Washington Post to No Longer Endorse Presidential Candidates
(Bloomberg) -- The Washington Post won’t be making a presidential endorsement for the 2024 election or in any future presidential races, becoming the latest news publication to pull away from backing political candidates.
William Lewis, the newspaper’s publisher and chief executive officer, said in a statement Friday that the Post is “returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates,” with the goal of providing “nonpartisan news for all Americans.” The paper only began endorsing candidates consistently starting in 1976, he said.
“We recognize 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 as an abdication of responsibility,” Lewis wrote. “That is inevitable. We don’t see it that way.”
The paper, which is owned by Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos, had drafted an endorsement for Vice President Kamala Harris, according to the union that represents Post staffers.
“The decision to not to publish was made by the Post’s owner,” the Washington Post Newspaper Guild said in a statement.
A spokesperson for Bezos didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, while a representative for the paper declined to say any more than what the publisher had written.
The change is significant for the Post, which uncovered the Watergate scandal that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation, and has a long history of standing up to those in power, winning more than 70 Pulitzer prizes in the process.
Marty Baron, a former executive editor of the paper, said in a statement on the social media platform X on Friday that the lack of an endorsement “is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty,” and that former President Donald Trump would use it as an invitation to “further intimidate” Bezos.
The paper has made other endorsements in this election cycle, including Democrat Angela Alsobrooks in a Maryland race for US Senate.
Robert Kagan, an editor at large for the paper, said he resigned in protest on Friday, confirming earlier reports by Semafor and other news outlets.
The publication has faced other controversy in recent months over Lewis’ ties to a phone hacking scandal at a previous employer and reports that he had tried to quash stories about his involvement.
Bezos, who is the world’s second-richest person, has businesses with contracts worth billions of dollars that depend on the federal government, including cloud-computing services and his Blue Origin space company.
The Bezos/Trump rivalry goes back nearly a decade when Bezos cheekily tweeted that he’d give Trump a seat on one of his space exploration company’s rockets.
Trump tried to blunt any critical stories written about him in the Post by linking the paper to its wealthy owner. Bezos initially wore Trump’s criticisms as a badge of honor, and openly lambasted the candidate during the 2016 campaign, accusing him of “eroding our democracy.”
Bezos muffled his criticisms’ somewhat after Trump was elected and the president’s bashing influenced Amazon’s stock price and the billionaire’s own wealth, like in 2018 when Trump criticized Amazon’s dependence on the US Postal Service for deliveries.
The Post’s decision is part of a growing trend of media outlets choosing not to endorse political candidates. Editorial page editors at the Los Angeles Times resigned this week after the newspaper’s owner blocked a planned endorsement for Harris. The New York Times said in August that it would end endorsements for state elections, but would continue to back presidential candidates, with the editorial board endorsing Harris in September.
The trend has affected local papers as well, with a co-owner of the Baltimore Sun stating in January that the newspaper would no longer endorse political candidates on its editorial page. Newspaper owner Alden Global Capital decided in 2022 that its more 200 publications would no longer back presidential, senate and gubernatorial candidates.
--With assistance from Spencer Soper and Matt Day.
(Updates with editor leaving in tenth paragraph.)
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