Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos has reportedly given the newspaper a mandate to add more conservative voices to its opinion section — even as he remains silent over the broadsheet’s decision not to endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election.
Bezos — the world’s second richest person with a fortune that Bloomberg Billionaires Index valued at $211 billion as of Monday — is keen on gaining a more ideologically diverse readership by expanding his newspaper’s reach among right-leaning audiences, according to a report in The New York Times.
The Amazon founder, meanwhile, has remained silent over the non-endorsement controversy. He has not spoken publicly amid protests from high-level staffers and prominent figures such as Watergate reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
Marty Baron, who was executive editor of the newspaper when Bezos bought the Washington Post more than a decade ago, denounced the move as an act of “cowardice.”
Washington Post staffers were reeling over Bezos’ decision to block the Harris endorsement, a draft of which was said to be all typed up and ready for publication.
The newspaper’s own reporters published an article which claimed that Bezos himself made the decision to veto the endorsement — a move that raised eyebrows since it broke with a tradition of 36 years less than two weeks before the election.
Bezos hired ex-Wall Street Journal boss Will Lewis as his chief executive — despite protests from journalists at the newspaper who cited his alleged involvement in the UK phone hacking scandal.
Lewis, who said it was him and not Bezos who killed the endorsement, wrote a column in which he said that the decision was actually a return to a tradition the paper had years ago of not endorsing candidates.
He said it was “consistent with the values the Post has always stood for” and it reflected the paper’s faith in “our readers’ ability to make up their own minds.”
“We recognize that this will be read in a range of ways, including as a tacit endorsement of one candidate, or as a condemnation of another, or as an abdication of responsibility. That is inevitable,” Lewis wrote.
“We don’t see it that way. We see it as consistent with the values the Post has always stood for and what we hope for in a leader: character and courage in service to the American ethic, veneration for the rule of law, and respect for human freedom in all its aspects.”
The decision sparked a backlash among staffers and readership — with scores of social media users proclaiming that they had cancelled their subscriptions to the paper.
One Washington Post reporter said she was left “heartbroken” when her mother cancelled her subscription over the nixed endorsement.
Robert Kagan, a member of the opinions section, resigned in protest. He said that Lewis’ explanation was “laughable” and that the decision not to endorse stemmed from an alleged deal between Bezos and former President Donald Trump.
Bezos’ space exploration company Blue Origin has contracts with the federal government to build a spacecraft to transport astronauts to and from the surface of the moon.
“This is obviously an effort by Jeff Bezos to curry favor with Donald Trump in the anticipation of his possible victory,” Kagan told CNN on Friday.
“Trump has threatened to go after Bezos’ business,” Kagan added, referring to Amazon.
The drama engulfing the Washington Post mirrors the turmoil playing out in the newsroom of the Los Angeles Times, where at least three editorial staffers resigned in protest of owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong’s decision to block an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Soon-Shiong’s daughter recently said that the refusal to endorse Harris stemmed from dissatisfaction over the Biden administration’s Israel policies, though the billionaire denied that this was the case.
MSNBC “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough blasted “billionaires” who own news outlets and social media companies for “bowing to” Trump.
“The anticipatory kowtowing to a guy who is saying he is going to be an autocrat is the first step,” Scarborough said on his show on Monday. His comments were reported by Mediaite.
“It’s the billionaires versus us. It is the billionaires versus ‘We, the People.’ We can win. They can have their billions and buy their newspapers, but we the people can have the final word.”
“Bezos runs one of the largest companies in America. They have tremendously intricate relations with federal government. They depend on the federal government.”
Bezos stepped down as CEO of Amazon in 2020, though he remains on the company’s board of directors and is the firm’s largest shareholder.
During Trump’s first term in office, he frequently criticized Bezos for his newspaper’s coverage of his administration.
In 2019, Amazon accused Trump of political retribution after his administration denied the company a $10 billion Pentagon contract to provide cloud computing services.
The New York Post has sought comment from the Washington Post.
