The lack of support from the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times is part of a trend, but their readers are not happy

The number of newspapers supporting a presidential candidate has declined amid the industry’s financial woes over the past two decades, in part because owners believe there is no point in discouraging some subscribers by taking a clear stance in a time of political polarization.

However, last week Washington Post. AND Los Angeles Times angered readers for exactly the opposite reason: not choosing their preferred candidate.

The fallout from both decisions continued on Monday, with post office owner Jeff Bezos taking the unusual step of publicly defending the move on his own newspaper. Three members of the Post’s editorial board resigned, and some journalists appealed to readers not to express their disapproval by canceling their subscriptions. Many thousands have already done so.

Bezos, v note to readers, he stated that this is a principled position consisting in giving up support. People basically don’t care and see it as a sign of prejudice, he said. His comments came hours after NPR reported that more than 200,000 people had canceled their Washington Post subscriptions.

If the NPR report is true, it would be a surprising blow to the facility that he lost money and fired staff despite having over 2.5 million subscribers last year. A Post spokeswoman does not comment on the reports.

The Times admitted that it lost thousands of subscribers as a result of its own decision.

Both newspapers reportedly produced editorials in support of Democrat Kamala Harris. Instead, at the behest of Bezos and The Times’ Patrick Soon-Shiong, they decided not to support the initiative. The Post’s editor, Will Lewis, called it “a statement of affirmation of our readers’ ability to decide for themselves.”

By announcing their decisions within two weeks of Election Day, however, the newspapers opened themselves up to criticism that their publishers were trying not to anger Republican Donald Trump if voters returned him to power. “It didn’t seem like they were making a principled decision,” said John Woolley, co-director of the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Retired mail editor Martin Baron, on social mediahe said the decision showed “disturbing brazenness from an institution renowned for courage” and that Trump would see it as another invitation to intimidate Bezos.

In the 19th century, newspapers were sharply biased, both in their news columns and in their editorials. Even as the trend toward unbiased news reporting took hold in the 20th century, the editorial pages remained opinion-based and the two functions were separated.

Quite recently, in 200892 of the nation’s 100 largest newspapers endorsed Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain for president. But by 2020, only 54 people had made a choice between Trump and Joe Biden, according to the presidential design. Woolley said there were even fewer this year and they don’t even plan to count.

The Tampa Bay Times told readers this week that it is focusing its editorial coverage on local races where it can be more helpful. “We can’t think of a single reader who told the editorial office during last year’s election that they needed our help deciding how to vote for president. Not a single one,” the newspaper wrote in an unsigned article.

Research showed that readers did not pay attention to recommendations, and in a digital world, many did not understand the difference between straight news and editorials based on propaganda. In many cases, network owners took the decision from local editors. At a time when the news industry is struggling, she didn’t want to give any reader an excuse to leave the site.

“They really don’t want to hassle or piss off people who don’t like their endorsement,” said Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank. “The solution is just not to do them.”

This doesn’t seem to be hitting the headlines in two large metropolitan areas with liberal populations. The Post, under Baron’s leadership during the Trump administration, has seen its circulation skyrocket thanks to aggressive political coverage that often irritated the former president.

Apart from Baron, the decision was this condemned by Watergate-era reporting legends Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Columnists Robert Kagan and Michele Norris announced that they were leaving the newspaper in protest. Three of the Post’s nine editorial board members. he said they were leaving this role.

Karin Klein, editor of the Los Angeles Times’ Out West, wrote in the Hollywood Reporter. she left the newspaper. Klein said that while Soon-Shiong had the right to impose his will on editorial policy, by expressing a lack of support so late in the campaign, he was effectively expressing the opposite of the neutrality he claimed to be striving for.