The Washington Post Building at One Franklin Square in Washington, D.C., June 5, 2024.
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The Washington Post said Friday it would not endorse any candidate in the presidential election this year — or ever again — breaking decades of tradition and drawing immediate criticism of the decision.
But the newspaper also published an article by two staff reporters revealing that editorial page staffers had penned an endorsement of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris over GOP nominee Donald Trump in the election.
“The decision not to publish was taken by the newspaper owner – Amazon “Founder Jeff Bezos,” the article said, citing two sources familiar with the events.
When he was president, Trump was critical of billionaire Bezos and the Washington Post, which he bought in 2013.
The newspaper in 2016 and again in 2020 endorsed Trump's election rivals, Hillary Clinton and President Joe Biden, in editorials that condemned the Republican in explicit terms.
In a 2019 lawsuit, Amazon claimed it lost a $10 billion cloud computing contract with the Pentagon to Microsoft because Trump used “inappropriate pressure… to harm his perceived political enemy” Bezos.
Since 1976, The Washington Post has regularly endorsed candidates for president, with the exception of the 1988 race. All of these endorsements have been for Democrats.
In a statement to CNBC, when asked about Bezos' alleged role in killing endorsements, Kathy Bird, the Post's chief communications officer, said: “This was a decision by The Washington Post not to endorse, and I will refer you to the publisher's full statement.”
On Friday evening, the Washington Post published a third article signed by the newspaper's opinion columnists, which stated, “The Washington Post's decision not to provide support in the presidential campaign is a grave mistake.”
“It represents an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper we love and for which we have worked for 218 years,” the article said. “This is the establishment’s moment to make clear its commitment to democratic values, the rule of law, international alliances, and the threat that Donald Trump poses to them — the exact points the Washington Post made in its endorsements of Trump’s opponents in 2016 and 2020.” “.
CNBC has requested comment from Amazon, where Bezos remains the largest shareholder.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos arrives for his meeting with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the British diplomatic headquarters in New York City, September 20, 2021.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images News | Getty Images
“The Washington Post will not endorse a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election,” the publication's publisher and CEO, Will Lewis, wrote in an online article explaining the decision.
“We have returned to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates,” Lewis wrote.
“We realize this will be read in a number of ways, including an implicit endorsement of one candidate, a condemnation of another, or an abdication of responsibility,” he wrote.
“This is inevitable. We don't see it that way. We see it consistent with the values that The Washington Post has long stood for and what we hope for in a leader: character and courage in the service of American morality, and reverence for the American people.” The rule of law and respect for human freedom in all its aspects.”
Seven of the 13 paragraphs in Lewis' article either quote at length or refer to statements by the newspaper's editorial board in 1960 and 1972 explaining the newspaper's rationale for not endorsing presidential candidates in those years, which included its identity as an “independent newspaper.”
Lewis noted that the newspaper endorsed Jimmy Carter in 1976 “for reasons understood at the time” — which he did not specify.
“But we had that before that, and that's what we'll come back to,” Lewis wrote.
“Our mission as a newspaper in the capital of the most important country in the world is to be independent,” he wrote. “And that is what we are and will be.”
Multiple media outlets reported that editor-at-large Robert Kagan, a member of the newspaper's opinion section, resigned after the decision.
More than 10,000 comments from readers were posted on Lewis' article, many of whom criticized the Washington Post for its decision, saying they had canceled their subscriptions.
One comment wrote: “The most important elections in our country, the choice between fascism and democracy, and you sit? Cowards. Fearful and immoral cowards.” “Oh, and by the way, I'm going to cancel my subscription, because you're putting business before morals and ethics.”
The announcement came days after Mariel Garza, editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Times, resigned in protest over the paper's owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong,'s decision not to make a presidential endorsement.
“I am resigning because I want to make clear that I do not agree with us remaining silent,” Garza told the Columbia Journalism Review. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. That's how I stand up.”
Sun-Shiong, like Bezos, is a billionaire.
Marty Barron, former editor of the Washington Post, described that newspaper's decision as “cowardice, and democracy was a victim of it.”
“@realdonaldtrump will see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner @jeffbezos (and others),” Barron wrote, “an annoying weakness in an institution famous for courage.”
The Washington Post Guild, the union that represents the newspaper's employees, said in a statement posted on the social media site Endorsing presidential candidates, especially just 11 days before an election of such great importance.”
“The letter from our CEO, Will Lewis — and not from the editorial board itself — makes us concerned about management interference in our members’ editorial work,” the union said in the statement, which referred to the newspaper’s report on Bezos’ role. In the decision.
“We are already seeing cancellations from previously loyal readers,” the guild said. “This decision undermines the work of our members at a time when we should be building the trust of our readers, not losing it.”
Former Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, whose paper won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for the Watergate break-in during the Nixon administration, said in a statement: “We respect the traditional independence of the editorial page, but this decision, 11 days away from the 2024 presidential election, ignores The Washington Post's overwhelming journalistic evidence about the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy.
“Under the ownership of Jeff Bezos, The Washington Post’s news operation has used its abundant resources to rigorously investigate the danger and damage a second Trump presidency could cause to the future of American democracy, and that makes this decision all the more surprising and frustrating, especially in late 2018.” “The electoral process,” Woodward and Bernstein said.
“Today was an absolute stab in the back,” columnist Karen Attia wrote in a post on the social media site Threads.
“What an insult to those of us who have literally put our careers and lives on the line to denounce threats to human rights and democracy,” Attiya wrote.
“The first step toward fascism is when a free press trembles in fear,” Rep. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat, tweeted about the news.
Trump in August told Fox Business News that Bezos called him after the Republican narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in July during a campaign rally in western Pennsylvania.
“He was very nice even though he owned the Washington Post,” Trump said of Bezos.
Bezos' last post on X was on July 13, hours after the assassination attempt.
“Our former President showed tremendous grace and courage under literal fire tonight,” Bezos wrote in that tweet. “So grateful he is safe and so sad for the victims and their families.”
The Associated Press reported that Trump met on Friday in Austin, Texas, with executives from Blue Origin, a space exploration company owned by Bezos, including CEO David Limb.
