Washington Post Loses 250,000 Subscribers After Jeff Bezos Kills Harris Endorsement

The Washington Post has seen implicit 250,000 readers cancel their paid subscriptions implicit caller days pursuing a study that proprietor Jeff Bezos stopped the insubstantial from endorsing Kamala Harris for president, according to NPR’s David Folkenflik. The stunning nonaccomplishment accounts for astir 10% of each paid subscriptions.

The wide cancellations started precocious past week aft respective quality outlets reported the Washington Post would not beryllium endorsing a statesmanlike campaigner this year, little than 2 weeks until Election Day. It was aboriginal revealed that Bezos himself made the decision, contempt the information that the paper’s main enforcement and steadfast Will Lewis came retired connected Friday to suggest the Amazon laminitis had nary relation successful the decision.

“Reporting astir the relation of The Washington Post proprietor and the determination not to people a statesmanlike endorsement has been inaccurate,“ Lewis said successful a connection to the Daily Beast connected the day of Oct. 26. ”He was not sent, did not work and did not opine connected immoderate draft. As Publisher, I bash not judge successful statesmanlike endorsements. We are an autarkic paper and should enactment our readers’ quality to marque up their ain minds.”

But that turned retired to beryllium wildly misleading. Bezos whitethorn not person been sent a draft, helium didn’t request to. The billionaire took afloat ownership of the information that his paper would not beryllium publishing an endorsement this year, adjacent penning his ain defense of the determination published Monday.

Bezos gave a mind-numbingly anserine mentation that since spot successful media is truthful low, helium wants to reconstruct it by… sidesplitting statesmanlike endorsements. It astir apt makes consciousness successful that billionaire encephalon of his, but it doesn’t walk the odor trial for anyone with the tiniest spot of sense.

“Ending them is simply a principled decision, and it’s the close one,” Bezos wrote of the statesmanlike endorsements. “Eugene Meyer, steadfast of The Washington Post from 1933 to 1946, thought the same, and helium was right.”

And if you’re a pupil of past you whitethorn callback that 1933-1946 was benignant of an important play for lasting up to fascism. The Nazis took powerfulness successful 1933 and World War II ended successful 1945. So by sidesplitting an endorsement that works arsenic an implicit motion to fascism, Bezos is surely making a point—just not the 1 helium intends to make.

The radical who speculated that Bezos was hoping to curry favour with Trump by spiking the endorsement pointed to a gathering betwixt Trump and executives astatine Bezos’s abstraction institution Blue Origin connected Friday. It was seemingly damning grounds of that theory, but Bezos denied determination was immoderate connection.

“I would besides similar to beryllium wide that nary quid pro quo of immoderate benignant is astatine enactment here,” Bezos wrote. “Neither run nor campaigner was consulted oregon informed astatine immoderate level oregon successful immoderate mode astir this decision. It was made wholly internally. Dave Limp, the main enforcement of 1 of my companies, Blue Origin, met with erstwhile president Donald Trump connected the time of our announcement.”

“I sighed erstwhile I recovered out,” Bezos wrote, “because I knew it would supply ammunition to those who would similar to framework this arsenic thing different than a principled decision. But the information is, I didn’t cognize astir the gathering beforehand.”

Even if we instrumentality Bezos astatine his connection that determination was nary quid pro quo, that’s not typically however powerfulness and power enactment successful politics. It’s overmuch much communal for determination to beryllium power successful a wide consciousness alternatively than “I americium paying you X magnitude of wealth for a circumstantial enactment that favors my company.” In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court conscionable said that much wide types of power peddling are perfectly legal, arsenic agelong arsenic immoderate bribes are really described arsenic gratuities.

Bezos wrote that determination volition request to beryllium different changes astatine his paper. And helium hinted that determination volition beryllium different melodramatic shake-ups.

“While I bash not and will not propulsion my idiosyncratic interest, I volition besides not let this insubstantial to enactment connected autopilot and slice into irrelevance—overtaken by unresearched podcasts and societal media barbs—not without a fight,” Bezos wrote.

“It’s excessively important. The stakes are excessively high. Now much than ever the satellite needs a credible, trusted, autarkic voice, and wherever amended for that dependable to originate than the superior metropolis of the astir important state successful the world? To triumph this fight, we volition person to workout caller muscles. Some changes volition beryllium a instrumentality to the past, and immoderate volition beryllium caller inventions.”

For galore people, it’s the timing of Bezos’s determination to termination the Harris endorsement that’s astir suspicious. Even erstwhile enforcement exertion of the Washington Post Marty Baron said arsenic overmuch successful an interrogation with NPR connected Monday.

“If this determination had been made 3 years ago, 2 years ago, possibly adjacent a twelvemonth ago, that would’ve been fine,” Baron said. “It’s a surely tenable decision. But this was made wrong a mates of weeks of the election, and determination was nary substantive superior deliberation with the editorial committee of the paper. It was intelligibly made for different reasons, not for reasons of precocious principle.”

What’s Bezos been up to lately, since employees astatine the Washington Post reportedly don’t adjacent cognize wherever he’s been during this clip of crisis? Well, Semafor conscionable published a study that he’s been successful Venice, Italy astatine a day enactment for Katy Perry. And it’s a large reminder that billionaires could virtually beryllium doing thing other with their clip alternatively than destroying important institutions and carrying h2o for fascists.