By Mayank Chhaya-

It is reasonable to describe The Washington Post editor-at-large Robert Kagan’s resignation to protest the paper’s billionaire owner Jeff Bezos’s decision not to let it endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president a harbinger of potentially dark times for the American media.
Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has apparently been prompted by the likelihood that former President Donald Trump could win the November 5 election and carry out a series of retributive strikes against those who have opposed him and have been critical of him. The Post is a distinguished member of that fraternity. Although Bezos bought the newspaper in 2013 for $250 million, an amount that did not even dent his personal fortune, he is aware that against the backdrop of the Post’s consistently damning coverage of Trump during and post-presidency its editorial endorsement of Harris could instigate him to unleash retributive investigations against Amazon once in the White House.
William Lewis, the newspaper’s publisher and CEO, wrote about the decision and I quote, “The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election. We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.”
However, that argument has not at all convinced Kagan and many others. In an interview with Erin Burnett on CNN he was categorical about the reasons behind Bezos decision not to allow the Post to endorse Harris.
“It was a pretty easy decision,” Kagan said, adding, “This is obviously an effort by Jeff Bezos to curry favor with Donald Trump in anticipation of his possible victory. Trump has threatened to go after Bezos’s business.”
Kagan then explained the rationale saying, “Bezos runs one of the largest companies in America. They have tremendously intricate relations with the federal government. They depend on the federal government and Trump has made it clear that he will attack media organizations that are critical of him. He has threatened to take away CBS’s license and this is clearly an effort by Bezos to try to get on Trump’s good side in advance of his presidency.”
That is as damning as it can get. No one should be surprised if Trump feels emboldened by Bezos’s move and chooses to project it as a triumph of his unvarnished tactics. Whether or not Trump brags about it and irrespective of the Post publisher’s assertion that in not endorsing Harris it was returning to its roots of not endorsing presidential candidates, Kagan’s comments will resonate across the US media world.
This is particularly because Trump has been openly talking about targeting his critics across a wide spectrum using the Department of Justice if he becomes president again. The Post publisher Lewis’s argument of returning to the paper’s roots has barely any mitigating merit because it has endorsed several candidates in other races even in this cycle. What makes the decision not to endorse anyone strikingly unusual is that it has coincided with the possibility of Trump’s return to the White House.
Meanwhile, in what seemed to be a studied contrast, The New York Times published an editorial today saying, “It is hard to imagine a candidate more unworthy to serve as president of the United States than Donald Trump. He has proved himself morally unfit for an office that asks its occupant to put the good of the nation above self-interest. He has proved himself temperamentally unfit for a role that requires the very qualities — wisdom, honesty, empathy, courage, restraint, humility, and discipline — that he most lacks.
Those disqualifying characteristics are compounded by everything else that limits his ability to fulfill the duties of the president: his many criminal charges, his advancing age, his fundamental lack of interest in policy and his increasingly bizarre cast of associates.
This unequivocal, dispiriting truth — Donald Trump is not fit to be president — should be enough for any voter who cares about the health of our country and the stability of our democracy to deny him re-election.
For this reason, regardless of any political disagreements voters might have with her, Kamala Harris is the only patriotic choice for president.”
The true test for Bezos much talked about hands-off approach towards the Post will come if and when under a prospective second Trump presidency, he lets the newspaper continue with its often harshly critical reporting of him or allows the obvious corporate interests of Amazon, with a market capitalization of 1.93 trillion dollars, take precedence over journalistic integrity. It is not necessarily a given that he would truckle under Trump’s pressure but equally, it is not a given that he would not.