Staff fury as billionaire newspaper owners refuse to endorse presidential candidate

Phoenix, Arizona: Journalists at two major US newspapers were in revolt on Friday after their respective billionaire owners intervened to block endorsements of Vice President Kamala Harris and instead chose to endorse neither candidate in America’s knife-edge election.

The Washington Post, one of the country’s most respected news outlets and a 2022 Pulitzer Prize-winner for its coverage of the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots, upended decades of tradition by announcing on Friday it would make no endorsement at this or future presidential elections.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who now owns The Washington Post, reportedly made the decision to block an endorsement.Credit: AP

But the paper reported that staff had drafted an editorial supporting Harris, and the decision not to publish was made by its billionaire owner Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, citing sources familiar with the sequence of events.

It came after biotech tycoon Patrick Soon-Shiong vetoed the Los Angeles Times from endorsing the Democratic nominee earlier in the week, prompting that paper’s editorial chief to resign. The Post’s editor-at-large, Robert Kagan, also resigned on Friday, NPR reported, amid a “uniformly outraged response from staff”.

The Post’s publisher and chief executive, William Lewis, said the newspaper was “returning to our roots” by declining to endorse either candidate. Apart from 1952, the paper did not back a side until 1976 when it endorsed Democrat Jimmy Carter following the Watergate scandal (which it broke), and continued to make endorsements thereafter.

“But we had it right before that, and this is what we are going back to,” Lewis said in a statement published by the Post. “We recognise that this will be read in a range of ways, including as a tacit endorsement of one candidate, or as a condemnation of another, or an abdication of responsibility. That is inevitable. We don’t see it that way.”

The decision will be seen in the context of Republican nominee Donald Trump’s repeated hostility towards press he perceives as unfriendly, in particular The Washington Post and Bezos. As president, he branded it the “Amazon Washington Post” and a “lobbyist newspaper”, and nicknamed Bezos “Jeff Bozo”.

More broadly, Trump has vowed vengeance against media outlets and journalists he does not like, calling them “the enemy of the people” at a rally as recently as Thursday afternoon in Arizona.

On Friday, journalists’ guilds at both The Washington Post and LA Times condemned their papers’ refusal to endorse a candidate and the interventions of their wealthy owners.

The Post’s guild, or union, said readers were cancelling subscriptions. “This decision undercuts the work of our members at a time when we should be building our readers’ trust, not losing it.”

Separately, 11 of the paper’s columnists signed a note calling the decision a “terrible mistake” that abandoned fundamental editorial convictions about democratic values and the rule of law.

“An independent newspaper might someday choose to back away from making presidential endorsements. But this isn’t the right moment, when one candidate is advocating positions that directly threaten freedom of the press and the values of the Constitution,” they said.

LA Times staff wrote an open letter to Soon-Shiong calling on the paper to explain its decision to readers. “Whether the newspaper endorses a candidate is ultimately the owner’s prerogative,” it said. “However, the process must be clear and transparent to readers.”

It is generally recognised that endorsements from legacy media brands do not change votes, especially compared to those from pop megastars such as Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, both of whom have backed Harris.

But the newspapers’ decisions to stay neutral, and how they were made, will likely have a lasting effect beyond the resignation of senior staff. The Post quoted former executive editor Martin Baron, who held the role under the Trump presidency, saying the decision was cowardly and “a moment of darkness”.

“Donald Trump will celebrate this as an invitation to further intimidate [Bezos] and other media owners,” Baron wrote. “History will mark a disturbing chapter of spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”

Writing in The Guardian, former The New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan said readers were entitled to conclude the papers had been intimidated. “This is no moment to stand at the sidelines – shrugging, speechless and self-interested,” she said.

Meanwhile, other major US media brands have chosen to endorse Trump, including the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post, whose front page on Friday was dedicated to backing the former president’s return to office.

The tabloid, often said to be Murdoch’s favourite of his newspapers, abandoned Trump two years ago over the January 6 riots, saying he was “unworthy to be this country’s chief executive again”. In the 2022 midterm elections, it said his “terrible” MAGA candidates were dragging the Republican Party down.

But Friday’s endorsement said the “ridiculously hyperbolic” Trump was what the country needed, praising him for delivering higher wages, lower unemployment and secure borders during his first term before the pandemic.

By contrast, The New York Times endorsed Harris in late September in a blistering editorial that said Trump had proved himself morally and temperamentally unfit for office.

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