- Jeff Bezos defended The Washington Put up’s choice to not endorse a presidential candidate.
- Bezos wrote in his personal newspaper Monday that too many individuals do not belief the information media.
- Endorsing Donald Trump or Kamala Harris would solely add to that mistrust, Bezos stated.
Jeff Bezos defended The Washington Put up’s choice not to endorse a presidential candidate in a column printed in his personal newspaper Monday, saying it will create the notion of bias in an age when individuals do not belief the information media.
Bezos, who has owned the Put up since 2013, wrote the op-ed after a collection of resignations from the editorial board and a reported wave of cancellations after the paper halted a plan to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Put up earlier reported that Bezos made the decision to not publish an endorsement. On Monday, Bezos did not say when the choice was made however acknowledged the firestorm surrounding it.
“I want we had made the change sooner than we did, in a second farther from the election and the feelings round it,” Bezos stated. “That was insufficient planning, and never some intentional technique.”
The choice additionally wasn’t a “quid professional quo” to curry favor with Donald Trump, Bezos stated. He stated the CEO of his area exploration firm, Blue Origin, coincidentally met with Trump on the day of the announcement.
“I sighed after I discovered, as a result of I knew it will present ammunition to those that wish to body this as something apart from a principled choice,” Bezos wrote.
The choice comes amid what Bezos stated was the general public’s declining belief within the information media. He cited latest Gallup polling that confirmed document low numbers of individuals belief the media.
Bezos stated newspapers wanted to be correct — but in addition should be believed to be correct. “We should work tougher to regulate what we will management to extend our credibility,” he stated.
Moreover, Bezos stated, a newspaper’s presidential endorsement would not imply a lot.
“No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, ‘I am going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.’ None. What presidential endorsements really do is create a notion of bias,” he stated. “A notion of non-independence. Ending them is a principled choice, and it is the suitable one.”
His op-ed comes after the paper faced staff resignations and after NPR reported Monday that greater than 200,000 people canceled their subscriptions to the Post, citing two individuals aware of the matter. That is round 8% of its 2.5 million subscribers.
On Friday, the newspaper’s writer, Will Lewis, initially introduced the Put up’s choice. It got here after the Los Angeles Times said it also would decline to endorse a candidate within the presidential election this yr.
The Put up did not instantly reply to a request for remark from Enterprise Insider.
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