In Defense of Bezos Non-Endorsement

July 2025

In 2013 Jeff Bezos purchased the Washington Post (WP), the Nation’s fourth largest daily newspaper. On the eve of the 2024 election he abruptly cancelled the Post’s 50 year tradition of endorsing Presidential candidates. The decision was greeted with widespread contempt. His own newsroom led the refrain that his edict was a cowardly ploy to stay on Trump’s good side. Journalists and editors resigned in protest.

However, Bezos was just one trumpeter on a crowded bandwagon. Among the largest 100 newspapers, non-endorsements went from 9 in 2004 to 23 in 2012 and hit 44 in 2020. In 2024, Bezos’ decision was matched by 70 other outlets.

Furthermore, this trend appears to correlate with the polarity of Presidential endorsements by the top 100 dailies. Before 2004, Republicans received the most endorsements. In the 2004 election Democrats broke the 50% mark. By 2012 Obama’s endorsements outnumbered Romney’s nearly 2 to 1. And over the course of the last three elections involving Trump, Democrats got 92% of the shrinking list of endorsements.

These developments suggest that publishers like Bezos may have a reasonable justification for terminating endorsements, such as mitigating the adverse effects of political polarization.

Bezos realized that to attract the widest audience, the WP must transcend the news media’s drift toward tribalization, as illustrated by Fox News and MSNBC. Appealing to just one wing of the market narrows the subscriber base; appealing to the whole market expands it.

So, to paraphrase Bezos, the WP should strive to be an independent and trustworthy source of information for people of various persuasions. But to achieve this trust, the Post’s style of journalism cannot appear to be a mouthpiece for either side of America’s entrenched Political Duopoly (i.e., Republican and Democratic parties).

Therefore, Bezos opted for non-endorsement in 2024 because a one-sided endorsement was likely to sow distrust among readers of other persuasions, especially in a polarized election.

The claim that his decision violated a sacred responsibility to the public is disputed by a brutal truth: both sides in the 2024 election were objectively unworthy of endorsement. This was a contest between a degenerate seditionist and a flip-flopping apologist for the incumbent President’s malpractice. Given that choice, a positive endorsement of Harris would smack of partisan bias to most readers who are not loyal Democrats. This would reinforce the drift of Republican readers to other news sources.

So, Bezos withheld the endorsement out of recognition that the Duopoly was too corrupt to serve the best interests of the American people.

The American people are increasingly aware of that problem. Since the onset of the Great Recession polls have shown that less than 20% of adults trust the Federal government “to do what’s right.”  Also, 85% of respondents from both parties say that “most elected officials don’t care what people like me think.”  And finally, a whopping 63% agree that “a third major party is needed.”

To address this need for third-way narratives, Bezos issued a new policy for the Opinion Section. Instead of serving as a conduit for the Duopoly's messaging, WP’s Opinion Page will now emphasis “personal liberty, free markets and other topics.” That sounds to me like an opportunity for a libertarian narrative.

Unfortunately, the political tribalization of the mainstream media is no longer just a drift, but an accomplished fact.

This is evident in the political orientation of each outlet's regular users, as shown on the chart below.

It's also evident in the political polarization of trust.

Trust in the mainstream media is far more prevalent among Democrats than Republicans. In fact, the latter are almost universally distrustful. The only major outlets that Republicans trust more than they distrust are Fox News, WSJ, and New York Post.

For example, the WP’s net trust score is a positive +44 among Democrats, but a distrustful score of -13 among Republicans. So, it’s no surprise that WP’s regular readers are much more likely to lean left and identify as Democrats. The polarization is even worse for NPR and the New York Times. Of course, at Fox News the net trust scores are reversed.

(It’s worth noting that the WSJ, which boasts the highest circulation and is trusted by both Republicans and Democrats, has never endorsed a candidate since 1929).

So, why has the WP become so aversive to Republicans and so congenial to Democrats?

Because the WP’s Newsroom, like others, is politically biased. The Paper’s content resonates with the beliefs and values of the woke progressives.

This bias emanates from the culture of the modern newsroom, or more precisely, the ideology shared by its journalists and editors. They exhibit the demographic signature of the ultra progressive: urban, college educated, Arts/Humanities major, no religion, and non-Republican.

In the urban newsroom, 79% of all workers (and 96% of journalists) are college graduates.  More important, 77% of them majored in the Arts and Humanities, the most powerful predictor of graduates’ liberal bent. Sixty-one percent of journalists report no religious affiliation, compared to 31% of adults. Finally, a microscopic 3.4% of journalists identified as Republicans in 2022, compared to 32% of registered voters. (At NPR it’s ZERO percent).  

This is the profile of an occupational subculture that is dogmatically incapable of favoring a republican candidate. It wasn’t the lack of endorsement per se that incited the newsroom revolt, but Bezos' failure to endorse Harris. The other side was never an option.

The rage against Bezos was not the only public display of newsroom partisanship.

In 2020 the NYT newsroom captured the headlines by throwing a tantrum over the publication of an Op-Ed by Republican Tom Cotton. Apparently, any criticism of the way Blue states handled the George Floyd demonstrations is regarded as a capital offense by the league of elite journalists. Cancel culture thrives in the NYT newsroom.

In 2024 NPR cancelled editor Uri Berliner after he published an expose of the newsroom’s bias. The leadership called the column “disrespectful” and a “distraction.” They categorically denied the validity of Berliner’s critique without bothering to refute any of his specific charges (which is reminiscent of Roy Cohn’s advice to Donald Trump: never admit you were wrong).

Also, you may recall that NPR cancelled journalist Juan Williams for confessing that his perception of certain individuals had been influenced by negative stereotypes. Such candor humanizes journalists and thereby undermines NPR’s ability to fabricate an image of unflinching objectivity.

Final word.

My take is that Bezos’ reforms are intended to weaken the stranglehold of woke-left ideology so that the WP can rehabilitate its reputation as an independent source of information.  However, ‘my take’ does not negate the accusation that he is pandering to the vindictive Orange Man. Both can be true at the same time.