Amazon founder Jeff Bezos arrives at his official residence in New York City for a meeting with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on September 20, 2021.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos said Monday that the paper’s controversial decision not to endorse a candidate in the presidential election is a “step in the right direction” to restore Americans’ lost trust in the news media. “This is a significant step forward for the future,” he said.
But Bezos also said, “I wish we had made the changes sooner and a little further away from the election and the emotions surrounding it.”
“It was poor planning and not a deliberate strategy.”
Bezos’ comments in a Washington Post op-ed came as the paper’s editorial and publishing staff remained reeling from Friday’s bombshell announcement after decades of supporting White House candidates.
“The president’s support does nothing to tip the scales of the election,” billionaire Bezos wrote. AmazonI bought the post in 2013.
“No undecided voter in Pennsylvania would say, ‘I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.’ Nothing,” he wrote. “What the president’s endorsement actually does is create a perception of bias. It creates a perception of non-independence.”
“It’s a principled decision to end them, and it’s the right decision.”
The editorial, headlined “The Hard Truth: Americans Don’t Trust the News Media,” has been published by The Washington Post’s digital subscribers since CEO Will Lewis announced Friday that the paper would be shutting down. It was posted hours after NPR reported that the number of people in the U.S. had fallen by more than 200,000. endorsement.
As a result of the decision, three members of the paper’s editorial board resigned from the board, although they remained in their roles as Post staffers.
Lewis said he made the decision.
But Friday’s Post article, citing four people briefed on the decision, said the paper had drafted support for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris over Republican candidate Donald Trump. After that, it was reported that Mr. Bezos had made such a call.
Other news outlets reported that Bezos withdrew his support for the president.
Bezos wrote in an op-ed on Monday that the decision was “made entirely internally.”
“I also want to be clear that there is no quid pro quo of any kind at work here,” Bezos wrote of his decision not to endorse a candidate.
He said the president’s campaign was not consulted or informed about the paper’s decision.
But Bezos pointed out that Dave Limp, CEO of his space exploration company Blue Origin, met with Trump on the same day that Lewis announced the paper’s decision.
“When I learned that, I breathed a sigh of relief because I knew it would provide ammunition for those who would try to frame this as anything other than a principled decision,” Bezos wrote. Ta.
“But the fact is that I had no prior knowledge of this meeting. Not even Limp knew of it in advance. The meeting was hastily scheduled for that morning,” Bezos wrote. “There is no connection between that and our decision to support the president, and any suggestion otherwise is false.”
Bezos pointed out that a recent Gallup poll ranked the media the least trusted of the 10 civic and political institutions in the United States.
“What we are doing is clearly not working,” he wrote.
Bezos said newspapers, like voting machines, need to be accurate, and people need to believe they are.
“It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we do not meet the second requirement,” Bezos wrote. “Most people believe that the media is biased. Those who cannot understand this are paying little attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose.”
