The Washington Post refuses to endorse Harris over Bezos decision, provokes fury from editors

In a memo to staff, Washington Post CEO Will Lewis wrote that "The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election. We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.” The decision was made by Jeff Bezos himself, owner of the newspaper.

This decision is being made for the first time since 1988. Lewis explained it by citing a 1960 editorial board column that detailed the paper's position at that time of not endorsing presidential candidates. According to the executive, this stance is consistent with the values of The Post.

The outlet also anticipated criticism from its supporters, who assumed that the famous paper would endorse Kamala Harris. The Post said that the most important thing for the paper was to help readers' make America's most important decision: who to vote for as the next president.

An editor's memo explains that the paper is "going back to its roots" with this decision. Lewis concluded that the task as a newspaper is to be independent.

But the criticism came anyway, a former Post editor, Marty Baron, wrote that the decision was cowardly. He claimed that the victim was democracy and that Donald Trump would see this as an invitation to further bully Jeff Bezos, owner of the paper. Incidentally, as a result of the decision, numerous comments emerged on social media claiming that in fact the idea of abstaining and not supporting either Harris or Trump had come from Bezos himself.

The Washington Post's surprise announcement came days after The Los Angeles Times became embroiled in a crisis over its decision not to endorse the Democratic candidate in the 2024 election. The stance prompted the editor-in-chief to resign.

The Washington Post began regularly endorsing presidential candidates in 1976, when it endorsed Jimmy Carter. It has not endorsed a Republican candidate since then and previously refused to pick a side between George H. W. Bush and Michael Dukakis in 1988.

The endorsement of Kamala Harris was already written 

According to reports, a draft endorsement of Kamala Harris was almost ready, but it was Bezos who put the brakes on its publication and opted for neutrality instead.

“An endorsement of Harris had been drafted by Post editorial page staffers but had yet to be published, according to two sources briefed on the sequence of events who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The decision not to publish was made by The Post’s owner — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — according to the same sources,” the Washington Post said.