In an op-ed released this week, Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos rejected speculation that his decision to block the paper from endorsing Kamala Harris was about preserving billions of dollars in government contracts for his his space exploration company in the event that Trump is elected. Instead, he insisted, the decision to end the paper’s long tradition of presidential endorsements was made so as not to create a “perception of bias.”

More than 250,000 subscribers—about 10 percent of all paying readers—have now reportedly canceled their Washington Post subscriptions. Most of them presumably detest Trump. West Wing star Bradley Whitford and Liz Cheney were among those who broadcast their decision to cancel their subscriptions, with Cheney arguing that Bezos was “apparently afraid” to endorse “the only candidate in the race who’s a stable responsible adult because he fears Donald Trump.”

This is not the first time the public has been presented with evidence that Jeff Bezos sucks. It’s worth differentiating, though, between how egregious his meddling is from a journalistic ethics standpoint (very) and how much influence a Washington Post endorsement would have on the presidential election (not much).

The logic of canceling subscriptions for either reason is a little hard to comprehend. Bezos bought the Post in 2013 for $250 million. It lost $77 million in 2023, when its audience........

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