Jeff Bezos issued a statement in defense of his strong stance on the non-endorsement of a presidential candidate by the news publication Washington Post.
Washington Post, owned by Bezos, hogged limelight for its recent controversial decision of not endorsing Kamala Harris or Donald Trump in the presidential election.
In an op-ed published by the Washington Post on Monday evening, Bezos said that the endorsement of a newspaper does not do anything to make significant changes in the results of the election and for him, it is the right thing to do.
"Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election," Bezos wrote.
"No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, 'I'm going with Newspaper A's endorsement.' None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it's the right one," he added.
Bezos' defense of the Washington Post's decision came after the editorial board of the newspaper resigned from their positions due to the non-endorsement of the publication of Vice President Kamala Harris. However, they still retained their staff roles in the publication. Aside from this, thousands of subscribers of the the newspaper also canceled their subscriptions.
Bezos explained in the editorial that the decision was all made "entirely internally." He also noted that there was no trade offs of any kind that prompted the decision.
"I would also like to be clear that no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here," said Bezos in relation to the Post's decision not to endorse anyone.
Bezos revealed however, that the CEO of his space exploration company, Blue Origin, met with former president Donald Trump on the day that the paper's decision was made known.
The Amazon founder said that he "sighed" when he found out about the meeting because he knew that it would be giving ammunition to those who would like to frame it as something else instead of being a merely "principled decision."
"But the fact is, I didn't know about the meeting beforehand. Even Limp didn't know about it in advance; the meeting was scheduled quickly that morning," Bezos further wrote.
"There is no connection between it and our decision on presidential endorsements, and any suggestion otherwise is false," he added in CNBC's report.
Bezos also noted that in a recent Gallup poll, out of civic and political institutions, the media is the least trusted.
"It's a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement," the Amazon founder wrote.
"Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn't see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose."
