Backlash builds against Bezos as non-endorsement sparks huge surge in cancellations

I agree with Jeff Bezos on one thing: Nobody trusts the media anymore.

But killing the Washington Post’s Kamala Harris endorsement days before the election was a colossal blunder, a giant stink bomb tossed into the campaign. And the damage just keeps escalating.

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One-third of his editorial board, including some prominent journalists, have resigned from those positions. NPR says 250,000 people have canceled their subscriptions, 10 percent of its 2.5 million paid subscribers. He couldn’t have wounded the Post’s reputation more if he had set the Washington headquarters afire. Nice work, sir.

Sure, national newspaper endorsements don’t matter much these days. If Bezos had announced the no-endorsement policy six months ago, nobody would have cared.

And in his first defense, an opinion column posted on the paper’s website, the billionaire admits as much. 

"I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it," he writes, chalking it up to "inadequate planning" on his part. I’ve been saying this for days. Not having enough Amazon van drivers is inadequate planning. This was a fiasco.

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The reason he did this is clear to me: fear of Donald Trump. The two men have had a testy relationship. Bezos figures Trump has a good shot at winning and history of bearing grudges, even labeling opponents "the enemy within," a phrase he defended in his Trump Tower interview with me. 

Why antagonize the guy further? Killing the Harris endorsement is a win for Trump.

Amazon and the Blue Origin rocket company do a lot of business with the federal government. Bezos even sued the Trump administration for denying a contract he felt he should have had. So this is sort of a peace offering.

But at what price? The surge in subscription cancelations reflect a deep feeling among readers that the paper betrayed them. It’s very hard to earn that back. Former Post editor Marty Baron, who covered the Trump administration, has accused his old paper of "spinelessness" and was on TV yesterday, saying such actions destroy trust. Top columnists are taking on the boss in published pieces, which the newsroom, to its credit, has also covered aggressively.

It’s a similar situation at the Los Angeles Times, where biotech mogul Patrick Soon-Shiong killed a Harris editorial and adopted a no-endorsement stance. Three top opinion editors quit the paper outright. In that case, his daughter was involved and spoke of the U.S. backing "genocide," meaning in Gaza. USA Today has now jumped on the no-endorsement bandwagon.

But there’s far more interest in the Post, where I worked for three decades, because of the Bezos factor and its inside-the-Beltway status. Even Woodward and Bernstein have spoken out against the move.

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Bezos and his billions actually deserve credit for saving the Post since buying it 11 years ago. He poured money into his new acquisition, trying to improve its digital side, and didn’t meddle with the newsroom.

I don’t care if these and other papers endorse or not. As the owner, Bezos has the right to set editorial policy. It’s just the bungling that has caused this incredible backlash.

Look, for the past two years, the Post’s left-leaning editorial pages have told us what they think on every issue under the sun, mostly with anti-Trump attacks. Then, with the election approaching, the owner has a fainting spell and says oh no, we couldn’t possibly tell you what we think about this – the most important decision a newspaper has to make every year, short of opining on war and peace. Heavens, no.

Bezos had no problem with the Post endorsing Democrats in 2016 and 2020. Only now does he pull the plug on that. And if backing a White House contender is such an outrage, why does the paper continue to make endorsements in state and local races?

There’s one other thing on which I agree with Bezos. While newspaper editorial pages are focused on racial and gender diversity, they lack ideological diversity. Bezos wants more conservative voices. That’s why he brought in Will Lewis, a Brit who previously worked at the Wall Street Journal.

But when Lewis was under scrutiny in the old British hacking scandal, he clashed with then-Post editor Sally Buzbee, who said of course we have to cover that controversy. She soon resigned rather than accept a demotion.

Intentionally or otherwise, Bezos has set the Post back 10 years. What I mean is that a decade from now, people will still be talking about this.

But all these subscription cancellations are hurting the paper that they profess to care about, undermining the journalists who work there, especially since the staff was decimated by a recent round of layoffs and buyouts. What many are saying is that if your beef is with Bezos, why not cancel Amazon Prime instead?