Over the weekend, there was anger and shock across liberal America following the news that the Washington Post, the home of the Pentagon Papers and home of the Watergate scandal, would no longer support Kamala Harris as a presidential candidate. has spread. But the angry response was quickly replaced by two pressing questions. Why did it happen and how can readers best protest?
At the center of the storm is British journalist William Lewis, who became publisher and CEO of the Washington Post in January. The 55-year-old north Londoner broke with his staff’s decision on Friday with words that evoked the tradition of the title.
He said the paper was just returning to its roots of refusing to endorse presidential candidates. This was a return to the non-endorsement tradition the Post abandoned 48 years ago in favor of Democrat Jimmy Carter. “I was able to do that right before that, and I’m going to get back to this,” Lewis said.
Among the early public reactions were calls to unsubscribe, #CancelWaPo, which quickly became a trend on social media, as well as comedian Steve Martin, actor Mark Hamill, Watergate journalists, There was also a series of attacks on Bob and others for not taking a stand against Donald Trump. Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
Messrs. Woodward and Bernstein said their Watergate reporting and subsequent writings were the basis for the award-winning film “The President’s Men,” and that “the 2024 presidential election is 11 days away. “This impending decision ignores the Washington Post’s own overwhelming reporting evidence about the threat posed by Donald Trump.” Pose for democracy.
“Under the direction of Jeff Bezos, The Washington Post’s reporting efforts are leveraging its extensive resources to rigorously assess the dangers that a second term in office for Trump could pose to the future of American democracy. process, which makes this decision all the more surprising and disappointing, especially so late in the election.” “
The paper’s editor-in-chief, Robert Kagan, resigned on Friday. Last year, he wrote a column titled “Trump Dictatorship: How to Stop It,” in which he also argued that the former president could “destroy” democracy if re-elected.
Chief executive William Lewis, a former Telegraph editor, said the decision was in line with the paper’s values. Photo: Washington Post/Getty Images
Editors of the Washington Post’s comics page retaliated Saturday by publishing a darkly striped image by Pulitzer Prize-winning illustrator Ann Ternas. The bleak situation prompted the paper’s own Trump-era slogan: “Democracy dies in the dark.” Bezos, who is believed to have denied the paper’s editorial board the freedom to express political support, has not commented.
“The timing of the Post’s support decision is insane and undermines the very independence the paper claims to protect,” said Markus Brauchli, who edited the paper from 2008 to 2012. This is a terrible own goal.” “There are good reasons why newspapers don’t support presidential candidates. The Post didn’t propose anything, the timing was terrible, and whatever the logic, is it lack of guts or insanity? It looked like.”
The paper’s editor told the Columbia Journalism Review that editorial work on the endorsement was on track as recently as a week ago. “I thought we were having a language problem, not approval or not,” the postal worker said.
This decision “seems to us to be what Yale history professor Timothy Snyder calls ‘anticipatory obedience,'” the review said. In Snyder’s words, the phrase represents “already ceding power to an ambitious authoritarian.”
This follows the Los Angeles Times’ decision earlier in the week not to endorse candidates, a decision that led to the resignation of several editorial board members. Nika Soon-Shiong, the daughter of owner and biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, said on social media that her decision not to support Harris was due to the Democratic candidate’s stance on the Gaza war.
She wrote that her father, a South African transplant surgeon, worked as an emergency surgeon at Soweto Hospital during the apartheid era. “Apartheid is not a vague concept for my family,” Soon-Shiong said, insisting that the decision to endorse was made by the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board, adding, “This is not a vote for Donald Trump. No,” he added. This is a refusal to support candidates who are overseeing a war on children. ”
Bob Thompson, a media professor at Syracuse University, said the tradition of endorsements dates back to a time when political parties had formal titles.
“It seems strange that newspapers, seemingly providing objective reporting, take a step back and look at the editorial pages and the newspapers themselves to express support. Television doesn’t do that. The problem is , and why this particular election.”
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The paper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, may fear retaliation from Trump. Photo: Joshua Roberts/Reuters
The final days of this election are marked by increasing bitterness and preemptive political condemnation.
This weekend, a number of American commentators are pointing fingers at Mr. Bezos, the Amazon billionaire who has run the Washington Post since the summer of 2013.
It is claimed that he now suspects that Trump will win on November 5th and exact presidential revenge against Bezos and Amazon’s business operations.
Bezos, not Amazon, owns the paper, but Amazon is an important government contractor. In 2021, the U.S. government announced the creation of a joint combat cloud capabilities agreement with Amazon Web Services, the company’s most reliable revenue arm.
The government said the Defense Department’s contract with AWS is “designed to provide access to cloud services and capabilities across all classification levels and security domains” and is “key to enabling critical capabilities for the warfighter.”
Lewis said in an opinion piece that the paper’s position is “consistent with the values the Post has always espoused.”
He writes: “Character and courage in the service of American ethics, respect for the rule of law, and respect for human freedom in all its aspects. And we will carry this into America’s decision on who to vote for as our next president.” We believe this is a statement that supports the ability of readers to make their own decisions on this most important issue.”
Mr Lewis, who was knighted on the recommendation of his former political boss Boris Johnson, is a former editor of the Daily Telegraph and previously spent six years in New York as publisher of the Wall Street Journal.
Upon taking the post, she replaced Sally Buzbee, the paper’s first female editor-in-chief, who resigned a few months later in June. She is believed to have objected to her new boss’ attempts to hide articles about her involvement in the aftermath of the British newspaper hacking scandal.
When Mr. Lewis was appointed to lead the company, he said: We’re going to bring back the arrogance. ”
