Jeff Bezos Insists That ‘No Quid Pro Quo’ Behind Blocking Harris Endorsement
In a spectacular display of mental gymnastics, The Washington Post‘s billionaire owner Jeff Bezos took to the opinion section to defend his decision to kill the newspaper’s planned endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Despite arguing several years ago that the Post “has an incredible role to play” in our democracy, he wrote Monday that newspapers’ presidential endorsements “create a perception of bias,” and ending the practice would help gain readers’ trust. He rejected the notion, proposed by a longtime Post columnist, that the decision not to endorse Harris was a “quid pro quo,” the result of a deal with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
The Amazon founder’s op-ed comes as the Post hemorrhages subscribers at an astounding rate.
Last Friday, publisher William Lewis announced that the Post’s opinion section would terminate its tradition of endorsing a presidential candidate for the first time in 36 years. The announcement quickly garnered widespread backlash among both WaPo‘s staff and readership — with several top columnists resigning and over 200,000 people, more than 8 percent of the paper’s paid readers, canceling their digital subscriptions.
Bezos attempted to quell the firestorm on Monday, rationalizing that his decision had been done to improve the paper’s credibility with its readership, while commiserating over the state of media today. The world’s second richest man also insisted that he had not and will not use his personal interest to influence decision-making at the Post, and that “no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here.”
“Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election,” Bezos wrote in his op-ed published Monday. “What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.”
Executives from Bezos’ Blue Origin aerospace company had a meeting with former president Trump on Friday, The New York Times reported, pointing out that the company has a $3.4 billion contract with NASA to build a lunar lander. Many saw the publication blocking the Harris endorsement as a way for Bezos to garner favor with Trump should he win the White House for a second term.
Robert Kagan, who resigned his role as a Post editor-at-large in protest, said that Team Trump’s decision to meet with Blue Origin execs on Friday, the day the paper officially nixed its Harris endorsement, suggested “there was an actual deal made,” and constituted a “quid pro quo.”
In his Post column, Bezos downplayed the timing, lamenting that he “sighed” when he found out about Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp’s meeting with Trump, because he “knew it would provide ammunition to those who would like to frame this as anything other than a principled decision.” According to the billionaire, “the fact is, I didn’t know about the meeting beforehand. Even Limp didn’t know about it in advance; the meeting was scheduled quickly that morning. There is no connection between it and our decision on presidential endorsements, and any suggestion otherwise is false.”
Still, Bezos acknowledged the inherent conflict posed by his ownership of the Post: “When it comes to the appearance of conflict, I am not an ideal owner of the Post,” he wrote. “Every day, somewhere, some Amazon executive or Blue Origin executive or someone from the other philanthropies and companies I own or invest in is meeting with government officials. I once wrote that the Post is a ‘complexifier’ for me. It is, but it turns out I’m also a complexifier for the Post.”
Bezos — who passed on the chance to endorse a presidential candidate who doesn’t take every opportunity to spread hateful, dangerous, and violent rhetoric against his opponents and immigrants — mourned that “people are turning to off-the-cuff podcasts, inaccurate social media posts, and other unverified news sources, which can quickly spread misinformation and deepen divisions.”
Late in the essay, Bezos wrote: “I am so grateful to be part of this endeavor. Many of the finest journalists you’ll find anywhere work at The Washington Post, and they work painstakingly every day to get to the truth. They deserve to be believed.”
He wrote that he will “not allow this paper to stay on autopilot and fade into irrelevance — overtaken by unresearched podcasts and social media barbs — not without a fight.”
Unfortunately, the paper is going to need some new subscribers — and Bezos’ latest contribution to the Post‘s opinion section is unlikely to help.
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