People definitely don't need a subscription service that pivots to reinforcing the owner's beliefs. Even that is probably giving Bezos too much credit, since it falsely suggests principles beyond "what will make me richer."

Billionaires need to own a subscription service to reinforce their own beliefs

That's not what happened though. They were going to endorse a candidate and Bezos interfered and forbade it. There was no "choice" about it at all and that's why I (40+ year subscriber) unsubscribed. Sorry, not sorry.

I think when you've historically backed one party, changing that stance is seen as a political signal. And Bezos pretty immediately cozied up to trump so can you say they were wrong to think of it that way?

> don't quite understand why, because refusing to endorse anyone is a neutral step

Pulling the endorsement after it goes the wrong way isn’t neutral.

I think it was more that the editorial team was going to endorse and it was killed by the owner interfering with that division. If they had not intended to publish one it would be a different story. You lose all appearances of journalistic independence (real or imagined) and it erodes trust.

You misunderstand what occurred. The paper prepared an endorsement and Bezos killed it.

> they refused to endorse a candidate.

> for them choosing not to endorse Harris

There was no "they" or "them" involved.

"We have a policy against endorsement" and "oh shit our megabillionarie owner is cancelling the planned endorsement at the last minute because he wants to avoid pissing off Trump" are two very different things.

Because the entire reason they "refused to endorse a candidate" was at the behest of Bezos because he's a greedy coward. The actual people working at the paper were quite clear and vocal about their support of one candidate. The downside to one candidate is that his playbook was literally bringing facism to America via "Project 2025". The downside to the other candidate was highlighted by being a black woman, and not being progressive enough I guess? That's not a difficult choice for anyone outside of the ruling class.