Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos broke his silence on Monday regarding his decision to end the Post's endorsement of presidential candidates ahead of the 2024 elections.
”The hard truth: Americans don’t trust the news media,” Bezos’ headline declared.
A string of editors have resigned over the decision, which Bezos confirmed was his own choice, after they were told that the editorial board would not issue an endorsement ahead of next week's election. The Los Angeles Times has also announced it would not support a candidate in the 2024 election.
Bezos pushed back on criticism that the decision was because of his business interests, and said instead that it was because endorsements from the media gave the perception that the outlet was biased.
The Amazon founder cited a GallUp poll that found the media was trusted less than Congress. Bezos said that newspapers must meet two requirements, they must be accurate, and must be "believed to be accurate."
"It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement," the Washington Post owner wrote in an op-ed in his publication. "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."
Bezos said that declining to endorse a presidential candidate will not automatically fix the public's apparent distrust of the media, but is a "meaningful step in the right direction."
"I would also like to be clear that no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here," the owner wrote. "Neither campaign nor candidate was consulted or informed at any level or in any way about this decision. It was made entirely internally."
Bezos said that he "sighed" when he found out that the chief executive of Blue Origin, which Bezos owns, was meeting with former President Donald Trump, because of the perception that the endorsement decision was business related. However, he reiterated that he had not been aware of the meeting when he decided the paper would not endorse anyone.
"While I do not and will not push my personal interest, I will also not allow this paper to stay on autopilot and fade into irrelevance," Bezos wrote. "The stakes are too high. Now more than ever the world needs a credible, trusted, independent voice, and where better for that voice to originate than the capital city of the most important country in the world?
"To win this fight, we will have to exercise new muscles. Some changes will be a return to the past, and some will be new inventions," he continued. "Criticism will be part and parcel of anything new, of course. This is the way of the world. None of this will be easy, but it will be worth it."
