Breaking with nearly four decades of tradition, the Washington Post will not take a stand for either the Republican or the Democratic candidate before the November 5 presidential election. The waves of the decision announced on Friday did not subside even after several days, the newspaper's readers are canceling their subscriptions en masse.

"We're going back to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates," CEO William Lewis announced in Friday's edition of the Washington Post. In his article published in the newspaper's opinion section, the head of the publishing house admitted: it is inevitable that the newspaper's decision will be interpreted in many ways, as tacit support of one candidate or condemnation of the other. However, he emphasized that the Post's gesture does not mean escaping responsibility, but "standing up for our readers' own decision-making ability", Maszol.ro observed.

announced eleven days before the election on November 5, provoked strong reactions from the profession, politicians, the public and, last but not least, the editors. The newspaper's journalists found the decision particularly shocking because two of the newspaper's authors had received the Pulitzer Prize in New York just one day earlier: David Hoffman for his series of articles entitled The Annals of Autocracy, and Vladimir Kara-Murza for his writings born in a Moscow prison.

Post opinion columnist Robert Kagan announced his resignation in protest, calling the decision a "premature capitulation." With this, he indicated that the newspaper's billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, stopped the communication of the position in favor of the Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. “Anyone who is as integral to the American economy as Bezos ... obviously wants to be on good terms with those in power. (…) This episode provides an insight into the next presidency of Donald Trump," said the publicist, recalling that Trump threatened retaliation against his political rivals. (By the way, Robert Kagan is the husband of Victoria Nuland, who started her career in the national security cabinet of the neoconservative Dickie Cheney, and then retired from the position of deputy secretary of state in the Biden administration this spring after an important role in the Ukraine crisis.)

The Washington Post, which was bought in 2013 by the owner of Amazon and the space exploration company Blue Origin, has regularly sided with one of the presidential candidates since 1976, with the exception of 1988, when George Bush Sr. won a landslide victory over Democrat Michael Dukakis. According NPR, the break with tradition was explained to the employees at a "tense" meeting. Previously, independent of the rest of the paper, the opinion column, which practically operated as a separate editorial office, had already prepared the resolution supporting Harris, and columnist David Shipley approved the text. "This is a moment of cowardice, a moment of darkness, of which democracy will be the victim," Martin Baron, who managed the Post's newsroom during Trump's first presidency, told public radio, referring to the Washington Post's famous slogan that "democracy dies in the dark" (Democracy Die sin Darkness).

Internal contradiction

A few hours after the announcement, a group of 11 Washington Post opinion writers distanced themselves from the financier's decision in a joint article. They wrote: in the current situation, when the competition between the two presidential candidates is extremely close, the newspaper should above all make clear its commitment to democratic values, the rule of law and international alliances, as well as highlight the threat that Donald Trump represents to these values . "That's exactly what the Post did when it endorsed Trump's opponents in 2016 and 2020," pointed out the article, which had been signed by 20 publicists

Who is the reader punishing?

The editorial office was flooded with complaints from angry readers. On social media, many people considered canceling their subscriptions. For obvious reasons, the publisher's spokesperson did not say how many people followed through on their threat, but the editors - who have access to the website's statistics - can see that has increased .

The Post is the second major US newspaper to drop its open endorsement of Kamala Harris in a week. The owner of the Los Angeles Times, billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, reportedly vetoed the resolution in favor of the Democratic vice president because Harris supports Israel's war in Gaza.

The full article can be read HERE

Cover photo: Republican former US President Donald Trump (b) and Democratic US Vice President Kamala Harris during the first televised debate of the presidential candidates broadcast by US TV channel ABC in Philadelphia on September 10, 2024. The presidential election will be held on November 5 in the United States.
MTI/EPA/The Washington Post pool/Demetrius Freeman