Billionaire Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon and the Washington Post, has decided that, for the first time and coinciding with one of the most decisive elections in recent times for the United States and the rest of the planet, the newspaper would not express its editorial. support for a candidate, in this case Kamala Harris.
As a result, according to NPR, the paper has been rocked by a wave of unsubscriptions and a series of columnist resignations, as the paper grapples with the fallout from Bezos’ decision to veto the vice -President Harris.
According to NPR, more than 200,000 people had canceled their digital subscriptions as of midday as of Monday in the United States, according to two people at the paper with knowledge of the paper’s internal affairs. According to reports, not all cancellations have immediate effect. This figure nevertheless represents around 8% of the paid circulation of the newspaper, which has 2.5 million subscribers, including the print version. The number of cancellations continued to rise Monday afternoon.
Post journalists have exposed repeated instances of wrongdoing and accusations of illegality by Trump and his associates. The editorial page, which operates separately, called Trump a threat to the American democratic model.
The newspaper owned by billionaire Bezos has been plunged into pre-election hell since he announced Friday that he would abandon a five-decade policy of securing formal presidential support. Famed Watergate investigative duo Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein called the decision “surprising and disappointing, especially at this point in the election process,” ahead of the Nov. 5 election.
However, there are signs of rejection of the Washington Post’s cancellations, with some editors at the paper saying it would ultimately be counterproductive, The Guardian reports. Dana Milbank, an opinion columnist, said she could not support calls to opt out. He said it wouldn’t hurt Bezos, who has already lost $77 million with the Post in 2023, because the paper is just “cash” for the businessman who also owns the online retailer Amazon and aerospace company Blue Origin.
“Boycotting The Post will harm my colleagues and me,” Milbank wrote. “The more cancellations there are, the more job losses there will be and the less good journalism there will be.”
In the United States, there is a tradition of the media explicitly supporting a presidential candidate, but Post editor William Lewis announced Friday that the newspaper had decided to remain equidistant and not support either Harris nor his Republican Party. rival, former president (2017-2021) Donald Trump.
As two journalists revealed in an article published in the same newspaper, the Post editorial team had already written its article in favor of the Democratic candidate, but it was Jeff Bezos who ordered its publication to be stopped, reports Efe.
The first presidential candidate supported by the Post was Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1976, after the Watergate scandal revealed by the newspaper. Since then, the newspaper has regularly supported candidates, with the exception of the 1988 campaign.
The newspaper has been investigating the irregularities and controversies of Trump and his inner circle for years, and has been highly critical of the Republican’s rhetoric and refusal to accept the 2020 election defeat. Trump, Amazon lost a multi-million dollar contract with the Pentagon and. sued Trump for applying “undue pressure” to harm Bezos. Critics of the newspaper’s decision believe that the billionaire wants to avoid clashes with a possible second term for the Republican.
The first to resign following the decision was editor-in-chief Robert Kagan, who called the change in position a “premature capitulation” to Trump. Columnist Michele Norris also announced her resignation, calling the change a “terrible mistake” and an “insult to the newspaper’s standards.” Eighteen other columnists signed a column in which they expressed their disagreement because this announcement “represents an abandonment of the newspaper’s convictions”.
Similar controversy in the Los Angeles Times
A similar controversy hit the Los Angeles Times, where editorial board head Mariel Garza resigned from her post in protest against the paper’s owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, who had blocked the paper’s support for Harris .
The billionaire Soon-Shiong, owner of the newspaper, wanted to present his decision as an attempt at neutrality. On Saturday, her daughter Nika Soon-Shiong, a progressive political activist, said the decision was motivated by Harris’ continued support for Israel in the Gaza war.
“As a citizen of a country that openly funds genocide and as a family who lived through South African apartheid, this support was an opportunity to reject the justifications for widespread attacks on journalists and the current war against children,” she said in a statement. statement.
