The left is in a state of self-inflicted chaos after leftist billionaire Jeff Bezos, owner of The Washington Post, blocked a 2024 endorsement for Kamala Harris, marking the first time since 1980 that the far-left publication won’t endorse a presidential candidate.
The Gateway Pundit previously reported that Bezos’ decision was revealed in a heated meeting with the editorial staff, leading to a schism within The Washington Post. Prominent editorial board members resigned in protest.
The journalists join Washington Post editor-at-large Robert Kagan, who resigned on Friday. Several other journalists also resigned or vowed not to work with the paper again in the future.
The aftermath has been immediate and severe. The far-left publication has lost over 200,000 subscribers.
The timing couldn’t be more ironic. Bezos published a soul-searching op-ed expressing concern over “dwindling trust in media” after years of relentless attacks on Trump, his allies, and supporters.
“Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working,” Bezos wrote, a statement that reflects more on his own leadership than on the industry he seeks to critique.
He draws a parallel between voting machines and newspapers, stressing the need for accuracy and perceived impartiality. Yet, one can’t help but question whether his sudden push for non-bias is truly principled, or merely a convenient escape hatch from endorsing a struggling candidate in Harris.
Read his statement below:
Let me give an analogy. Voting machines must meet two requirements. They must count the vote accurately, and people must believe they count the vote accurately. The second requirement is distinct from and just as important as the first.
Likewise with newspapers. We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate. 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. Reality is an undefeated champion. It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility (and, therefore, decline in impact), but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.
Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, “I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.” None. 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. Eugene Meyer, publisher of The Washington Post from 1933 to 1946, thought the same, and he was right. By itself, declining to endorse presidential candidates is not enough to move us very far up the trust scale, but it’s a meaningful step in the right direction. I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it. That was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy.
I would also like to be clear that no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here. Neither campaign nor candidate was consulted or informed at any level or in any way about this decision. It was made entirely internally. Dave Limp, the chief executive of one of my companies, Blue Origin, met with former president Donald Trump on the day of our announcement. I sighed when I found out, because I knew it would provide ammunition to those who would like to frame this as anything other than a principled decision. But 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.
