Jeff Bezos defends Washington Post's decision to stop presidential endorsements days before election
Jeff Bezos, the billionaire Amazon founder who owns The Washington Post, defended the newspaper's decision to stop endorsing presidential candidates, arguing in part that the move is a way to shore up credibility and combat perceptions of political bias.
Jeff Bezos, the billionaire Amazon founder who owns The Washington Post, defended the newspaper's decision to stop endorsing presidential candidates, arguing in part that the move is a way to shore up credibility and combat perceptions of political bias.
"Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, 'I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.' None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one," Bezos wrote in a nine-paragraph article published on the Post's website Monday night.
Bezos published his comments three days after Will Lewis, the publisher and chief executive officer of the Post, announced that the storied publication would not make a presidential endorsement this year or "in any future presidential election" — breaking with decades of tradition. The announcement sparked immediate backlash from readers, current and former staff members, an employee guild and liberal social media influencers.
NPR reported Monday that the newspaper has lost more than 200,000 digital subscribers since Lewis' announcement. At least three members of the newspaper's editorial board have stepped down in protest.
The Post's editorial page had planned to endorse the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, according to the newspaper's own reporting. The Post, in an article citing four people who were briefed on the matter, reported that Bezos made the decision to stop issuing presidential endorsements. The newspaper has denied that claim through spokespeople.
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