jobs before trouble starts

Staff assignment as a smoking gun? That's going to be a stretch.

> and the journalists so assigned naturally work quite sincerely

Indeed, just people doing their jobs.

Who, pray tell, is going to leak what?

[uoaei]

I invite you to consider Hannah Arendt's words on institutional pressures driving unethical patterns of behavior. These she referred to as "the rule of Nobody" and also "the banality of evil".

In this frame, "business decisions / climate" are exactly the driving forces which perpetuate such structures and outcomes.

[ethbr0]

Business decisions and climate are also the driving forces behind literally everything a company does.

The banality of evil doesn't forgive laziness in the construction of hypotheses, unless you're Fox News.

To spell it out, what leak / disclosure would constitute proof of GP's belief? A memo from the WaPo editorial staff which says "Pursuant to Mr. Bezo's comments on X, please assign Y to story Z, so that reporting will be more favorable"?

And barring a plausible method of provability / falsifiability, we're in "just asking the question" rumor territory with regards to the original assertions of malice. Which, personally, seems below the level of discourse I expect from HN.

[boomboomsubban]

>Business decisions and climate are also the driving forces behind literally everything a company does.

This is the extent of the "conspiracy" in Chomsky's opinion. When things like the Amazon firing of a union organizer happen, the reporter set to cover it is going to have more connections to the corporate side and a be accustomed to writing stories that will please corporate sponsors.

If a reporter is overly critical, the story will likely get a less favorable placement and that reporter won't get similar assignments in the future. There is no overt conspiracy, but there is editorial pressure.