The Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos wrote in an op-ed on Monday that the paper’s choice to cease presidential endorsements was borne from an attempt to regain the trust of its readers.
“Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election,” Bezos wrote. “What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence.”
Post CEO Will Lewis announced in a memo on Thursday that the paper would not endorse a candidate for president — the first time since 1988 — and will cease to do so for future elections. The news came three days after the Los Angeles Times announced similar plans.
In his editorial on Monday, Bezos wrote that their decision was one way to rebuild the public’s trust, 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 reporting that Americans’ trust in the media had fallen below that of Congress.
“Most people believe the media is biased,” Bezos wrote. “Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose.”
The Amazon billionaire went on to invoke Eugene Meyer, publisher of The Washington Post from 1933 to 1946, who also refused to endorse presidential candidates. “He was right,” Bezos wrote.
Bezos also said he wished “we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it,” saying the decision “was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy.”
Acknowledging the critics who say Bezos made the decision out of 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 own principles can tip the balance from one to the other.”
He concluded, “While I do not and will not push my personal interest, I will also not allow this paper to stay on autopilot and fade into irrelevance.”
The Post has seen a mass exodus of subscribers since last week, with 200,000 gone by Monday, NPR reported. Among them was Liz Cheney, who said at a New Yorker event that “when you have Jeff Bezos apparently afraid to issue an endorsement for the only candidate in the race who’s a stable responsible adult because he fears Donald Trump, that tells you why we have to work so hard to make sure that Donald Trump isn’t elected.”