(LifeSiteNews) — The far-left Washington Post is facing internal turmoil over its decision not to endorse a presidential candidate for the first time since 1988.
The Post, which has endorsed the Democrat nominee for every election since 1980 except for 1988 (when it endorsed nobody), announced in an October 25 note from publisher William Lewis that the paper would be “returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates,” and as such not endorsing them in any future elections either.
“We recognize that this will be read in a range of ways, including as a tacit endorsement of one candidate, or as a condemnation of another, or as an abdication of responsibility. That is inevitable,” Lewis wrote.
We don’t see it that way. We see it as consistent with the values The Post has always stood for and what we hope for in a leader: character and courage in service to the American ethic, veneration for the rule of law, and respect for human freedom in all its aspects. We also see it as a statement in support of our readers’ ability to make up their own minds on this, the most consequential of American decisions – whom to vote for as the next president.
The announcement set off a firestorm among the Post’s left-wing staff and readership. The Washington Post Guild, the union representing the paper’s employees, said it was “deeply concerned” about the move, “especially a mere 11 days ahead of an immensely consequential election.” The union speculated that management had spiked an already-written endorsement of Democrat nominee Kamala Harris at the behest of owner Jeff Bezos, the Amazon mogul.
As of October 28, almost a third of the Post’s editorial board had resigned in protest, including Editor-at-Large Robert Kagan, and more than twenty opinion columnists signed a joint statement criticizing the move. But the biggest consequence by far is the cancellation of more than 200,000 subscriptions in just a three-day period, representing 8 percent of the Post’s total circulation, NPR reports.
On October 28, Bezos published an op-ed explaining his reasoning, which opened with an admission that journalism “is now the least trusted of all” professions according to Gallup polling, and therefore it “must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility” (albeit without admitting or pledging to change his own paper’s history of left-wing bias).
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“Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election,” he maintained, and instead merely “create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence […]. I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it. That was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy.”
Bezos also insisted that “no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here,” that “[n]either campaign nor candidate was consulted or informed at any level or in any way about this decision,” and that it was completely unrelated to a recent meeting between Republican nominee Trump and Dave Limp, who runs Bezos’s aerospace company Blue Origin.
“I sighed when I found out, because I knew it would provide ammunition to those who would like to frame this as anything other than a principled decision,” he wrote. “But the fact is, I didn’t know about the meeting beforehand. Even Limp didn’t know about it in advance; the meeting was scheduled quickly that morning. There is no connection between it and our decision on presidential endorsements, and any suggestion otherwise is false.”
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Regardless, the move seems to have alienated many of the Post’s longtime liberal supporters while convincing few if any conservatives that the paper is suddenly on their side. However, former President Trump did quip that the Post is “saying, ‘This Democrat’s no good. They’re no good,’ and they think I’m doing a great job. They just don’t want to say it.” Per the Gallup poll Bezos cited, just 31 percent of Americans say they trust mass media at least a “fair amount.”
Both the Los Angeles Times and the USA Today parent company Gannett have also declined to endorse a presidential candidate this year.
This year’s presidential race is extremely close, with the lead Harris enjoyed since replacing President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee having all but disappeared. Trump now narrowly leads by 0.3 percent in RealClearPolitics’ national popular vote polling average, and Harris leads by roughly two points according to RaceToTheWH. Margins remain even closer in the swing states that will decide the Electoral College outcome.