Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Washington Post, defended the paper’s decision not to issue a presidential endorsement.
In an opinion piece for the paper, Bezos admitted that Americans’ trust in the media is at a record low, with only 31% of Americans having a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence in it, according to a Gallup poll.
Bezos said newspapers must be “accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate.”
“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,” he explained. “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.”
Bezos added that “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.”
Instead, newspaper endorsements “create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence.”
“Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one,” he asserted.
More than 200,000 subscriptions to The Washington Post have been canceled since it announced it would not endorse a presidential candidate, sources familiar with the matter told NPR.
The number is about 8% of the newspaper’s paid subscribers.