There are always risks in openly supporting a political position when you’re a successful businessman, but in an electoral system like America’s it’s common for major millionaires to donate to candidates’ campaigns. Elon Musk supported Trump and Bill Gates did the same with Harris.

However, Jeff Bezos, through his newspaper Washington PostHe chooses to remain at equal distance by refusing to support any candidate, costing him a serious internal crisis. Finance Times.

Equal distance is not accepted in the USA. Elon Musk has been donating hundreds of millions of dollars to Donald Trump’s campaign for weeks and has been working overtime to attend rallies in support of the Republican candidate. As published Forbes81 billionaires have publicly expressed their support for Kamala Harris, including Bill Gates, who has always kept his political preference secret.

However, in an unprecedented decision in the last 36 years, Jeff Bezos ordered those in charge of The Washington Post, which he bought for $190 million in 2013, not to publish an editorial supporting one of the names in the White House race. .

The decision triggered the storm. Bezos’ decision regarding the newspaper’s stance on any candidate raised eyebrows among both the paper’s readers and prominent members of the editorial staff.

More than 200,000 people had canceled their digital subscriptions as of noon last Monday, according to public broadcaster NPR. Some cancellations do not have an immediate effect, so the figure may be much higher at the end of the month. This represents approximately 8% of the newspaper’s total 2.5 million paid subscribers.

Additionally, according to EFE, 18 columnists signed a statement protesting the decision because, in their opinion, this decision “represents an abandonment of the newspaper’s opinions.” Columnists Molly Roberts, David Hoffman, and Mili Mitra resigned from the paper’s editorial board, and Robert Kagan, the publication’s editor-in-chief and acclaimed columnist, resigned in protest of the move.

Jeff Bezos’ reasons. Owner Washington Post He wanted to calm things down by publishing the reasons that led him to make this decision. In his statement, Bezos stated that the press should not be a judge or a party in the election processes, and assured that he did this to protect the impartiality of a press with very low credibility. “Endorsing a candidate does nothing to tip the balance of the election (…) but instead creates a perception of bias,” Bezos said in his editorial.

Also in his article, Amazon’s founder, Blue Origin CEO William Lewis; Amazon CEO Andy Jassy with Republican candidate Donald Trump, as published cnn. The discussions held before the newspaper’s decision not to publish the editorial showing its support for Harris’ candidacy cast a shadow over possible pressures from Trump. CNBC.

A decision unprecedented since 1988. In a public statement by The Washington Post’s executive, the media acknowledges that the situation is unprecedented in the last 36 years, but points out that this is not the first time the newspaper has adopted this equidistant attitude.

Marty Baron, former managing director of the Washington Post, said in an interview: NPR Although it is true that the reasons put forward by the newspaper management are justified, it seems that they did not choose the right moment to implement them. “If this decision had been made three years ago, two years ago, maybe even a year ago, there would have been no problem. A reasonable decision, no doubt. But it was made a few weeks after the election and there were no serious problems. This was clearly done for other reasons than for high-principled reasons .”

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Image | Van Ha, Unsplash (Mr. Cup / Fabien Barral)