The Washington Post is the second major US newspaper to decline to endorse a presidential candidate

Less than two weeks before Election Day, The Washington Post said Friday it would not endorse a candidate for president in this year's closely contested race and would avoid doing so in the future – a decision that was immediately condemned by a former editor-in-chief and by the current one The editor emphasized that this is “in line with the values ​​that the Post has always stood for.”

In an article posted on the front of its website, the Post — which reported on its own inner workings — also cited anonymous sources within the publication as saying that an endorsement of Kamala Harris over Donald Trump had been written but not published. Those sources told Post reporters that the company's owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos, made the decision.

Post editor Will Lewis wrote in a column that the decision was actually a return to a tradition the newspaper had years ago of not endorsing candidates. He said it reflected the newspaper's belief in “the ability of our readers to form their own opinions.”

“We recognize that this will be interpreted in a variety of ways, including as a tacit endorsement of one candidate, a condemnation of another, or an abdication of responsibility. “That is inevitable,” Lewis wrote. “We don’t see it that way. We see this as consistent with the values ​​the Post has always stood for and with what we hope for in a leader: character and courage in the service of American ethics, reverence for the rule of law and respect for human freedom in all its aspects aspects. ”

There was no immediate response from either campaign.

Lewis cited the Post story when writing about the decision. According to him, the postal service began to regularly support presidential candidates only in 1976, when it supported Jimmy Carter.

The Post said the decision “upset” many employees on the opinion staff, which operates independently of the Post's newsroom staff – what is commonly referred to in the industry as a “church-and-state separation” between those who report the news and those who produce opinions write, is known.

The Post's move came the same week that the Los Angeles Times announced a similar decision that resulted in the resignations of its editorial page editor and two other editorial board members. In this case, Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong insisted that he had not censored the editorial team that sought to support Harris.

“As an owner, I am a member of the editorial board and I have communicated to our editors that this year we may have a column, a page, two pages if we want, with all the pros and cons and let the readers decide,” Soon said -Shiong on Thursday in an interview with Spectrum News. He said he feared supporting one candidate would increase division in the country.

Many American newspapers have stopped providing editorial recommendations in recent years. That's largely because they don't want to give remaining subscribers and news consumers a reason to get angry and cancel their subscriptions at a time when readership is declining.

Martin Baron, the Post's editor-in-chief for 2012 to 2021, immediately condemned the X decision, saying it empowered Trump to further intimidate Bezos and others. “This is cowardice of which democracy is the victim,” he wrote. “Disturbing spinelessness in an institution known for its courage.”

The decisions come at a difficult time for American media, particularly newspapers. Local news is drying up in many places. And having been upended by the economics of the Internet and drastically changing readership habits, the top “legacy media outlets” — including the Post, the New York Times and others — are struggling to keep up with the changing landscape hold.

Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in the political sphere. Candidates have rejected some mainstream interviews in favor of podcasts and other niche programming this year, and many news organizations are working aggressively to combat misinformation in near real time on Election Day, Nov. 5.

Trump, who for years called the media covering him the “enemy of the people,” has returned to that rhetoric in recent days. His vitriol is particularly directed at CBS, whose broadcasting license he has threatened to revoke.

On Thursday he explicitly returned to the language at a rally in Arizona.

“You are the enemy of the people. They are,” Trump said to a cheering crowd. “I was asked not to say that. I don't want to say it. And I hope that one day they will no longer be the enemies of the people.”

For the Post, the decision is sure to spark debate beyond the news cycle. She appeared to confirm this with a note from the paper's letters and community editor at the top of the comments section of the editor's column: “I know many of you will have strong feelings about this note from Mr. Lewis.”

In fact, by afternoon the column had attracted more than 7,000 comments, many of them critical. One said, echoing the Post's slogan “Democracy dies in the dark,” “It's time to change your slogan to 'Democracy dies in broad daylight.'”

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Ted Anthony, AP's director of new storytelling and newsroom innovation, can be followed at http://x.com/anthonyted