Subscribers flee Washington Post as it decided not to support presidential candidate
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New York: The US newspaper The Washington Post lost 250,000 subscribers after the publication decided not to endorse a presidential candidate in the upcoming polls, according to the Guardian.
The outlets’ owner, Jeff Bezos, defended his decision terming it a ‘“meaningful step in the right direction” to restore Americans’ lost trust in news media, CNBC reported.
The NPR reporter David Folkenflik claimed that the publication shed 10% of the 2.5 million customers it had before the decision was announced on Friday.
Bezos said that decision should have been made earlier than the newspaper did, adding that ‘in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it.’
Bezos justified his decision as part of an effort to support journalists and journalism citing surveys that showed fall in trust on media.
Calling media the least trusted of all, he said that ‘Something we are doing is clearly not working’.
A survey by the New York Times showed that mainstream media were ‘trusted less than social media’.
Also more important, 55 per cent of those responded to the survey believed that media were bad for democracy.
Jeff Bezos’ decision to forgo support to a presidential candidates comes on the heels of a similar trend happening in the newspaper business.
USA Today announced on Tuesday neither the newspaper nor its more than 200 local papers would support a candidate.
Lark-Marie Antón, a spokesperson for the fifth-largest print publication with fourth-largest in digital subscription, said that the newspaper’s service was to ‘provide readers with the facts that matter and the trusted information they need to make informed decisions’.
