Amazon founder Jeff Bezos remains under fire after he penned his own explanation in the Washington Post for the venerable paper’s refusal to endorse a presidential candidate this year.
In his editorial, Bezos denied accusations that squashing the endorsement of Kamala Harris that the Post‘s editorial board had prepared — and doing so just weeks before election day — was a cautious or cowardly move on his part, and a pragmatic, fearful hedge against a Donald Trump victory that could mean bad news for Bezos’s federal contracts.
Bezos claimed that endorsements didn’t square with the mission of the paper, which is to inform, not instruct or influence. His critics called the distinction disingenuous.
Bezos wrote that endorsements “create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence.” (He also cited, for precedent, a time during the Post‘s past when the paper followed a policy not to endorse.)
Bezos contended that this move was a step in fixing a bigger problem: that America doesn’t trust the news media.
Popular X commentator Adam Cochran (220K followers) responded that the “way to rebuild ‘trust in news’ is not by having a wealthy newspaper owner, override the independent editorial board.”
The way to rebuild “trust in news” is not by having a wealthy newspaper owner, override the independent editorial board.
Now each WaPo story is a question of “What did Bezo’s have rewritten in this story?” Or “What did he block from print”
The 4th estate is political but it is… https://t.co/MpYs6CRqQO
— Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth) (@adamscochran) October 29, 2024
Popular X commentator Charlotte Clymer (413K followers) laid out the common argument against Bezos’s defense on X, as seen below. The crux of Clymer’s riposte? “We don’t believe you,” Clymer writes. “At all.”
Dear Mr. Bezos:
We don’t believe you. At all.
We don’t think this is about encouraging news neutrality or building trust or fighting disinformation or competing against indie media.
You know why?
Because you did it 11 days before the election, after your editorial board…
— Charlotte Clymer (@cmclymer) October 29, 2024
Critics like Clymer — and the 200K Post subscribers who reportedly cancelled in the aftermath — targeted Bezos for his timing in particular. Even allowing for the sincerity of his opinion on endorsement matters, such a change in policy at one of the nation’s most prominent publications should never have been an “October surprise.”
Bezos himself wished aloud that the announcement that the Post was getting out of the endorsement business had come sooner. “I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it,” he wrote. “That was inadequate planning.”
Tom Nichols at The Atlantic, a former Naval War College professor, also criticized the timing of Bezos’s embrace of principles.
Look, if you want to argue that newspapers should never endorse, that’s fine (if wrong). But to discover that principle a week before an election, against a man who has threatened to destroy the free press, is just cowardice and anticipatory obedience.
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) October 29, 2024
The Post is unusual among Bezos’s multitude of business interests in that it is not a profit-maker for the billionaire and is instead often characterized as a kind of charitable project — an operation that Bezos’s largesse keeps afloat because the press serves a critical role in a functioning democracy.
To wit, “Democracy dies in darkness” is the Post‘s proud mantra. Much of politics takes place in darkness — in the proverbial smoky rooms where deals are done. His critics believe Bezos made his decision in just such an environment, making a mockery of the mantra.