Washington Post columnists push back against non-endorsement decision: NPR

The Washington Post Buildings in Washington, DC, on June 5.

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

“The Washington Post’s decision not to support the presidential campaign is a terrible mistake,” said a joint column signed by 17 post Saturday afternoon columnists.

The opinion piece, published on the newspaper's website, argued that the president's support serves as a reminder to readers post stands for. It stated that the newspaper could not shirk its responsibility to stand up for the fundamental values ​​of democracy threatened by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. His editorials repeatedly warned that Trump was unfit for office.

“An independent newspaper could one day refrain from supporting the president. But this is not the time when a candidate is taking positions that directly threaten press freedom and constitutional values,” the column added. It was signed by some postThe most prominent writers include Pulitzer Prize winner Eugene Robinson, David Ignatius and Jennifer Rubin.

NPR first broke the news of Bezos' decision. The column appeared just hours after publisher William Lewis made the announcement Friday afternoon. In his own opinion piece, Lewis stated that the post made no routine recommendations until 1976. He said it was time to return to that tradition and “support readers' ability to form their own opinions.”

The post had written an editorial recommendation for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris earlier this month. But it was ultimately abolished by the newspaper's billionaire owner, Bezos and Amazon founder post reported. The Post's revelation came just days after it was reported that the Los Angeles Times Owner Patrick Soon-Shiong prevented the newspaper's editorial team from endorsing Harris.

A screenshot from Ann Telnaes' cartoon episode The Washington Post's announcement of no presidential endorsement.

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Two other columns published Friday expressed frustration about it Posts Decision. “I have never been so disappointed with the newspaper as I am today,” he wrote Editor and columnist Ruth Marcus. “This is not the time for such a change. “It is the time to speak out as loudly and convincingly as possible to make the arguments we made in 2016 and again in 2020: that Trump is dangerously unfit to hold the highest office in the country.”

Editor and columnist Karen Tumulty wrote: “Editorial boards exist to make judgments and speak for the institution. If this change in policy regarding support for the president was a stand on a long-ignored tenet of our past, why did the newspaper wait until 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 caption “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

“I was finishing the finale of another cartoon and texted my editor that I wanted to change my idea,” she wrote on Substack. “I grabbed a piece of Bristol and a big brush and painted whatever I felt.”

Washington Post Guild leadership also said it was deeply disturbed by the decision and the way management interfered with the editorial team's work. “We are already seeing rejections from once-loyal readers. This decision undermines the work of our members at a time when we should be building, not losing, the trust of our readers,” they wrote in a statement.

Readers on social media said they canceled their subscription post and they came quickly 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-in-Chief Robert Kagan also announced his resignation Friday after approval was rejected. In an interview with CNN, Kagan said the move was an indication of Bezos' troubling relationship with Trump. “This is clearly an attempt by Bezos to side with Trump in the run-up to his presidency,” he said.

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

When Trump was in office, he threatened to personally review Amazon's request to the Pentagon for a $10 billion cloud computing contract out of frustration Posts reporting on him. Instead, the Defense Department awarded the contract to Microsoft, which surprised outside industry analysts. It was later split between four companies, including Amazon, after a lawsuit was filed.

On Friday, just hours after the Post announced it would not support her, The Associated Press reported reported that Trump met with executives from Bezos' Blue Origin, which has a multibillion-dollar contract with NASA.

post Reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who investigated the Watergate scandal, wrote in a joint statement: “We respect the traditional independence of the newsroom, but this decision, 11 days before the 2024 presidential election, ignores the overwhelming reporting evidence from The Washington Post.” Threat that Donald Trump poses to democracy,” CNN’s Brian Stelter reported.

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and editor David Maraniss — who has worked at the paper since 1977 and describes himself as “the lifer of the Washington Post” — wrote on Democracy is at stake.” is despicable.”

He later added: “The newspaper I enjoyed working at for 47 years is in darkness.”

NPR's David Folkenflik contributed reporting.