The Washington Post’s former executive editor, Marty Baron, has popped up on Radio National’s breakfast program and he’s not happy with Amazon (and Post) owner Jeff Bezos.

Bezos’ recent decision to drop the paper’s tradition of writing an editorial endorsement of a presidential candidate has gone down like a lead balloon and cost the paper more than 200,000 subscribers. It’s the first time since 1976 (with one exception) that the paper has not done so.

Baron is one of the most respected editors in the US – he was in charge of the Boston Globe when the paper won a Pulitzer Prize for its investigation of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church (which was later chronicled in the movie Spotlight) – and had a hugely successful career at the Post, too.

Baron told RN’s Patricia Karvelas that dropping the editorial endorsement, less than two weeks before election day, was an act of cowardice and “absolutely the wrong decision to be made”.

While Bezos had stood by him during his entire time as executive editor of the Post and acted with integrity “but something here has changed”.

“He said in his piece in the Washington Post yesterday that this was an act of principle, and that’s fine, except, you know, they could have waited until after this election to change the policy on presidential endorsements,” Baron said.

“I have a lot of concern about the timing and the decision itself.”

But Baron said that unlike the hundreds of thousands of people cancelling their subscriptions, he would not be withdrawing his support for the paper.

“I’m not cancelling my subscription, and I urge people not to do so, their subscriptions go to support incredible investigative work, really important investigative work that’s essential to our democracy.”

Baron added that Donald Trump’s close relationship with Space X and Tesla owner Elon Musk may have been in the back of Bezos’ mind – the pair own rival space companies – when he scrapped the endorsement.