Close up phot of Jeff Bezos the owner of Amazon and the Washington Post
Amazon Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos triggered a firestorm with his decision just days before Election
The owner of The Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, is defending his newspaper\u2019s decision not to endorse a United States presidential candidate following a report that 200,000 people have cancelled their digital subscriptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
National Public Radio (NPR) reported that the decision, made on Friday, blocked a planned endorsement of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and that many unhappy customers were blaming the billionaire Bezos, founder of Amazon and the aerospace manufacturer Blue Origin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bezos responded on Monday in an opinion piece in his own paper, saying that \u201cmost people believe the media is biased\u201d and that The Washington Post and other newspapers needed to boost their credibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPresidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election,\u201d Bezos wrote. \u201cWhat presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it\u2019s the right one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The timing, less than two weeks before Election Day, led critics to question whether Bezos had been concerned about the possibility of Republican Donald Trump retaliating if he were elected president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Bezos said that no candidate was informed or consulted about the decision and that there was \u201cno quid pro quo\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said there was no connection between the decision and a meeting between Trump and senior officials of Blue Origin on the same day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
William Lewis, The Washington Post\u2019s publisher and CEO, said the newspaper would not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate this November, or in any future presidential election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates,\u201d Lewis wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Journalistic legacy
The Washington Post, famous for its reporting on the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate scandal, is considered a newspaper of record in the US, winning the Pulitzer Prize 76 times for its work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Its journalists are concerned about the decision not to endorse a candidate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As many as 20 columnists at the newspaper have weighed in with their own opinion column on the Post\u2019s website and some have resigned in protest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Washington Post\u2019s decision not to make an endorsement in the presidential campaign is a terrible mistake,\u201d they wrote, adding that it \u201crepresents an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Post\u2019s decision came only days after the Los Angeles Times, California\u2019s largest newspaper, also said it would not endorse a presidential candidate, which the paper has acknowledged has cost them thousands of subscribers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Close up phot of Jeff Bezos the owner of Amazon and the Washington PostAmazon Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos triggered a firestorm with his decision just days before Election The owner of The Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, is defending his newspaper\u2019s decision not to endorse a United States presidential candidate following a report that 200,000 people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shot24.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shot24.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shot24.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shot24.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shot24.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/shot24.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41,"href":"https:\/\/shot24.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions\/41"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shot24.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shot24.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shot24.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shot24.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}