Following the departure of hundreds of thousands of subscribers to The Washington Post after the publication said it wouldn’t be endorsing a presidential candidate in this year’s election, billionaire Jeff Bezos, who owns the paper, penned an op-ed seeking to justify the decision, dubiously claiming that it had nothing to do with him or his business conflicts of interest.
The missive from Bezos, published on Monday evening, did little to alleviate the concerns of readers — and prompted some who hadn’t yet canceled their subscriptions to do so.
Bezos noted in his op-ed that the public’s trust in the media is at an all-time low, and said the paper was “failing” at “being believed to be accurate” by some readers. Newspapers’ presidential endorsements, he claimed, played a role in this problem, as they “create a perception of bias” in the paper’s reporting — even though The Post is known for keeping its opinion section completely separate from its news divisions.
“Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one,” Bezos said, adding that ending The Post’s decades-long tradition of endorsements was a “step in the right direction” toward restoring trust with readers.
Bezos went on to demand that readers of his op-ed put complete trust in him, claiming that there was “no quid pro quo of any kind” behind his decision — despite the fact that business executives of his space-based Blue Origin company had met with Donald Trump the same day The Post announced that it wouldn’t be publishing an op-ed.
Many critics have wondered whether Bezos’s business interests influenced The Post’s decision to drop the editorial, which would have endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, over Trump, the Republican.
“You can see my wealth and business interests as a bulwark against intimidation, or you can see them as a web of conflicting interests,” Bezos said. “Only my own principles can tip the balance from one to the other. I assure you that my views here are, in fact, principled.”
Contradicting Bezos’s claims that presidential endorsements cause harm to a paper’s reputation, Jon Allsop, who writes “The Media Today” newsletter for the Columbia Journalism Review, wrote in his own op-ed before Bezos’s was published that endorsements are actually positive forces for news publications.
“Reader confusion between a paper’s news coverage and its editorial opinionating is indeed a problem in the digital age, but not one that killing endorsements alone will come anywhere close to solving; America’s bitter present divisions can be seen as an argument against weighing in on one side or another, but also an argument for doing so, as a signpost in confusing and noisy times,” Allsop noted.
“Readers certainly seem to expect their news sources to express certain values, as this weekend’s slew of canceled subscriptions would suggest. If endorsements can damage reader trust, so, clearly, can withholding them,” Allsop added.
Bezos’s op-ed came following a report from NPR indicating that more than 200,000 people ended their subscriptions with The Post after it had dropped the idea of issuing a presidential endorsement in the 2024 election, without warning of any kind, less than two weeks before Election Day. That number accounts for close to 1 in every 16 subscribers The Post previously had.
In addition to subscription cancellations, Post journalists have also taken action against their own paper, with two members of the editorial board removing themselves from their positions, and one person quitting the paper altogether because of the decision. Others at The Post have pleaded with readers to keep their subscriptions, recognizing that canceled subscriptions do not hurt Bezos’s pocketbook but could hurt the publication itself.
Still, readers responded to Bezos’s op-ed by saying it was proof that their decision to drop their subscription was justified.
“That Bezos op-ed was almost as much of a disgrace as his blocking The Washington Post presidential endorsement,” wrote the popular X account Angry Staffer.
“Does Jeff Bezos honestly think people will buy the line that he killed his editorial board’s endorsement of Harris because he suddenly became gravely concerned about newspapers’ credibility and decided that not publishing an op-ed will right the ship?” wrote former Los Angeles Times tech reporter Brian Merchant.
Journalist and writer David Simon said he wasn’t planning to join the throngs of people who ended their subscriptions, but after reading Bezos’s op-ed, decided he had to.
“My god, this man’s insipid defense of his own transparent cowardice is provoking. I cancelled,” Simon said.
“I was on the fence till I read the despicable rationalization by @JeffBezos, probably dictated from his yacht,” Columbia University lecturer Tom Watson said, sharing a picture of his unsubscription notice in a post on X. “Democracy dies with Bezos. What a terrible American.”
Journalist and transgender rights advocate Charlotte Clymer also questioned the timing of Bezos’s actions.
“If this were somehow about principle, you could have nixed the endorsement before the general election began,” Clymer wrote, addressing her comments directly to Bezos.
NYU history professor and expert on authoritarianism Ruth Ben-Ghiat also weighed in on the matter, noting that Bezos’s decision to nix The Post’s presidential endorsement was an attempt to appeal to a fascist element in U.S. politics.
“The ‘trust’ he wants is that of the authoritarian right,” Ben-Ghiat wrote on X. “Bezos naively thinks staying ‘neutral’ will make him ‘whole’ with MAGA. He is not understanding how authoritarians operate.”
Besides The Post, at least two other major newspapers that have traditionally published presidential endorsements — USA Today and The Los Angeles Times — announced late this election cycle that they won’t be doing so this year, despite publishing numerous editorials about the dangers of a second Trump presidency throughout the year. In the latter’s case, the decision to drop the editorial came directly from the billionaire owner of The Los Angeles Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong.
Like Bezos, many critics suspect that Soon-Shiong’s choice is based on a desire not to upset either presidential candidate — particularly Trump.
“He thinks that Trump is going to win, and he doesn’t need to make an enemy,” a former employee of The Times opined.