Washington Post Owner Defends Decision to End Support of President | Al Jazeera News

Jeff Bezos claims that such support can “create a perception of bias.”

Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos is defending his newspaper's decision not to support a US presidential candidate after 200,000 people reportedly canceled their digital subscriptions.

National Public Radio (NPR) reported that Friday's decision blocked a planned endorsement of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and that many dissatisfied customers blamed billionaire Bezos, the founder of Amazon and aerospace manufacturer Blue Origin.

Bezos responded in an opinion piece in his own newspaper on Monday, saying that “most people believe the media is biased” and that the Washington Post and other newspapers need to strengthen their credibility.

“Supporting the President does nothing to tip the balance in an election,” Bezos wrote. “What supporting the president actually does is create the impression of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending it is a principled decision, and it is the right one.”

The timing, less than two weeks before Election Day, led critics to question whether Bezos was worried about the possibility of retaliation from Republican Donald Trump if he were elected president.

Bezos said no candidate was informed or consulted about the decision and that there was “no consideration.”

He said there was no connection between the decision and a meeting between Trump and senior Blue Origin officials the same day.

William Lewis, publisher and CEO of The Washington Post, said the newspaper will not endorse a presidential candidate this November or in a future presidential election.

“We are returning to our roots of opposing presidential candidates,” Lewis wrote.

Journalistic legacy

The Washington Post, famous for its coverage of the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate scandal, is considered a newspaper of record in the United States and has won the Pulitzer Prize 76 times for its work.

Your journalists are concerned about the decision not to support a candidate.

Up to 20 of the paper's columnists have contributed with their own opinion columns on the Post's website, and some have resigned in protest.

“The Washington Post’s decision not to support the presidential campaign is a terrible mistake,” they wrote, adding that it “represents an abandonment of the newspaper’s core editorial beliefs that we love.”

The Post's decision came just days after the Los Angeles Times, California's largest newspaper, also said it would not support a presidential candidate, which the paper has acknowledged has cost thousands of subscribers.