This week, the editor of the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times and two of her editorial writers resigned after the newspaper’s publisher said the paper wouldn’t be endorsing a candidate for president, in a break of longstanding tradition.
WTF, WaPo?!? You've run editorials about how trump is unfit for office, but refuse to endorse Harris? How has the news source I have depended on for 40 years sunk so low?
One more thing: The NY Times said that some progressives are concerned about the Republican support for Harris (Cheney, etc.). Get a life, people! I am pretty far left, but know that having moderate to even fairly conservative people on our side is good. Worrying about purity will cost us the election (like those in FL in 2000 who voted Nader because Gore wasn’t liberal “enough”, so we got Bush & Iraq).
I have long thought that Editorial board endorsements are stupid.
But for them to stop this time, and for this reason, is enough, as Raymond Chandler put it, to sicken a goat raised on barbed wire and broken beer bottles.
I just read their statement and it would be reasonable—IF THEY HAD MADE AN ANNOUNCED THIS DECISION LONG BEFORE THE ELECTION—say 2 or 3 years ago. Doing it a week out can’t help but make the statement they insist they aren’t making
So much for "Democracy Dies in Darkness." I feel that this would never have happened under Martin Baron. EDITED TO ADD: I never though the Post would turn out the lights.
So what’s terrifying is this: it means that (a) the billionaires who own WP and LAT believe that even their wealth will not protect them from a Trump administration bent on revenge and (b) they believe a Trump victory is likely enough that they have to take precautions.
My wife suggested that Bezos and company are lining up for the expected tax cuts that will be coming from a Trump administration, They wouldn't want to bite the hand that feeds them.
I agree but I didn’t check “like” because I don’t like that this is probably true. On the other hand perhaps the multi billionaires think Trump is good for them and who cares about us little people!
I'm re-posting an opinion piece about this that someone just forwarded to me, from The Bulwark:
The Guardrails Are Already Crumpling
Jeff Bezos’s decision to pull a Washington Post endorsement of Harris is foreboding. But not necessarily for the reasons you think.
Jonathan V. Last
Oct 25
On Friday afternoon, the Washington Post announced that it would not be making an endorsement in the presidential race. After that, a number of things happened very quickly.
First, the paper’s former executive editor Marty Baron called the decision “cowardice.”
Second, at least one senior Post opinion writer resigned.
Third, it was leaked that the editor of the editorial page had already drafted the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris when publisher Will Lewis—who is a new hire, hailing from the Rupert Murdoch journalism tree—quashed it and then released a CYA statement about how the paper was “returning to its roots” of not endorsing candidates. The Post itself reported that the decision was made by the paper’s owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Everything about this story feels like a tempest in a teapot, a boiling story about legacy media fretting over itself in the mirror.
It’s not.
It’s a situation analogous to what we saw in Russia in the early 2000s: We are witnessing the surrender of the American business community to Donald Trump.
No one cares about the Washington Post’s presidential endorsement. It will not move a single vote. The only people who care about newspaper editorial page endorsements are newspaper editorial writers.
No one really cares all that much about the future of the Washington Post, either. I mean, I care about it, because I care about journalism and I respect the institution.
But this isn’t a journalism story. It’s a business story.
Following Trump’s 2016 victory, the Post leaned hard into its role as a guardian of democracy. This meant criticizing, and reporting aggressively on, Trump, who responded by threatening Bezos’s various business interests.
And that’s what this story is about: It’s about the most consequential American entrepreneur of his generation signaling his submission to Trump—and the message that sends to every other corporation and business leader in the country. In the world.
Killing this editorial says, If Jeff Bezos has to be nice to Trump, then so do you. Keep your nose clean, bub.
We have seen this movie before.
The year was 2003, and the scene was Russia, where Vladimir Putin, still in his first term as president, had not yet let the mask slip.
Putin was carefully consolidating power and he realized that the same oligarchs who had supported him initially were also a source of danger. Their money and control of important industries—especially the media—gave them independent bases of power. And every autocrat knows that dictatorship only works when his subjects understand that the only power they may have is the power he grants them.
