Washington Post, LA Times not endorsing a candidate

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The Washington Post's publisher, William Lewis, on Friday said the newspaper would not endorse a presidential candidate in this year's election or in future elections, a stance that sparked outrage from and some of its current and former employees, as well as subscribers.

"The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election. We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates," Lewis wrote in a note published on the newspaper's website.

The decision follows a move by Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong to block that newspaper's endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, which has sparked the resignation of the editorials editor, Mariel Garza, followed by the resignations of two other members of its editorial board.

Both Soon-Shiong and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos are billionaires who made their fortunes outside the media industry.

Former WaPo editor objects
Media observers decried the decisions, while some readers of the newspapers said they are canceling their subscriptions.

"This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty," wrote Marty Baron, the former editor of the Washington Post, who retired in 2021, on X Friday about the Washington Post's decision. Former President Donald Trump "will see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner @jeffbezos (and others). Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage."

The Washington Post Guild, which represents roughly 1,000 journalists and other workers at the media company, expressed concern that corporate management had interfered with the paper's editorial decision-making process.

"According to our reporters and Guild members, an endorsement for Harris was already drafted, and the decision to not to publish was made by The Post's owner, Jeff Bezos," the labor group said In a statement posted on X. "We are already seeing cancellations from once loyal readers. The decision undercuts the work of our members at a time when we should be building our readers' trust, not losing it."

Robert Kagan, an editor at large for the Washington Post, resigned from the editorial board as result of the decision not to endorse a candidate, according to NPR's David Folkenflik. "Kagan has been a persistent conservative critic of Trump, tying him to an autocratic tradition," Folkenflik wrote on X. "Uniformly outraged response from staff."

Some readers of both the Post and the Los Angeles Times said they planned to cancel their subscriptions, with some posting images of their subscription cancellation notices.

"Great, another billionaire protecting his own self-interest instead of the country's. Nice knowing you, @washingtonpost⁩. Subscription canceled," wrote Hollywood director Paul Feig on X.

Zach Wahls, an Iowa state senator and a Democrat, wrote, "I am a strong believer in paying for serious, high-quality journalism, and that is exactly why I am canceling my @washingtonpost subscription over this timid, cowardly decision that could not come at a worse possible — or more revealing — time."

The vast majority of reader responses on social media were negative, with many saying they had canceled their subscriptions, although a few expressed support for the Washington Post. "For the first time in my adult life, I'm proud of the Washington Post," one reader wrote.

Los Angeles Times resignations
On Thursday, Los Angeles Times veteran journalists Robert Greene and Karin Klein announced their resignations one day after the editorial page editor Garza left in protest over Soon-Shiong's decision not to endorse a candidate.

Greene, a Pulitzer Prize winner for editorial writing, said in a statement shared with the Columbia Journalism Review that he was "deeply disappointed" in the decision not to endorse Harris.

"I recognize that it is the owner's decision to make," he wrote. "But it hurt particularly because one of the candidates, Donald Trump, has demonstrated such hostility to principles that are central to journalism — respect for the truth and reverence for democracy."

Garza said the board had intended to endorse Harris and that she had drafted the outline of a proposed editorial, but that was blocked by Soon-Shiong.

An editorial board operates separately from the newsroom, and its writers' job is to present an issue and then take a side and lay out arguments to defend it.

The Washington Post’s outgoing editor-at-large and longtime columnist has made explosive claims that its owner Jeff Bezos struck a deal with Donald Trump in order to kill the newspaper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris.

Robert Kagan, who resigned from his position on Friday after more than two decades at the publication, told the Daily Beast that Trump’s meeting with executives of Bezos’ Blue Origin space company the same day that the Amazon founder killed a plan to support Harris was proof of the backroom deal.

“Trump waited to make sure that Bezos did what he said he was going to do, and then met with the Blue Origin people,” he said on Saturday. “Which tells us that there was an actual deal made, meaning that Bezos communicated, or through his people, communicated directly with Trump, and they set up this quid pro quo.”

The alleged collusion between Bezos and Trump, Kagan says, “is just the beginning,” adding that if the former president wins a second term, there will be “a lot of self censorship [in the media] and a lot of changing course just to be sure that they’re not going to be punished.”

Kagan became a vocal anti-Trump voice in 2016, writing about the dangers of authoritarianism in the event of a second Trump presidency, and about how the former president could jeopardize American democracy.

In 2023, Kagan warned about Trump’s potential influence on the media, saying, “Media owners will discover that a hostile and unbridled president can make their lives unpleasant in all sorts of ways.”

Bezos knows first hand the consequences of criticizing the former president. The Post’s 2016 endorsement of Hillary Clinton is widely thought to have led to him losing out on a $10 billion cloud computing defense contract awarded by the Trump administration. And, throughout the former president’s first term, he repeatedly attacked Bezos and Amazon, accusing them of scamming the United States Postal Service.

“This is what we have to look forward to,” Kagan said. “All Trump has to do is threaten the corporate chiefs who run these organizations with real financial loss, and they will bend the knee.

Donald Trump speaks with Satya Nadella, Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft, and Jeff Bezos, Chief Executive Officer of Amazon. The Washington Post/The Washington Post via Getty Im

While the billionaire tech mogul did not buckle to Trump’s threats in years past, Kagan said that Bezos’ shock decision to pull the Harris endorsement had “obviously been in the works for some time,” describing his formerly hands-off approach to owning the Post as “a lot of Kabuki.”

“We now know what Bezos’ intention was, therefore we now know why he hired Will Lewis,” he continued. “We were the ones who were naive in thinking that there was anything else going on here.”

Lewis, who is the newspaper’s publisher, claimed that the Post’s last-minute nixing of its endorsement had nothing to do with its owner, and was instead because, “I do not believe in presidential endorsements.” His claim contradicts reports from sources that Lewis “fought tooth and nail” to keep the endorsement.

According to Kagan, “all the facts” lead in the direction of Bezos attempting to transform the Post into something akin to The Wall Street Journal, a center right “anti-anti-Trump editorial slant,” with Lewis by his side.

“Some journalists will stick around for that. Some will leave. If they leave, they can be replaced,” he said.

With L.A. Times and WaPo, I would assume that the problem with Kamala Harris is that she is not left wing enough. She is far too conservative for those papers.

With L.A. Times and WaPo, I would assume that the problem with Kamala Harris is that she is not left wing enough. She is far too conservative for those papers.

It's not at all clear to my why Bezos isn't letting the WaPo endorse her.