There was uproar and outrage among the Washington Post’s current and former staffers and other notable figures in the world of American media after the newspaper’s leaders on Friday chose to not endorse any candidate in the US presidential election.
The newspaper’s publisher, Will Lewis, announced on Friday that for the first time in over 30 years, the paper’s editorial board would not be endorsing a candidate in this year’s presidential election, nor in future presidential elections.
After the news broke, reactions came flooding in, with people criticizing the decision, which, according to some staffers and reporters, was allegedly made by the Post’s owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos.
Karen Attiah, a columnist for the Washington Post who writes a weekly newsletter, called the decision an “absolute stab in the back”.
“What an insult to those of us who have literally put our careers and lives on the line, to call out threats to human rights and democracy,” she added.
In a statement, the union representing editorial staff and reporters at the Washington Post expressed that they were “deeply concerned” by the decision “especially a mere 11 days ahead of an immensely consequential election”.
“The role of an Editorial Board is to do just this: to share opinions on the news impacting our society and culture and endorse candidates to help guide readers,” the statement reads.
It also concerns that “management interfered with the work of our members in Editorial” they said, adding that according to the newspapers reporters and staffers, an endorsement for the vice-president, Kamala Harris, had already been drafted, and the decision to not publish was made by Bezos.
The union added that since the decision was announced, they are “already seeing cancellations from once loyal readers” and Semafor reported that in the 24 hours ending on Friday afternoon, about 2,000 subscribers had already canceled their subscriptions.
In a statement on X, Marty Baron, the former executive editor of the Washington Post, called the paper’s decision “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty”.
Donald Trump, Baron said, would “see this as an invitation to further intimidate the owner” of the Washington Post – Bezos. “Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage”, Baron added.
David Maraniss, a Pulitzer-winning reporter and editor at the Post, added: “The paper I’ve loved working at for 47 years is dying in darkness.”
Another former editor at the paper, Robert McCartney, said: “Given the choice this year, it’s appalling.”
Multiple outlets have also reported that Robert Kagan, the newspaper’s editor at large, has decided to resign from the editorial board following the announcement of the paper not to endorse in the presidential race.
Susan Rice, the former US ambassador to the United Nations and former domestic policy adviser for the Biden administration, called the decision “hypocritical”.
“So much for ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’,” she said, referring to the newspaper’s official slogan, adopted in 2017 under Bezos’s ownership. “This is the most hypocritical, chicken-shit move from a publication that is supposed to hold people in power to account.”
On Friday afternoon, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” and “WaPo” were trending on X, and NPR’s media correspondent, David Folkenflik, was reporting that “the furor” at the Washington Post was so much that its chief tech officer was getting engineers to block questions from readers about its decision to not make an endorsement.
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