There is increasing resistance against Bezos, because failure to approve the agreement leads to a huge increase in cancellations

I agree with Jeff Bezos on one thing: no one trusts the media anymore.

But murders from the Washington Post The endorsement of Kamala Harris days before the election was a colossal blunder, a gigantic stink bomb thrown into the campaign. And the damage just keeps escalating.

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A third of its editorial board, including several leading journalists, have resigned. NPR says 250,000 people have canceled their subscriptions, 10 percent of its 2.5 million paying subscribers. He couldn’t have done more damage to the Post’s reputation if he had set fire to its Washington headquarters. Well done, sir.

Certainly, the endorsements of national newspapers don’t matter much these days. If Bezos had announced the no-endorsement policy six months ago, no one would have cared.

And in his first defense, an opinion column on the newspaper’s website, the billionaire admits this.

“I wish we had made the change sooner than now, at a time further away from the election and the emotions surrounding it,” he wrote, attributing it 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 difficult relationship. Bezos figures Trump has a good one shot for victory and the history of holding grudges, and labeling opponents “the enemy within,” a phrase he defended in his Trump Tower interview with me.

Why antagonize the man any further? Scrapping Harris’ endorsement is a victory for Trump.

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

But at what price? The rise in subscription cancellations reflects a deep feeling among readers that the newspaper has betrayed them. It is very difficult to earn that back. Former Post editor Marty Baron, who reported the Trump administrationhas accused his old newspaper of ‘spinelessness’ and was on TV yesterday saying such actions destroy confidence. Top columnists take on the boss in published pieces, which the editors also reported aggressively.

It’s a similar situation at the Los Angeles Times, where biotech magnate Patrick Soon-Shiong was murdered a Harris editorial and adopted a non-approval position. Three leading opinion editors immediately quit the paper. In that case, his daughter was involved and spoke about US support for “genocide,” meaning in Gaza. USA Today has now jumped on the no-endorsement bandwagon.

But there is much more interest in the Post, where I worked for 30 years, because of the Bezos factor and its status within the Beltway. Even Woodward and Bernstein have spoken out against this measure.

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Bezos and his billions actually deserve credit for saving the Postal Service since purchasing it eleven years ago. He put money into his new acquisition, tried to improve the digital side of it, and stayed out of the newsroom.

I don’t care whether these and other newspapers endorse it or not. As owner, Bezos has the right to set editorial policies. It is precisely the tampering that has caused this incredible backlash.

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

Bezos had no problem with the Post supporting Democrats in 2016 and 2020. Only now is he pulling the plug. And if supporting a White House contender is such a scandal, why does the newspaper continue to make endorsements in state and local races?

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

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

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Bezos, whether intentionally or not, set the Post back ten years. What I mean is that people will still be talking about this in ten years.

But all these subscription cancellations are damaging the very newspaper they claim to care about, and undermining the journalists who work there, especially as the staff has been decimated by a recent round of layoffs and takeovers. What many are saying is that if your problem is with Bezos, why not cancel Amazon Prime?