Democracy dies in darkness ... but revenue keeps the lights on.

Is that the calculation Jeff Bezos is employing? According to Washington Post staffers, the Amazon super-billionaire has suddenly grown skittish about allowing the paper to endorse Kamala Harris, as they have all expected its board to do. The absence of an endorsement with only twelve days to go is already raising eyebrows inside and outside the paper, reports Oliver Darcy at his new platform Status:

Why hasn't The Washington Post made an endorsement in the 2024 presidential race?

It's a question, I'm told, that is being discussed amongst some staffers at the Jeff Bezos-owned and Will Lewis-led newspaper. With less than two weeks until Election Day, and with millions of votes already cast, The Post has remained conspicuously silent on one of the highest-stakes contests in recent memory. ...

It is not as if these newspapers have a particularly difficult decision before them. On one side is an Adolf Hitler-praising autocratic-wannabe who has vowed to seek retribution against his perceived enemies, should he find himself back in the Oval Office. On the other side is a relatively run-of-the-mill Democratic politician who respects the rule of law and American democratic order.

Well, I guess we have the Status endorsement figured out. 

Darcy points out that this has become rather acute after the Los Angeles Times had its endorsement vetoed by its multi-billionaire owner. That led its editorial board editor to resign in protest, Max Tani noted at Semafor:

On Tuesday, Semafor reported that in recent weeks, executive editor Terry Tang told the Los Angeles Times editorial board that the newspaper’s billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong did not want the board to endorse a candidate for president this election. The move was a break from recent tradition; the paper had endorsed a Democrat for president in every election since 2008.

In a brief email to Semafor on Wednesday, Mariel Garza, the paper’s editorials editor, confirmed that she was leaving the paper. Garza had served as deputy editorial page editor since 2021, but was elevated by Tang in April to lead the editorial board.

In an interview with former editorial board lead Sewell Chan for the Columbia Journalism Review, Garza said she was “resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not okay with us being silent. In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”

A lot of this seems like puffery rather than principle. The idea that the LAT is violating some "tradition" at a newspaper that's been around for more than a century for breaking a 12-year streak is rather ludicrous. In relation to WaPo, few will mistake their editorial direction as long as they keep running that haughty banner across the top of every page. Does anyone really believe that WaPo readers think that the paper would consider endorsing Trump?

Come on, man.

On the other hand, with that expectation, why not publish the endorsement? The New York Post passes along Darcy's suggestion that Bezos may be worried that Trump will retaliate when he wins:

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.

Well, maaaaayyybeeee, but Bezos is one of the world's wealthiest men. If Bezos doesn't have eff-you money, no one does. He may be worried about a Trump administration freezing the paper out of information, but the WaPo would hardly be alone in that situation. For instance, the New York Times has a banner editorial today re-running its July 11 anti-endorsement of Trump today, "Donald Trump Is Unfit to Lead." It's exactly what you'd expect -- Trump is "dangerous," etc etc.

Of course, at the same time, the NYT is running a new feature extolling the current Taliban chief as a moderate with whom the West should be working. 

Anyway, all of the endorsement controversies really only matter to the navel-gazers at their publications. Voters turned all of that off years ago, thanks to the way that the media has destroyed the trust the public used to have in their product. The Protection Racket Media just haven't figured that out ... because they stopped listening decades ago. 

Update: VIP members were quick to point out in the comments that Bezos may be more worried about his core business rather than his journalistic hobby shop. Amazon Web Services competes for billions in gov't contracting, plus has ongoing concerns about anti-trust actions. That's a good point, although perhaps also a rather depressing one about the nature of gov't contracting.