Publications or announcements from Jeff Bezos or the Washington Post

Bezos Blocks Harris Endorsement; Washington Post Loses 200,000 Subscribers, Staff Resign

Oct 28, 2024, 11:46 PM

The Washington Post announced on Friday that it will no longer endorse presidential candidates, ending a three-decade-long practice. The decision follows reports that owner Jeff Bezos blocked a planned endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, leading to internal backlash and staff resignations. Bezos had expressed reservations about an endorsement during a Miami meeting with Post leaders in late September. Opinions editor David Shipley tried to persuade Bezos but was unsuccessful. Among those stepping down from the editorial board are David Hoffman, who accepted a Pulitzer Prize last week for editorials on autocracies, Molly Roberts, and Mili Mitra, representing a third of the editorial board. More than 200,000 digital subscribers have canceled their subscriptions by Monday afternoon, representing about 8% of the paper's paid circulation of 2.5 million subscribers. On Monday, Bezos addressed the controversy in an op-ed titled "The hard truth: Americans don’t trust the news media," stating that "presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election" and that ending them is "a principled decision" aimed at bridging the credibility gap in the media. He emphasized that there was "no quid pro quo of any kind" influencing the decision and acknowledged, "Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working." Bezos also expressed a wish that the change had been made earlier, "in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it."