The Washington Post this week "aggressively ramped up" its paid advertising on social media platforms to boost stories criticizing former President Donald Trump after the backlash over owner Jeff Bezos' decision to kill an endorsement for Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign.
The newspaper began its ad blitz at the beginning of the week on sites such as Facebook, with promoted stories centering around Trump's misstatements, campaign rhetoric, controversial comments about Haitian migrants in Ohio, and about supporters leaving his campaign rallies early, Semafor reported.
However, stories about Harris that were promoted were neutral in tone, the publication noted.
Before Monday, however, the Washington Post had run only about a dozen ads on Facebook for the full month, which promoted the newspaper and didn't mention Trump, reported The New York Post.
According to a source close to the situation, the Washington Post's promoted stories reflected content that performs high on the newspaper and was directly pulled from respective reporting and was nothing "new."
The source said the promoted posts were a mix of all of its content, not just political.
The increase in paid advertising this week on Facebook could also be a reflection of the policy of its parent company, Meta, not to accept advertising during the week of the election, said the source, adding that the Washington Post was likely increasing ads before the new ad buys are frozen.
Meanwhile, at least 250,000 readers, about 10% of the newspaper's circulation, canceled their subscriptions to protest Bezos' decision that the newspaper would not endorse a presidential candidate, breaking the publications' practice of several years.
Bezos, the founder of Amazon, said in a guest essay Monday that the decision was made as a matter of "principle" and that endorsements "create a perception of bias" for newspapers.
But readers, along with journalists including the Post's arguably most famous reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, protested the move, and at least three editorial page staffers quit their jobs at the paper.
The Los Angeles Times has faced similar protests after billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong blocked the paper's editorial board from endorsing Harris.
He said he had wanted the board to present a side-by-side analysis of Trump and Harris rather than an endorsement so readers could decide for themselves. This led to at least three L.A. Times staffers quitting in protest, while between 10,000-18,000 people canceled their subscriptions.