The final stretch for the presidential elections in the United States has already begun, and with it, the endorsements are becoming more official. However, this is not the case for the Washington Post. Last week, the prestigious newspaper announced that it will not endorse any candidate, and this has now cost them the loss of over 200,000 people who have canceled their subscription.
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The public broadcaster NPR reported the figure, citing "two people at the newspaper with knowledge of internal affairs," and the owner, the magnate Jeff Bezos, has come out in defense of the decision.
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The editorial section of the Post, which operates independently from the news department, had written the endorsement column for Kamala Harris, but Bezos and the company's CEO intervened to prevent its publication, causing a crisis at the newspaper.
Since 1976, with the exception of 1988, the Washington Post has endorsed presidential candidates who have always been Democrats, including Joe Biden in 2020.
What did Jeff Bezos say about The Washington Post's decision not to endorse either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump?
The owner defended the measure in a somewhat uncommon opinion article published on Monday night by the Post: "Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election," wrote Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon. "No undecided voter in Pennsylvania is going to say, 'I'm going to support 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 is the right one."
This statement came just hours after three members of the Washington Post's editorial board resigned over the decision not to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris, and thousands of readers canceled their subscriptions to the newspaper.
High-profile staff from The Washington Post also publicly expressed their dismay at how the situation was handled and have raised questions about the reason behind the last-minute decision.
The loss of subscriptions represents a big blow to a media outlet that is already facing financial difficulties. Last year, the Post had over 2.5 million subscribers, most of them digital, ranking third in circulation, behind The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.