NEW YORK — Billionaire Washington Post proprietor Jeff Bezos on Monday defended the newspaper’s choice to not endorse a presidential candidate as “truthful” and “principled” and pushed again in opposition to any suggestion that he ordered it to guard its business pursuits.
That choice, introduced Friday, would lead tens of hundreds of individuals to cancel their subscriptions and protests from journalists with lengthy histories on the paper. The Post editorial staff was able to help Democrat Kamala Harris earlier than editor Will Lewis wrote as an alternative that it will be higher for readers to make up their very own minds.
Bezos, in a “notice from our proprietor” printed Monday night, mentioned the editorial endorsements create a notion of bias at a time when many Americans do not consider the media and do nothing to tip the scales of the election.
“Ending it’s a principled choice, and it is the appropriate one,” Bezos mentioned.
Bezos wrote that he wished the choice to finish presidential approval had been made sooner, “at a time additional faraway from the election and the feelings surrounding it. This was insufficient planning and never an intentional technique.”
The choice precipitated a stir for days
Bezos’ choice precipitated an unprecedented spasm of anger each inside journalism and outdoors of it.
NPR reported Monday that greater than 200,000 folks had canceled their subscriptions to the paper, citing “two folks on the paper with data of inner issues.” A Post spokeswoman, Olivia Petersen, declined to touch upon the NPR report.
A lack of subscriptions of that magnitude could be a significant blow to a historic information group that’s already going through monetary difficulties. Last 12 months the Post had greater than 2.5 million subscribers, most of them digital, making it the third hottest after the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
Following the choice, two editorial writers on the newspaper resigned and three of the 9 members of the editorial staff resigned. Retired former Post editor Martin Baron, who was editor when Bezos purchased the paper, had denounced the choice on social media as “cowardice, with democracy because the sufferer.”
The Post’s choice got here simply days after the Los Angeles Times additionally mentioned it will not endorse a presidential candidate, which the paper acknowledged price it hundreds of subscribers.
Bezos insists that worry of company retaliation was not an element
Some critics have recommended that Bezos, additionally the proprietor of Amazon, ordered the withholding to guard his enterprise pursuits, appearing out of worry of retaliation if Donald Trump have been elected. The Post endorsed Trump’s Democratic rivals in 2016 and 2020, and Trump has often denounced the paper’s vital protection.
In his article, Bezos mentioned that individuals may even see his wealth and enterprise pursuits as considered one of two issues: a bulwark in opposition to intimidation or a community of conflicting pursuits. He insisted that his views are principled and that his observe file as proprietor of the Post since 2013 bears that out.
“I problem you to search out an occasion in these 11 years through which I prevailed over anybody on the Post in favor of my pursuits,” he wrote. “It did not occur.”
He acknowledged that the CEO of considered one of his firms, house exploration agency Blue Origin, met with Trump final week on the identical day the failure to approve was introduced.
“I sighed after I discovered, as a result of I knew it will present ammunition to those that would need to body it as something apart from a principled choice,” Bezos wrote. “But the factor is, I did not know earlier than the assembly.”
He mentioned that even when he does not and will not push his personal private pursuits, he would not enable the Post to “stay on autopilot and fade into irrelevance.”
“Many of the perfect journalists you will see that work on the Washington Post, they usually work painstakingly day-after-day to get to the reality,” he mentioned. “They should be believed.”
