Washington Post in turmoil after opting against 2024 presidential endorsement
Jeff Bezos-owned news outlet faces criticism that move was motivated by concern of retribution by Donald Trump.
Thousands of Washington Post readers have cancelled their subscriptions. Staffers have gone public with their outrage. Owner Jeff Bezos is under scrutiny.
The Washington Post is facing a crisis over its decision not to endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential race, a move the news outlet announced Friday.
Several current and former employees said refusing to take a stand was an abandonment of the Post’s principles. Many readers, including author Stephen King and former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney, said they had cancelled their Post subscriptions.
“We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates, ” Publisher William Lewis announced in a column on Friday. Before 1976, the paper mainly abstained from endorsing a candidate.
People close to the Post, though, said the paper had drafted an editorial in favour of Vice President Kamala Harris. The decision not to endorse prompted complaints inside the newsroom – and among the Post’s reader base. Critics suggested the news outlet and its owner, Bezos, were concerned about retribution from Donald Trump should he win next week’s presidential election.
The Los Angeles Times also recently decided against endorsing a candidate, triggering outcry from readers and staff as well.
“From a distance you can’t look at this and say it isn’t an act to curry favour with one presidential candidate,” said Peter Bhatia, chief executive of the Houston Landing, an independent, non-profit digital news organisation and the former editor of the Detroit Free Press. “That’s really unfortunate. And the implications are profound.”
Lewis said on Friday that the absence of an endorsement isn’t intended as a tacit sign of support or condemnation of either candidate.
Rather, he said, it is “a statement in support of our readers’ ability to make up their own minds on this, the most consequential of American decisions – whom to vote for as the next president.” Lewis said not endorsing was “a Washington Post decision”.
People concerned about Bezos’ impact, including one editor who quit after the Post’s decision, pointed to a meeting the billionaire’s space-exploration company, Blue Origin, had with Trump on Friday, the same day of the non-endorsement announcement.
Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp was in Texas for a meeting with Gov. Greg Abbott, and afterwards had a chance to briefly meet Trump, who had just wrapped up a rally in Austin. The two shook hands and exchanged pleasantries about space in an encounter that lasted just a few minutes, Limp told The Wall Street Journal on Sunday.
“The meeting with Trump was opportunistic and planned only that morning after meeting with the Governor,” Limp said, adding that Bezos didn’t know about the meeting.
“Given that, it’s crazy to think there was some quid pro quo because of this meeting.”
On Sunday, Lewis said through a spokeswoman that the decision “was made entirely internally and neither campaign nor candidate was given a heads up or consulted in any way at any level.”
Blue Origin has won major contracts from federal agencies, including a $US3.4 billion ($5.15bn) deal with NASA to develop a moon lander for a future exploration mission. Bezos’ core business, Amazon, is facing a monopoly lawsuit filed last year by the Federal Trade Commission.
A spokesman for Amazon declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Trump didn’t respond to a request for comment.
On Friday evening, a group of Washington Post opinion columnists signed a short piece that described the decision as a “terrible mistake” and said it “represents an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love”.
Investigative reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, as well as former Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron, publicly criticised the decision. “This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty,” Baron wrote on X on Friday.
On political endorsement https://t.co/e5OTZhylIE
— Marty Baron (@PostBaron) October 25, 2024
This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty. @realdonaldtrump will see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner @jeffbezos (and others). Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.
Thousands of people have cancelled their Post subscriptions in recent days, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Some Post journalists issued pleas on social media for readers not to cancel, saying it would only hurt the news outlet’s ability to hold the powerful accountable.
Readers were also calling online for boycotts of Amazon or encouraging shoppers to cancel their Amazon Prime accounts in protest.
It isn’t clear how much sway a newspaper’s presidential endorsement has these days, say some media observers. But that hasn’t stopped many from still issuing them. The Wall Street Journal hasn’t endorsed any presidential candidate since 1928.
Until its decision this year, the Los Angeles Times endorsed Democrats in every election since 2008. Owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong asked instead for a side-by-side comparison of the candidates’ policies. “Instead of adopting this path as suggested, the Editorial Board chose to remain silent,” he wrote.
Editorial page editor Mariel Garza subsequently resigned, as did two other members of the Los Angeles Times editorial board.
Dr Soon-Shiong later told the Los Angeles Times that he feared that picking one candidate would exacerbate already deep divisions in the country.
Bezos expressed his hesitation around an endorsement at a meeting with top opinion-section leaders in Miami in late September, according to people familiar with the matter. The Miami meeting was previously reported by the New York Times. At that point, he had not issued a firm edict on the matter.
Some Post leaders expressed reservations about withholding an endorsement, these people said.
Bezos, who purchased the Post in 2013 for $US250 million, was initially hesitant to do the deal. He told people around him that he understood the newspaper’s investigations could create uncomfortable situations for his businesses, according to people familiar with the matter.
Trump and Bezos have had a fraught relationship for years, with Trump calling Amazon a monopoly since before his 2016 election and lamenting the Washington Post’s coverage of him as a candidate and then as president.
Dow Jones Newswires
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