Washington Post staffers are growing restless over the left-leaning paper’s silence on endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president — with many suspecting that owner Jeff Bezos is behind the delay, according to a report.
Some insiders speculate the billionaire Amazon founder, who has not spoken publicly about the 2024 election, does not want to alienate Republican challenger Donald Trump as he gains momentum to recapture the White House next month, the Status newsletter reported Tuesday.
The newspaper’s editorial board is believed to have written its backing for the Democrat but has not gotten the go-ahead to publish it from Bezos and editor-in-chief Will Lewis, wrote former CNN media observer Oliver Darcy, who launched Status after leaving the network in August.
The WaPo staffers are perplexed over the Beltway broadsheet remaining mum given that 20 million voters have already sent in their ballots and Election Day is less than two weeks away, he added.
The newspaper supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020, publishing its endorsements much earlier in past election cycles. The New York Times endorsed Harris on Sept. 30.
The Post has sought comment from the Washington Post and Bezos.
Bezos, the second-richest person in the world with a net worth valued by Bloomberg Billionaires Index at $208 billion as of Thursday, was a frequent target of Trump during his first term in office — mainly due to the Washington Post’s coverage of his administration.
The paper’s silence comes against the backdrop of the drama playing out in the Los Angeles Times newsroom, where the editorial board was blocked from publishing its Harris endorsement by the outlet’s billionaire owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong.
Soon-Shiong’s intervention prompted Mariel Garza, the LA Times’ editorials editor, to resign in protest on Wednesday.
On his X feed, Soon-Shiong wrote that he wanted the editorial board to “draft a factual analysis of all the positive and negative policies by each candidate during their tenures at the White House” as part of a “clear and non-partisan information side-by-side” so “our readers could decide” whom to support.
Fortune 500 moguls have been reticent to weigh in on the election and have preferred to steer clear of political controversy for fear of angering the potential winner.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly complained to several people about the criticism he has received for his philanthropic work and has ceased supporting any endeavors that could be construed as partisan.
During the 2020 elections, Zuckerberg, the third-richest person in the world, whose net worth was valued by Bloomberg Billionaires Index at $200 billion as of Thursday, donated around $350 million to support election administration in the face of challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic.
But Zuckerberg was criticized by some who alleged that most of the funds tended to favor Democratic-leaning areas.
Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is privately backing Harris, but won’t say so publicly out of fear that Trump would retaliate against him if he were to become president again.