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The Washington Post — reeling from a mass exodus of subscribers over its refusal to endorse Kamala Harris — “aggressively ramped up its paid advertising campaign” on social media platforms that boost stories critical of Donald Trump, according to a report.
Owner Jeff Bezos has faced backlash over his decision last week to kill the endorsement for the Vice President, which has led to the resignation of several high-level staffers and a loss of more than 250,000 digital subscribers.
On Thursday, the news site Semafor reported that the publication had rolled out an ad blitz at the start of the week on social media sites such as Facebook that boosts its anti-Trump coverage.
The promoted stories centered around the former president’s campaign rhetoric, misstatements, supporters leaving his rallies early and Trump’s controversial comments about migrants in Ohio eating dogs, Semafor reported.
By contrast, the promoted stories about his Democratic challenger were neutral in tone and informative, Semafor found.
Before Monday, the newspaper had run around a dozen ads on Facebook for the month of October, mainly promoting the Washington Post brand and steering clear of any mention of Trump.
The New York Post reached out to WashPo for comment.
A source close to the situation told the New York Post that the Washington Post’s promoted stories on social media reflect high-performing content.
The content of the advertising posts is directly pulled from the respective reporting, according to the source.
“This isn’t new,” the source insisted.
The Washington Post’s promoted posts span a mix of its content across all of its verticals, including climate, style and other sections, the source added.
The Beltway paper’s increase in paid ads this week could also be a reflection of Facebook parent company Meta’s policy that prohibits new ads during the week of the election, which is set for Tuesday.
A source said that the Washington Post was likely getting some new ads up before the tech giant freezes new ad buys.
As of Thursday, at least 250,000 readers — or 10% — cancelled their digital subscriptions to the Washington Post in apparent protest of Bezos’ move to end the paper’s decades-long practice of endorsing a presidential candidate, according to National Public Radio.
Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, published a guest essay Monday, saying the decision to forego endorsements was a matter of “principle” intended to dispel the notion that his newspaper was biased.
But the move elicited howls of protest from readers on social media as well as journalists who are either former employees of the Washington Post or are currently employed there, such as award-winning Watergate sleuths Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
At least three editorial staffers resigned from the paper.
After Bezos’ decision was announced last Friday, some of the paper’s top editors and columnists met to discuss the controversy.
David Shipley, the newspaper’s opinion editor, listened as his colleagues blasted Bezos for harming the publication’s reputation as an “independent journalistic organization,” according to the Washington Free Beacon, which obtained audio of the meeting.
One staffer reportedly told Shipley that the “one thing that can’t happen in this country is for Trump to get another four years.”
Shipley responded by telling staffers that they were welcome to vent their frustration but that they would then need to either come to terms with Bezos’ decision and move on — or resign.
“Whatever you decide, I’m good with it,” Shipley said.
“What I really do want to impart is that you do not get stuck in the middle. Don’t be here if you don’t want to.”
Shipley told his colleagues that he spent an hour on the phone with Bezos in an effort to get him to change his mind and allow the editorial board to issue its endorsement of Harris — but the mogul refused to budge.
He said that while he agreed with the “principle that you do not have to do presidential endorsements,” he took issue with Bezos’s “timing, and the way in which the timing could be read.”
A similar dynamic has been playing out at the Los Angeles Times, where billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong blocked the editorial board from publishing its endorsement of Harris.
Soon-Shiong said he wanted the editorial board to present a side-by-side comparative analysis of the two candidates and their positions so that the readers could decide for themselves whom to support.
At least three LA Times staffers quit in protest and between 10,000 and 18,000 readers cancelled their subscriptions to the paper, according to reports.
