Hi,
I cancelled my Washington Post subscription a few months ago when it became clear that Bezos had made the decision to hire a former Murdoch executive William Lewis.
Yes, it’s true that in theory an executive could work for the opposite team and then still bring very capable work to a good Washington Post team, but there is an ardent debate as to whether Lewis’s presence at the Post signals a problem. .
With this decision to not endorse Harris, I don’t know with full confidence what to make of it, but I was kind of done a few months ago giving Bezos and the Washington Post the benefit of the doubt, so I did not have a difficult decision to make today. Still, yes, TYT makes a decent point that maybe we should stay subscribed to support good journalism. Nonetheless, I think I will let my cancellation stand when the subscription runs out.
I also cancelled today three different Amazon subscriptions that I had, including my Prime Membership which I have had since the program started, probably a couple of decades now. This feels a little similar to when I got rid of my Tesla in early 2024 in favor of another EV, due to Musk.
None of my cancellations take effect immediately, and I am not under illusions that my little gestures will amount to more than a rain drop in the ocean, but I think as consumers we each have our limit as to what we will associate with… My limit is when a violent thug is very clearly is going to end the rule of law in the US, really just in order to seize power and have their violent thug day in the sun, then he should under no circumstances get any support, from anyone that I am associated with.
To the best of my knowledge, I do not yet know of Bezos “supporting” Trump, but if he is going to run what was one of the world’s top news publications, then he’d better think about whether he is going to ruin that publication or not, at a moment when we desperately need their voice, and the integrity and hard work of their journalists. Have some of them now quit?
I do have hope that Bezos will come around. He did something that took some bravery, (from what little I could tell) in famously standing up to the blackmail of the National Enquirer a few years back. I haven’t heard anything (yet) to indicate that he is some sort of honest-to-goodness Trump supporter. However, I think Bezos is probably smart enough to recognize that if Trump becomes President, this chilling of the Washington Post’s editorial policy is but the first taste of what is to come. There is more at stake than hundreds of billions in market capitalization. Maybe Bezos should not have gotten into the newspaper business, if he did not want to be in this situation. And maybe he should not have hired someone to oversee his paper who, based on his employment history, might well undercut key principles of good journalism.