Washington Post says it will not endorse a candidate for president in this or future elections

The Washington Post’s publisher said Friday that the paper will not make an endorsement in this year’s presidential contest, for the first time in 36 years, or in future presidential races.

The decision, announced 11 days before an election that most polls show as too close to call, drew immediate and heated condemnation from a wide swath of subscribers, political figures and media commentators. Robert Kagan, a longtime Post columnist and editor-at-large in the opinion department, resigned in protest, and a group of 11 Washington Post columnists co-signed an article condemning the decision. Angry readers and sources flooded the email inboxes of numerous staffers with complaints.

In a column published on The Post’s website Friday, publisher and CEO William Lewis described the decision as a return to the newspaper’s roots of non-endorsement. The Post did not begin regularly endorsing presidential candidates until 1976, when the paper endorsed Jimmy Carter “for understandable reasons at the time,” Lewis wrote.

“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.”

Lewis also portrayed the decision as a “statement in support of our readers’ ability to make up their own minds.”

Within hours of the announcement, a group of Washington Post columnists, including Pulitzer Prize winner Eugene Robinson and former deputy editorial page editor Ruth Marcus, called the decision “a terrible mistake,” writing, “This is a moment for the institution to be making clear its commitment to democratic values, the rule of law and international alliances, and the threat that Donald Trump poses to them - the precise points The Post made in endorsing Trump’s opponents in 2016 and 2020.”

Washington Post legends Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein issued a statement saying: “We respect the traditional independence of the editorial page, but this decision 12 days out from the 2024 presidential election ignores the Washington Post’s own overwhelming reportorial evidence on the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy. Under Jeff Bezos’s ownership, the Washington Post’s news operation has used its abundant resources to rigorously investigate the danger and damage a second Trump presidency could cause to the future of American democracy and that makes this decision even more surprising and disappointing, especially this late in the electoral process.”

The Post decision marks the second time this week that a major media organization has declined to issue an endorsement in the race between the Republican nominee, former president Donald Trump, and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, after years of making such endorsements. Earlier this week, Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, blocked a planned endorsement of Harris, prompting the resignation of the newspaper’s editorials editor.

An endorsement of Harris had been drafted by Post editorial page staffers but had yet to be published, according to two people who were briefed on the sequence of events and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. 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.

“This was a Washington Post decision to not endorse, and I would refer you to the publisher’s statement in full,” said Chief Communications Officer Kathy Baird.

The Post plans to continue issuing endorsements in other races, including local contests, a spokeswoman said.

The Post’s decision has roiled many on the paper’s opinions staff, which operates independently from The Post’s news staff, a long-standing tradition of American journalism designed to separate opinion writing from day-to-day news coverage.

The Post’s editorial board was informed Friday by Opinion Editor David Shipley in a tense meeting. Multiple members of the board expressed vehement opposition, according to two attendees who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The timing of the announcement was especially jarring because it came just one day after two Post opinion writers - editorial board member David Hoffman and contributing columnist Vladimir Kara-Murza - received Pulitzer Prizes at a ceremony in New York. Hoffman’s series of articles was called “Annals of Autocracy.”

“It’s a sort of preemptive bending of the knee to who they may think is the probable winner,” said Kagan, whose resignation was first reported by Semafor. “Anybody who is as much a part of the American economy as Bezos is … they obviously want to have a good relationship with whoever is in power. [It’s] an attempt to try not to be on the wrong side of Donald Trump.”

On social media, some readers announced their intent to cancel subscriptions, while a few applauded the new policy for being unbiased.

The Washington Post Guild, which represents newsroom employees, released a statement saying members are concerned that The Post would “make the decision to no longer endorse presidential candidates, especially a mere 11 days” before the election.

“The role of an Editorial Board is to do just this: to share opinions on the news impacting our society and culture and endorse candidates to help guide readers,” the statement said. “The message from our chief executive, Will Lewis - not from the Editorial Board itself - makes us concerned that management interfered with the work of our members in Editorial.”

On social media, celebrities such as author Stephen King and actor Jeffrey Wright - who is from Washington - said they were canceling their subscriptions.

Susan Rice, who served as national security adviser under President Barack Obama and is a former domestic policy adviser to the Biden White House, wrote on X, “As a DC native and lifelong subscriber to the Post, I’m disgusted. You have lost us.”

Two former executive editors of The Post also weighed in with scathing criticism.

“This is cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty. Donald Trump will celebrate this as an invitation to further intimidate The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos (and other media owners),” former Post executive editor Martin Baron, who led the paper while Trump was president, said in a text message to The Post. “History will mark a disturbing chapter of spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”

Marcus Brauchli, The Post’s editor from 2008 to 2012, wrote in an email that “the decision looks craven. In the same way that readers expect newsrooms and reporters to tell them what’s happening, they look to editorial boards to help them to reason through complex events and reach informed conclusions. In a campaign awash in lies and misinformation, the value of a well-considered endorsement is greater than ever.”

As the news was being processed, Post journalists huddled in angry knots. One of the paper’s biggest stars - Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and best-selling author Carol D. Leonnig - said in an email: “I don’t care who the Post opinion section endorses. … For me, and for the readers and sources who today have flooded me with calls and messages, what’s curious is the timing and odd explanation of this endorsement change. It raises concerns about the thing I do care so deeply about: whether our ownership will continue to let my colleagues and me pursue hard-hitting reporting, independently, without worrying who is upset with our coverage.”

Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Times faced scrutiny and reader backlash over Soon-Shiong’s decision not to publish the planned endorsement of Harris. The biotech mogul said he wanted the editorial board to provide an analysis of each candidate’s policies to give readers “clear and non-partisan information side-by-side.” The decision prompted the resignation of editorials editor Mariel Garza, who said the move made the paper look “craven and hypocritical.”

Soon-Shiong’s daughter, Nika Soon-Shiong, wrote on social media that the decision not to endorse a candidate has prompted “controversy and confusion,” and she implied that the decision had to do with the Biden-Harris administration’s policies on Israel and Gaza.

“This is not a vote for Donald Trump. This is a refusal to ENDORSE a candidate that is overseeing a war on children,” she wrote. “I trust the Editorial Board’s judgment. For me, genocide is the line in the sand.”

The Post has not always issued presidential election endorsements. In announcing the paper’s decision Friday, Lewis cited an editorial that The Post’s editorial board wrote in 1960 explaining its decision not to endorse a candidate in that year’s presidential race, the same practice it had followed in five of the six previous elections, the exception being an endorsement of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952:

“In the light of hindsight we retain the view that the arguments for [Eisenhower’s] nomination and election were compelling. But hindsight also has convinced us that it might have been wiser for an independent newspaper in the Nation’s Capital to have avoided formal endorsement.”

Beginning in 1976, however, The Post began regularly endorsing candidates during each presidential election cycle, with the exception of 1988, when it declined to make a recommendation in the contest between George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis. In the 1976 race, The Post endorsed Democrat Jimmy Carter. All of its subsequent endorsements have been Democrats.