As the LA Times remains gripped in a crisis caused by owner Patrick Soon-Shiong preventing the paper from endorsing Kamala Harris for president, a similar potential scandal may be brewing across the country at the Washington Post.
With just 10 days left before the 2024 election, the Washington Post has yet to endorse anyone for president. It’s a conspicuous silence considering the stakes, and even more so because the venerable paper has endorsed a presidential candidate in every election since 1980 with the sole exception of 1988.
On Wednesday, Oliver Darcy reported that WaPo has in fact already written an endorsement of Harris, that for reasons unknown hasn’t been published. He also reported that there is “growing suspicion among some staffers” that owner Jeff Bezos may be personally intervening to prevent that endorsement from going up, purportedly in order to appease Donald Trump.
Neither the Washington Post nor any member of the paper’s staff have commented publicly on the matter, and it’s not known if or when an endorsement may come. Representatives for the Post didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from TheWrap.
But in the day and change since Darcy’s initial report, speculation has only grown — and subsequent reporting has confirmed there are concerns within the company.
On Thursday, NPR reported that sources within the Washington Post, speaking anonymously, say they do not know if an endorsement will be published at all. The outlet also noted that Will Lewis, the paper’s publisher who was hand-picked by Bezos, is a political conservative with a history of working for powerful right wing media outlets in the United Kingdom.
Meanwhile Robert McCartney, a retired Washington Post editor has weighed in. “There are reports that The Washington Post may decline to endorse anyone for president. It would be first time that’s happened since 1988. There’s speculation in newsroom that owner Jeff Bezos may want to avoid risk of endangering Amazon’s government contracts if Trump wins,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
McCartney also made mention of Lewis, adding, “it’s also possible that publisher William Lewis, a British conservative and Murdoch veteran, would have a role if Post declines to endorse. Post Editorial page has a long history of endorsing Democrats for president and has roundly condemned Trump for various things.”
An individual with knowledge of the matter has confirmed to TheWrap that the endorsement — or rather the continuing lack thereof — is a matter being widely discussed by Washington Post alumni, though there is no consensus. And while there is speculation that delays in an endorsement may be due to Bezos wanting to appease Donald Trump, the paper has a long history of publishing exhaustive stories exposing the ex-president’s various misdeeds.
Nevertheless, the lack of an endorsement, and further the lack of any comment whatsoever by Washington Post leadership, is strange. Particularly given the context on the west coast, where at LA Times, several high ranking editorial staffers have quit in protest over Soon-Shiong’s interference.
On Wednesday, editorial editor Mariel Garza quit, writing in part in her resignation letter that forbidding the paper from endorsing Harris “makes us look craven and hypocritical, maybe even a bit sexist and racist. How could we spend eight years railing against Trump and the danger his leadership poses to the country and then fail to endorse the perfectly decent Democrat challenger—who we previously endorsed for the US Senate?”
And on Thursday, longtime editorial writer Karin Klein and Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert Greene both resigned. In a statement explaining her decision, Klein called Soon-Shiong a “chickens—” and said that the refusal to let the paper publish its endorsement was as good as endorsing Harris’ opponent. The decision was an editorial of its own, she said, “a wordless one, a make-believe-invisible one that unfairly implies that she has grievous faults that somehow put her on a level with Donald Trump.”
Leave a Reply