Credit To Jeff Bezos For Defending Washington Post Not Endorsing Kamala

Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos penned an op-ed on Monday evening to defend the paper's decision not to endorse a presidential candidate in 2024. Bezos called the decision a response to the basic fact that "Americans don’t trust the news media."

He started the piece by citing a recent Gallup poll showing a trend of Americans registering record-low trust in the mass media. "We have managed to fall below Congress," Bezos noted. "Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working."

Bezos added, "We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased.

"Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion. It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility (and, therefore, decline in impact), but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility."

He insists that newspaper endorsements "do nothing to tip the scales of an election" but instead "create a perception of bias."

"By itself, declining to endorse presidential candidates is not enough to move us very far up the trust scale, but it’s a meaningful step in the right direction. I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it. That was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy," Bezos states. 

The Amazon founder also denied the decision was a result of a "quid pro quo," of which critics accused him following a meeting where Dave Limp, the chief executive of Bezos' Blue Origin company, met with former president Donald Trump on the day of the announcement. 

"There is no connection between it and our decision on presidential endorsements, and any suggestion otherwise is false," he explained.

Bezos summed up the decision as "principled" and "the right one."

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD - SEPTEMBER 19:  Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, founder of space venture Blue Origin and owner of The Washington Post, participates in an event hosted by the Air Force Association September 19, 2018 in National Harbor, Maryland. Bezos talked about innovating in large organizations as well as staying on the cutting edge in the space industry.  (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Credit to Jeff Bezos.

The op-ed follows an NPR report that cited sources claiming that The Post has lost over 200,000 subscribers since Friday as entitled liberal pundits and authors encourage readers to cancel the paper in protest of the decision not to endorse Democratic candidate Kamala Harris. Multiple members of the paper's editorial staff have also resigned.

Most cowardly billionaires would have caved to save face at upcoming elite cocktail parties and to appease the vultures in the legacy press. Bezos didn't do that. He doubled down. He explained his decision.

And his explanation is admirable.

Never before has the American public trusted the mass media less than it does today. The Washington Post is complicit. 

In 2016, The Post took a hard left turn as it sought to discredit Trump's presidency as a product of Russian interference. No honest person could have considered the paper's coverage of politics since 2016 honest or balanced. The Post has lost all credibility, essentially emerging as the MSNBC of newspapers.

And while the paper was a card-carrying member of the Cool Kids' Club of News Media, the results of its turn were damning. In 2023, The Post reported a loss of $77 million and a 50% drop in audience since 2020.

Put simply, far-left partisanship is bad business. The market is oversaturated, and the number of people looking for Brian Stelter-approved media coverage is miniscule. (Brian Stelter is really, really upset that The Post didn't endorse Kamala.)

Maybe it's too late for the Washington Post. Or maybe it's not.

If Bezos is actually determined to restore the trust Americans have in the paper, he has the resources --with a net worth of $205 billion-- to hire a room full of skilled writers with diverse points of view.

We hope he does that.

Americans could use a newspaper that prioritizes information over affirmation. They could use a paper that they trust.