'Washington Post' columnists push back against non-endorsement decision

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The Washington Post Building in Washington, D.C., on June 5. / Getty Images

A growing number of current and former journalists at The Washington Post are criticizing the legacy newspaper after owner Jeff Bezos decided to withhold a planned editorial endorsement for president for the first time in 36 years.

"The Washington Post’s decision not to make an endorsement in the presidential campaign is a terrible mistake," said a joint column that had been signed by 17 Post columnists as of Saturday afternoon.

The opinion piece, published on the paper's website, argued that presidential endorsements serve as a reminder to readers of what the Post stands for. It declared that the paper cannot retreat from the its responsibility to stand up for core democratic values threatened by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Its editorials have repeatedly warned that Trump is unfit for office.

"An independent newspaper might someday choose to back away from making presidential endorsements. But this isn’t the right moment, when one candidate is advocating positions that directly threaten freedom of the press and the values of the Constitution," the column added. It was signed by some of the Post's most prominent writers, including Pulitzer Prize winner Eugene Robinson, David Ignatius and Jennifer Rubin.

NPR first broke news of Bezos' decision. The column arrived just hours after publisher William Lewis made the announcement Friday afternoon. In his own opinion piece, Lewis explained that the Post did not routinely make endorsements until 1976. He said it was time to return to that tradition and support "readers' ability to make up their own minds."

The Post had drafted an editorial endorsement for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris earlier this month. But it was ultimately scrapped by the paper's billionaire owner Bezos, also the Amazon founder, the Post reported. The Post's revelation came just days after it was reported that the Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong blocked the paper's Editorial Board from endorsing Harris.

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A screenshot of Ann Telnaes' cartoon following The Washington Post's announcement to not make a presidential endorsement. / Screenshot by NPR

Two other columns published on Friday expressed frustration with the Post's decision. "I have never been more disappointed in the newspaper than I am today," wrote editor and columnist Ruth Marcus. "This is not the time to make such a shift. It is the time to speak out, as loudly and convincingly as possible, to make the case that we made in 2016 and again in 2020: that Trump is dangerously unfit to hold the highest office in the land."

Editor and columnist Karen Tumulty wrote, "Editorial boards exist to make judgments and to speak for the institution. If this change in policy regarding presidential endorsements was a stand on some long-ignored principle of our past, why did the newspaper wait until just 11 days before the election to announce it?"

In a chilling cartoon, Pulitzer Prize-winning artist Ann Telnaes depicted broad strokes of black paint with the title "Democracy Dies in Darkness."

"I was in the middle of completing the final of another cartoon and texted my editor that I wanted to change my idea," she wrote on Substack. "Grabbing a piece of bristol and a large brush, I painted what I felt."

The Washington Post Guild leadership also said they were deeply troubled by the decision and how management interfered with the work of the Editorial Board. "We are already seeing cancellations from once loyal readers. This decision undercuts the work of our members at a time when we should be building our readers’ trust, not losing it," they wrote in a statement.

Readers on social media said they had canceled their subscriptions to the Post and they came at a fast clip after news of the decision broke. More than 1,600 people canceled digital subscriptions in the first three hours, according to internal exchanges reviewed by NPR.

Post editor-at-large Robert Kagan also announced his resignation on Friday following the non-endorsement. In an interview with CNN, Kagan said the move indicated Bezos' concerning relationship with Trump. "This is clearly an effort by Bezos to try to get on Trump's good side in advance of his presidency," he said.

Bezos holds significant business interests before the federal government that involve billions of dollars each year, from Amazon’s shipping business and cloud computing services to his Blue Origin space company.

When Trump was in office, he threatened to personally review Amazon’s submission to the Pentagon for a cloud computing contract worth $10 billion — out of frustration of the Post's coverage of him. The Defense Department instead awarded the contract to Microsoft, surprising outside industry analysts. It was later divvied up among four companies, including Amazon, after it filed a lawsuit.

On Friday, just hours after the Post's announcement to not endorse, The Associated Press reported that Trump met with executives of Bezos’s Blue Origin, which has a multibillion-dollar contract with NASA.

Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who cracked the Watergate scandal, wrote in a joint statement: "We respect the traditional independence of the editorial page, but this decision 11 days out from the 2024 presidential election ignores the Washington Post's own overwhelming reportorial evidence on the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy," CNN's Brian Stelter reported.

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and editor David Maraniss — who has been at the paper since 1977 and describes himself as a "Washington Post lifer" — wrote on X: "The decision in this of all years to not endorse when democracy is on the line is contemptible."

He later added, "The paper I've loved working at for 47 years is dying in darkness."

NPR's David Folkenflik contributed reporting.