Jeff Bezos’ oped in Washington Post – he owns the newspaper – unsurprisingly set off a debate about journalism among journalists. Bezos, explaining his earlier decision that WaPo shouldn’t endorse any US presidential candidate, argued (a) an endorsement creates a perception of ‘bias’ and ‘non-independence’ and therefore (b) hurts the paper at a time ‘unresearched podcasts’ and ‘social media barbs’ are threats for newspapers. Plenty of commentators, including current and former WaPo journalists, disagree with Bezos on principle. This disagreement is different from critiques that allege Bezos killed his newspaper’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris because he feared a Trump backlash, should the latter win. Bezos denied this in his oped. Who to believe will be an interesting question for some journalists. But the question of principle underlying this conversation – whether a newspaper should be neutral – is important for all journalists, as well as newspaper owners.
The Times Of India has never endorsed a political leader or a political party via its editorial columns. We don’t believe it’s the job of a newspaper to put its stamp of approval on one of the competing candidates/parties. We believe the job of a newspaper is to observe, try to understand and analyse, all the while maintaining an academic distance.
This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Times of India.
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