As It Happens6:27Former Washington Post editor accuses Jeff Bezos ‘yielding to Trump’ by blocking Harris endorsement
When Martin Baron was the executive editor of the Washington Post, he says owner Jeff Bezos always stood up for the paper’s editorial independence in the face of pressure from former U.S. president Donald Trump.
But now that the Post has decided not to endorse a presidential candidate, reportedly at its billionaire owner’s behest, Baron no longer believes that to be the case.
“Jeff Bezos stood behind us all the way. He endured a lot of pressure from Donald Trump, and Trump threatened his business, Amazon, and all of that. And he didn’t bend at all,” Baron told As It Happens host Nil Koksal.
“I see this development as yielding to Trump’s pressure.”
Reports that the editorial board was ordered to toss an already-written endorsement for Democrat Kamala Harris less than two weeks before she’s set to take on Trump at the polls has drawn widespread rebuke from staff and readers, many of whom have quit or cancelled their subscriptions in protest.
The Post’s publisher, William Lewis, has defended the decision as a return to the newspaper’s non-partisan roots, and says the Post will not endorse a candidate in this or “any future presidential election.”
Bezos, founder of retail giant Amazon and space exploration company Blue Origin, did not respond to a request for comment.
However, in an op-ed published on the Post website on Monday evening, Bezos argued that “presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election,” while also creating what he said was “a perception of bias.”
Bezos said ending such endorsements “is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.”
Post’s publisher stands by decision
News outlets traditionally draw a line between opinion writers and journalists, the latter of whom are expected to refrain from weighing in on the issues their organizations cover.
The Post’s news department, reporting on the paper’s inner workings, quoted unidentified sources within the publication saying that the editorial board had already written a Harris endorsement and were shocked to learn it wouldn’t be published.
“The decision to no longer publish presidential endorsements was made by The Post’s owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, according to four people who were briefed on the decision,” the story, by journalists Manuel Roig-Franzia and Laura Wagner, reads.
The New York Times also reported Bezos was behind the decision, citing four confidential sources at the paper.
But Lewis, the paper’s chief executive officer, wrote in a column that the decision is merely a return to a tradition the paper had years ago of not endorsing candidates.
“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,” Lewis wrote.
In a statement to the Daily Beast, Lewis added that Bezos “was not sent, did not read and did not opine on any draft” endorsement.
Baron notes that Lewis’s statement is “very narrowly written.”
“It doesn’t say that [Bezos] wasn’t involved in the decision not to run a presidential endorsement. And if that’s the case, why haven’t they said so?” he said.
Asked why Bezos would make this decision now, after years of butting heads with Trump over the Post’s coverage, Baron says it appears Trump has a good chance of re-taking the White House and surrounding himself with yes-men who won’t push back on his efforts to silence media and punish his enemies.
He also noted that Trump has been getting closer to Elon Musk, who owns SpaceX, which is a rival company to to Bezos’s Blue Origin.
Staff quits, readers cancel subscriptions
A group of 11 Washington Post columnists signed a letter condemning the decision, and at least two members of the Post’s editorial board have resigned in protest.
The Washington Post Guild, the union that represents the paper’s editorial staff, said “the decision undercuts the work of our members at a time when we should be building our readers’ trust, not losing it.”
The Post has lost more than 200,000 subscribers since Friday, reports U.S. public broadcaster NPR, citing unnamed sources familiar with the situation.
The Post’s move comes the same week that the Los Angeles Times announced a similar decision, which triggered the resignations of its editorial page editor and two other members of the editorial board.
In that instance, the Times’ owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, insisted he had not censored the editorial board, which had planned to endorse Harris.
Musician Bad Bunny threw his support behind U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris on Sunday, sharing a video of the Democratic presidential nominee shortly after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made crude jokes at Donald Trump’s rally about Latinos and called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” angering Latin artists and some Hispanic Republicans.
What questions do you have about the upcoming U.S. election? Tell us in an email to ask@cbc.ca.
Baron says Trump has long been antagonistic with the news media in general, and the Washington Post in particular, and poses a threat to press freedom.
The Post, he noted, first started regularly endorsing presidential candidates in 1976 on the heels of the Watergate scandal, encouraging readers to choose Democrat Jimmy Carter over Republican incumbent Gerald Ford, successor to the disgraced Richard Nixon.
“There was a president who had abused his power, weaponized the federal government against his political opponents,” Baron said. “The publisher and the owner of the Post might ask themselves, are those still pertinent issues today? I think they are.”
Still, Baron says he hasn’t joined other readers in cancelling his Post subscription. That, he says, would only starve the newspaper’s journalists of the resources they need to do their jobs.
“They are my former colleagues. They continue to do excellent investigative work. I can’t even imagine our democracy without the kind of work that’s been done by the superb journalists at the Washington Post, and I want to support that work,” he said.