At the time, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was the wealthiest man in Russia. He controlled Yukos, a massive oil company he cobbled together from formerly state-owned assets. He had the kind of wealth and power that made him untouchable, and he started making noises about getting more involved in politics—maybe even running for office.
So Putin had him arrested.
You may not remember this, but the Khodorkovsky case was a major piece of international news at the time. In the West, people weren’t quite sure what to make of it. Khodorkovsky’s people waged an aggressive PR campaign on his behalf claiming that his arrest was politically motivated and that Putin was becoming a thug.
Putin’s side portrayed it as an anti-corruption move, since Khodorkovsky was no angel.
Here in the West, we were all still giddy over glasnost and the end of the Cold War. We didn’t want to believe that Russia might be plunging back into authoritarianism. So people mostly took a wait-and-see approach.
But the Russians understood.
Khodorkovsky was convicted and sent to a labor camp in the Russian Far East while the government confiscated Yukos and redistributed it to Putin’s cronies. Khodorkovsky’s money, his power, his connections—none of it could protect him from Vladimir Putin.
The rest of the oligarchs got the message. If Putin could get to Khodorkovsky, he could get to anybody.
And so the oligarchs fell in line and ceased to be a source of concern to Putin. Instead of alternative power centers, they became vassals.
Which is exactly what Jeff Bezos has just taught Jamie Dimon and every other important American businessman.
These guys can hear the music. They’ve seen the sides being chosen: Elon Musk and Peter Theil assembling with Trump’s gangster government in waiting. They see Mark Zuckerberg praising Trump as a “badass.” And now they see Bezos getting in line, too.
What’s remarkable is that Trump didn’t have to arrest Bezos to secure his compliance. Trump didn’t even have to win the election. Just the fact that he has an even-money chance to become president was threat enough.
Or maybe that’s not remarkable. One of Timothy Snyder’s rules for resisting authoritarians is that “most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given.” People surrender preemptively much more often than you might expect.
Two weeks ago, Ian Bassin and Maximillian Potter wrote what might be the most prophetic essay of the year. They warned about “anticipatory obedience” in the media.
Seventeen days later, Bezos made his demonstration.
In case you needed reminding: The “guardrails” aren’t guardrails. They’re people.
And they’re already collapsing. Before a single state has been called.
Has The Post's draft endorsement of Harris been "leaked" yet? I look forward to reading on social media the endorsement Jeff Bezos doesn't want us to read.
I'm disappointed, but it doesn't make me want to cancel. No one who reads the Post on a regular basis would not understand how the Editorial Board feels about the election. And, frankly, the Post, in public opinion, leans left. So if you're an independent, the likelihood that you'll go to the Post for perceived unbiased opinions is probably low. But that said, I think that it's disappointing because I think there needs to be a record that there were newspapers who felt strongly about the election, the possibility of messing with our constitution, the possibility of political repercussions happening in the future and that the NEWSPAPER OF RECORD IN WASHINGTON, DC refused to take a stand. THAT is incredibly disappointing. This is an election of values. Where are the values, Washington Post??
Not mention what happens if the Trumpists win and REALLY start re-writing history (Jan 6, was "a day of love," and the rioters are political prisoners...anyone remember?) and there are no newspapers that stood up for what was about to happen? What history will we be teaching in 50 or 100 years (ESPECIALLY if the Dept. of Education is disbanded)?
I guess I’ll… sort of… defend this. I read and 100% agree with the endorsements in the NYT, New Yorker, and the Atlantic. But reading them I couldn’t help being like… who is this for? Is it for me to nod along with? That’s not helpful… I don’t really need the NYT editorial board to explain why Trump is terrible. Is ANY potential Trump voter remotely persuaded by this? I don’t think so! I think they see these endorsements as elite media grandstanding at best, and a sign of the untrustworthiness of these sources at worst. (Now, does declining to endorse win back any of that trust? I doubt it. But I think that’s what they are going for— an attempt at some kind of humility like, admitting that nobody who is on the fence in this election really cares what the WaPo editorial board thinks)
So does that mean that Fox News or the NY Post won't be endorsing anyone either? To me it sounds that the LAT and WaPo see some writing on the wall and don't want to piss off Trump if he wins the election.
