Media tycoon Barry Diller, a friend to The Washington Post’s billionaire owner Jeff Bezos, called the timing of the newspaper’s decision not to endorse a presidential candidate a “blunder.”
“They made a blunder — it should’ve happened months before, and it didn’t, and that’s the issue with it,” Diller told CNBC’s Squawk Box on Monday.
Diller, 82, and his wife, fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, hosted Bezos’ star-studded engagement party to fiancée Lauren Sánchez at their Beverly Hills home last year.
But Diller criticized The Washington Post’s decision not to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris just weeks before Election Day.
“I think it was absolutely principled,” Diller said.
He said he spoke to Bezos after the decision was made.
“The mistake they made – and it was a mistake admitted by him – was timing,” Diller said.
The non-endorsement – which broke from 36 years of tradition – elicited outrage from staffers, readers and journalists at other outlets.
At least 250,000 readers canceled their subscriptions in the days following the paper’s announcement and at least three editorial board staffers turned in biting resignation letters.
The paper’s CEO and publisher, ex-Wall Street Journal boss Will Lewis, claimed he was the one who killed the board’s endorsement of Harris, which was reportedly already drafted.
But in an article for The Washington Post, the paper’s own reporters said Bezos axed the endorsement.
Days later, Bezos defended the paper’s decision to no longer publish presidential endorsements. He called it a “meaningful step in the right direction” to restoring public trust in journalism.
“Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election,” Bezos wrote. “No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, ‘I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.’ None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias.”
The Amazon founder acknowledged the inflammatory timing of the announcement, as the major party candidates are locked in a neck-and-neck race.
“I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it,” Bezos wrote.
Bezos said the decision not to issue an endorsement was made “entirely internally” and without consulting either campaign.
Robert Kagan, a member of the opinions section who resigned in protest, said the decision not to endorse stemmed from an alleged deal between Bezos and former President Donald Trump.
Kagan told The Daily Beast that Trump’s meeting with executives from Blue Origin, Bezos’ space company, the same day the endorsement was killed was proof of their scheme.
Diller serves as chairperson of travel booking site Expedia and IAC, a media conglomerate he founded in 1995 that owns brands like Dotdash Meredith, Care.com and The Daily Beast. Dotdash Meredith is the largest digital and print publisher in America, owning name brand magazines such as People and Southern Living.
Before he founded IAC, Diller worked at ABC, Paramount and Fox.
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