Billionaire Jeff Bezos said Wednesday he is “proud” The Washington Post ended its tradition of endorsing presidential nominees, suggesting it was a brave but necessary decision for the paper.
“It was the right decision, I am proud of the decision we made,” Bezos said during The New York Times Dealbook Summit in New York. “And it was far from cowardly because we knew there would be blowback, and we did the right thing anyway.”
The Amazon founder announced in late October that the Post would no longer endorse presidential candidates, saying the tradition of major media outlets doing so did “nothing to tip the scale of an election.” Rather, he claimed, the media needed to shift tack to counter Americans’ eroding trust in the news.
“We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate,” Bezos wrote in an op-ed. “It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose.”
Recent Gallup polls do show a downward trend in American trust in mass media, with just under a third of respondents saying recently they held a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in an accurate free press. Those numbers are split even more dramatically on party lines, with just 12% of Republicans agreeing with that sentiment (compared to 54% of Democrats).
The Washington Post Guild said at the time of Bezos’ announcement that the paper had an endorsement for Vice President Kamala Harris drafted before the billionaire decided to pull it, 11 days before the November election.
The decision prompted a wave of resignations at the paper and some 250,000 readers canceled their subscriptions, or about 10% of the paper’s paying customers.
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Bezos said Wednesday he wasn’t concerned about the Post’s reader base, adding later in the conversation that he had “a bunch of ideas” for the paper to put it back “on a good footing again.”
“We knew that this was going to be perceived in a very big way,” the billionaire said Wednesday. “You can’t do the wrong thing because you’re worried about bad PR or whatever it is. This was the right decision, we made the right decision. I’m very proud of the decision.”
He went on to vow that the Post would continue to cover presidents from both parties with journalistic rigor.
“I am very aware that the Post covers all presidents very aggressively, and will continue to cover all presidents very aggressively,” Bezos added.
Bezos paid $250 million for the Post in 2013.