bob stepno

Dear Mr. Bezos: We don't believe you. At all. We don't think this is about encouraging news neutrality or building trust or fighting disinformation or competing against indie media. You know why? Because you did it 11 days before the election, after your editorial board came to a conclusion and drafted an endorsement, after your senior brass gave a green light internally. If this were somehow about principle, you could have nixed the endorsement before the general election began. Hell, you could have done it the day Pres. Biden stepped aside as an understandable moment for a reset. But you didn't. You claim major newspaper endorsements largely don't matter in a presidential election. And honestly, I'm inclined to somewhat agree. I think their influence is overrated. Unless it's an outlet endorsing their perceived ideological opposite (ex: NYT or WaPo for Trump, WSJ or New York Post for Harris), it doesn't matter a whole lot. Although it's quite curious you claim to believe WaPo's presidential endorsements are too impotent to matter in elections, yet too powerful over public attitudes to be allowed to continue. That doesn't make sense. But it's also missing the point. People aren't angry at you because we think Harris will somehow lose based on WaPo not endorsing her. We're furious because you, one of the richest people in the world, bought one of the leading newspapers in our country--a storied bulwark against censorship and corrupt governing--and abused that power to kill the autonomy of the staff of that newspaper. You have subverted the free press right before a presidential election in which one of the candidates is aggressively totalitarian in outlook, and you now pretend to be surprised at the shock and outrage. We do not trust you. We now find it very difficult to trust your newspaper despite the many excellent journalists who work there. And we believe you either ultimately care only about your own greed OR you are dangerously incompetent regarding the importance of a free press. Maybe both. In any case, there's no way in hell I'm paying for The Washington Post while you still own it.