Billionaire and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns the major U.S. news portal The Washington Post, has seemingly skewed his support in favour of Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump. According to a New York Post report, Bezos has directed the newspaper to add more conservative voices to its opinion section.
Strikingly, this development comes a day after reports that Bezos instructed The Washington Post to junk a draft ‘endorsing’ Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, which had already been prepared by the publication. Later, it was argued that by not endorsing any candidate, the Washington Post was returning to its old tradition, thus breaking its 36-year-long tradition.
According to the NYP report, Bezos, however, has maintained silence over the publication’s decision not to endorse a candidate in the 2024 US presidential elections. He has not come out publicly on the non-endorsement controversy despite mounting pressure from high-level staffers and prominent figures such as Watergate reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
Incidentally, more than a decade ago, when Bezos bought the Washington Post, Marty Baron was the publication’s executive editor. After Bezos vetoed Harris’ endorsement draft, Baron claimed that the move was an act of “cowardice.”
As per US media reports, Bezos’ decision to block Kamala Harris’ endorsement has not gone down well even with the Washington Post staffers. Evidently, the Washington Post reporters themselves published an article admitting that Bezos himself made the decision to veto the endorsement — breaking with a tradition of 36 years just two weeks before the US presidential election on 5th November.
Additionally, as per reports, Bezos hired ex-Wall Street Journal boss Will Lewis as his chief executive. He made the decision despite strong opposition from its own journalists who were against this move citing Lewis’ alleged involvement in the UK phone hacking scandal.
Interestingly, regarding vetoing the endorsement draft, Lewis said that it was not Jeff Bezos who killed the endorsement rather he decided to do so. In his column, he said that the decision was actually a return to a tradition the paper had years ago of not endorsing candidates.
He added it was “consistent with the values the Post has always stood for” and it reflected the paper’s faith in “our readers’ ability to make up their own minds”, as reported by the New York Post.
Lewis stated, “We recognize that this will be read in a range of ways, including as a tacit endorsement of one candidate, or as a condemnation of another, or as an abdication of responsibility. That is inevitable.”
He further added, “We don’t see it that way. We see it as consistent with the values the Post has always stood for and what we hope for in a leader: character and courage in service to the American ethic, veneration for the rule of law, and respect for human freedom in all its aspects.”
In the meantime, the Washington Post has been facing backlash from its staffers and readers with many of them taking to social media to proclaim that they had cancelled their subscriptions to the paper.
Nonetheless, according to a report in The New York Times, the world’s second richest person with an estimated net worth of over $211 billion, as of Monday (28th October), aims to lure an ideologically diverse readership by expanding his newspaper’s reach among right-leaning audiences which is Donald Trump’s voter base.
Incidentally, a similar controversy is also brewing in the newsroom of the Los Angeles Times. Its owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong has also decided to block an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris prompting at least three editorial staffers to resign in protest.
Recently, Soon-Shiong’s daughter said that the refusal to endorse Harris stemmed from dissatisfaction over the Biden administration’s Israel policies but the billionaire denied that this was the case.
It is pertinent to note that several Kamala Harris supporters have started to cry foul and accused billionaires who own news outlets and social media companies of “bowing to” or kowtowing before Donald Trump. One of the prominent endorsement Donald Trump has secured in the recent past is that of world’s richest man Elon Musk.
Have ‘billionaires’ including Jeff Bezos read the writing on the Wall about a repeat of Donald Trump’s Presidency?
Strikingly, according to several polls, Republican Candidate Donald Trump has maintained an edge over his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, with less than two weeks remaining until Election Day – 5th November.
While polls indicate a close fight, several prominent polls released in the last few days have given former President Trump a lead over Harris with The Wall Street Journal reporting a 2% edge over Harris. In August, the publication was giving Harris a 2% lead.