The day after The Washington Post said it will not endorse a candidate in this year’s election or any future election, the billionaire owner of the newspaper is nowhere to be found as the newspaper’s staff are up in arms.
Jeff Bezos has not yet addressed the case, while his own paper’s journalists said that it was Bezos who personally killed the planned endorsement.
A source with knowledge told BBCNews on Friday that an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris had been written before being killed.
At least one editor has quit in the last 24 hours, and prominent Post employees have spoken out as many in the paper’s Opinion section are angry about how things were managed.
To many current and former staffers of the venerable newspaper, the timing of the announcement was highly suspect and has led them to believe that Bezos’s business interest was at play.
Former Post executive editor Marty Baron, who led the paper under Bezos during the first Trump administration called the decision an act of “cowardice.”
“To declare a moment of high principle, only 11 days before the election that is just highly suspect that is just not to be believed that this was a matter of principle at this point,” Baron told BBCNews Michael Smerconish on Saturday morning.
Trump has threatened Bezos “continually,” Baron pointed out.
But when Baron was in charge of the newspaper, Bezos “resisted that pressure” and he was “proud” and “grateful” for that leadership.
“Bezos has other commercial interests, a big stake and Amazon, he has a space company called Blue Origin,” Baron said.
“Trump has threatened to pursue his political enemies and he rewards his friends and he punishes his perceived political and think there’s no other explanation for what’s happening right now.”
Baron dismissed what Post publisher Will Lewis had to say about the non-endorsement as ‘laughable’ pointing out that the Post has endorsed in other races.
“If their philosophy is readers can make up their own minds on the big issues that they face in this democracy, then don’t run any editorials,” Baron said.
“But the fact is they only decided not to run an editorial in this one instance 11 days before the election.” On Saturday, Lewis sought to debunk some of the stories related to Bezos’s involvement in the endorsement process in an interview with BBCNews.
“The reporting around The Washington Post owner and the decision not to endorse a president has been misleading,” Lewis said. “He was not sent, did not read and did not opine on any draft.”
As Publisher, I would not endorse any presidential candidate. We are an independent newspaper and therefore we should help our readers to come up with their own conclusions.”
Several current Post journalists interviewed by BBCNews said they had no qualms with the editorial board not endorsing in any circumstance, some even agreeing with it.
But all of them expressed serious concern over the timing of the announcement.
“Deciding that now, right before an election, puts us in a lose-lose position: ‘Cowards’ for backing down, or complaining about not supporting Harris, which the Trump campaign is already attempting to discredit, one Post journalist said to BBCNews.
One said to BBCNews that “people are angry and feel like senior managers are undermining the journalism.”
Some people were very worried that a flood of readers responding to the news have cancelled their subscriptions, something that will immediately affect the newsroom.
Post columnist and opinion editor-at-large Robert Kagan, who had worked for the paper for 25 years, resigned on Friday specifically because of the non-endorsement.
“This is obviously an effort by Jeff Bezos to try to please Donald Trump in the hopes of a Trump victory,” Kagan said on BBCNews Erin Burnett OutFront on Friday.
“Trump has threatened to go after Bezos’ business.” Bezos oversees one of the biggest companies in America.
They have greatly complex associations with federal government. They rely on federal government.”
On Friday, Trump held a meeting with the representatives of Blue Origin – the company that belongs to Bezos, the owner of Post – shortly after the company decided to close the section Friday.
The company has a $3.4 billion deal with the federal government to construct a new spacecraft to carry astronauts to and from the lunar surface.
Trump advisers and supporters have been smirking since both the Post and the Los Angeles Times’ billionaire owners intervened to stop their papers from endorsing Harris.
A tweet by a Post reporter pointing out that Trump met with Blue Origin executives the same day the Post did not endorse Harris was retweeted by Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung with multiple “love” emojis.
Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller also pounced on the non-endorsement, writing: “When the Washington Post refuses to endorse the Kamala campaign, you know that the campaign is in a very bad shape.”
Earlier in the week, the Trump campaign used the Los Angeles Times’s non-endorsement in a fundraising email, saying that it was a ‘humiliating blow’ for Harris.
Other staffers argued that not endorsing will hurt American democracy despite Lewis saying in his note to the readers that it should not be interpreted as a ‘quiet endorsement of one candidate or a condemnation of the other’.
Woodward and Bernstein, who worked for the Post and broke the Watergate story, said in a joint statement:
‘This is surprising and disappointing,’ adding that the timing of the move ‘disregards the Washington Post’s own extensive journalistic coverage of the danger that Donald Trump poses to democracy.’
Seventeen Post opinion columnists also issued a statement on Friday evening calling their own newspaper’s failure to endorse a presidential candidate a ‘terrible mistake’.
“The Washington Post’s failure to endorse a candidate in the presidential campaign is a grave error,” they said.
“It is a betrayal of the core editorial beliefs of the newspaper we cherish, and for which we have spent a total of 218 years of our lives.”
