Good morning.
Two tech billionaires started this week with egg on their face, and for once, it had nothing to do with a live product demo.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and NantHealth founder Patrick Soon-Shiong blocked, each at the eleventh hour, the U.S. presidential endorsements of Kamala Harris by the editorial boards of their newspapers, the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, respectively. Both papers endorsed Joe Biden in 2020 and have a long history of endorsing political candidates.
Why are we shocked that two tech founders interfered at century-old newspapers they own? Because they vowed they wouldn’t when they bought them. “The best newspapers are the voice of the people,” Soon-Shiong wrote in 2018. Bezos was more forthright in 2013: “The paper’s duty will remain to its readers and not to the private interests of its owners.”
You can take the founder out of the mode, but you can’t take the mode out of the founder, I suppose. —Andrew Nusca
P.S. I’ll be interviewing the great Wynton Marsalis about jazz, leadership, and the future of democracy at our Fortune Global Forum, Nov. 11-12 in New York City. Interested? Request an invitation here.
Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Data Sheet? Drop a line here.
