The Washington Post Owner Jeff Bezos wrote in an editorial Monday that the paper's decision to end presidential endorsements arose from an attempt to regain the trust of its readers.
“Presidential endorsement does nothing to change the balance of an election,” Bezos wrote. “What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of prejudice. A perception of non-independence.”
Send CEO Will Lewis announced in a statement Thursday that the newspaper will not endorse a presidential candidate — the first time since 1988 — and will stop doing so in future elections. The news arrived three days later Los Angeles Times has announced similar plans.
In his op-ed on Monday, Bezos wrote that their decision was a way to rebuild public trust, which he said had been degraded by “off-the-cuff podcasts, inaccurate social media posts and other unverified news sources.” He also referenced a Gallup poll that found Americans' trust in the media had fallen below that of Congress.
“Most people believe the media is biased,” Bezos wrote. “He who does not see it pays little attention to reality, and he who fights reality loses.”
The Amazon billionaire then invoked Eugene Meyer, publisher of The Washington Post from 1933 to 1946, who also refused to support presidential candidates. “He was right,” Bezos wrote.
Bezos also said he wished “we had made the change earlier than we did, at a time further removed from the election and the emotions surrounding it,” saying the decision “was poor planning and not an intentional strategy.”
Acknowledging critics who argue that Bezos made the decision based on his own business interests, Bezos wrote that readers “can see my wealth and business interests as a bulwark against intimidation, or you can see them as a web of conflicting interests “, but that “only my principles can tip the balance from one to the other”.
He concluded: “While I do not and will not push my self-interest, I will also not allow this document to remain on autopilot and fade into irrelevance.”
The post has seen a mass exodus of subscribers since last week, with 200,000 missing by Monday, NPR reported. Among them was Liz Cheney, who told New Yorker event that “when Jeff Bezos is apparently afraid to lend an endorsement to the only candidate in the running who is a stable, responsible adult because he fears Donald Trump, that tells you why we have to work so hard to make sure Donald Trump isn't elected.