Facing criticism and subscriber cancellations, Amazon founder and owner of The Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, published a column on Monday, October 28th, stating that his decision to cease endorsing presidential candidates was aimed at restoring Americans’ trust in the media. Elon Musk immediately came out in praise and support of Bezos.
In his column, Bezos expressed that political endorsements “create a bias” and believed that stopping the practice of endorsing White House candidates was a “principled decision and the right decision.” He wrote, “Refusing to endorse presidential candidates alone is not enough to greatly increase our trustworthiness, but it is a meaningful step in the right direction.”
On the same day, fellow billionaire Musk took to his X platform to express, “Kudos to @JeffBezos,” and retweeted a post stating, “Kudos to @JeffBezos for telling newspapers the brutal truth: readers aren’t wrong.”
The post retweeted by Musk also quoted some of Bezos’s words from his column, “Reality is inescapable. Blaming others for our decreasing credibility (thus weakening influence) is easy, but a victim mentality is useless. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.”
Musk’s recognition and praise seem to have somewhat eased the longstanding tension between the two. They have been competing for control over space tourism and contracts with NASA for twenty years.
According to reports from The Washington Post, after the editorial team drafted and prepared to publish an editorial supporting Heg Quanli, Bezos personally issued the directive not to endorse any presidential candidate. The editorial was kept strictly confidential and not shared with all board members.
Publisher William Lewis stated that Bezos did not see the editorial or comment on it. Bezos did not mention in his column whether he had seen the editorial, but he stated, “I also want to make it clear that there are no conditions here.”
However, Bezos did express regret over the timing of the change, writing, “I wish we had made this change earlier, further from the elections and emotions. It was poor planning rather than intentional strategy.”