I am kinda persuaded by this. Where is the one person in the universe who was waiting to hear from the Post before deciding how to cast his vote? And don’t call them cowardly - it would have been easy enough to endorse Harris just like every other time, instead of getting the subscriber base up in arms by declaring “independence.” And while we are at it let’s give the, props for doing good news gathering and reporting, which we still need to rely on. So all you subscription-canceled folks … maybe reconsider?
Yeah I don’t plan to cancel over this. I do think the timing of this announcement is… extremely less than ideal and borderline deranged. The best time to decide to stop issuing endorsements would have been maybe like… mid 2021 or something?
I don’t think media political endorsements are effective at persuasion in any direction. But I do see them as touchstones of personal reality. When a touchstone is suddenly gone, it’s as if you were transported to the future and when you make your way back home and it’s just different and the warmly remembered core of your existence no longer warms you and you have to reconnoiter the grounds and find what’s what and what’s where and who can you trust now. It’s unsettling and disturbing and if discovered to be the result of one or another unnecessary human failing instead of normal aging behavior, then it can also be enraging.
Just canceled my subscription over this, after a lifetime of reading the Post, since I was first discovered the comics (probably 48 of 53 years? Maybe a little more?). I'm legitimately teary over it, but I also felt that I had to. I hate this, I HATE it.
In a perfect world there would be no need for newspaper endorsements. People would read and think critically and arrive at their own informed decisions. But that’s not our world. A newspaper’s endorsement often makes people’s decisions for them. And for a newspaper to fail to endorse—thereby implying that Harris and Trump are equally acceptable candidates—is beyond irresponsible, not to mention unbelievably cowardly. Shame on them.
This is moral cowardice of the highest order. I have cancelled my subscription to the post. In the words of a commenter on the editorial who beat me to it: "I thought 'Democracy Dies in Darkness' was a motto. Turns out it's a mission statement."
WTF, WaPo?!? You've run editorials about how trump is unfit for office, but refuse to endorse Harris? How has the news source I have depended on for 40 years sunk so low?
Damn. If we have to cancel the Post then I won’t have bags for picking up dog shit.
Look at it this way: the bags are already full of dog shit when they're delivered to you.
It's worth paying the pet store so WaPo doesn't get the money.
You can buy those on Amazon . . . Oh wait.
Don't cancel it. That only hurts the journalists who work there. I'm sure we can find another way to hurt Bozos.
One more thing: The NY Times said that some progressives are concerned about the Republican support for Harris (Cheney, etc.). Get a life, people! I am pretty far left, but know that having moderate to even fairly conservative people on our side is good. Worrying about purity will cost us the election (like those in FL in 2000 who voted Nader because Gore wasn’t liberal “enough”, so we got Bush & Iraq).
By all means, you and yours should keep labeling the majority of the voters stupid, racist, misogynistic, bigoted, garbage deplorables!
I have long thought that Editorial board endorsements are stupid.
But for them to stop this time, and for this reason, is enough, as Raymond Chandler put it, to sicken a goat raised on barbed wire and broken beer bottles.
Exactly what I was going to say. Now I don’t have to post a comment. Oh, wait…
I just read their statement and it would be reasonable—IF THEY HAD MADE AN ANNOUNCED THIS DECISION LONG BEFORE THE ELECTION—say 2 or 3 years ago. Doing it a week out can’t help but make the statement they insist they aren’t making
*AND announced
You do know you can edit your post?
Fair enough. I'm getting a choice of Edit and Delete. Maybe it has to do with how you're signed in?
The Substack works in mysterious ways.
So much for "Democracy Dies in Darkness." I feel that this would never have happened under Martin Baron. EDITED TO ADD: I never though the Post would turn out the lights.
When Bezos saved WaPo that was great. When he decided he needed to earn money from it, WaPo mostly died.
And why shouldn’t we all cancel our subscriptions?
I canceled mine when they canceled the Style Invitational.
Though I wish I could cancel again, just to make a point.
A bunch have already.
So what’s terrifying is this: it means that (a) the billionaires who own WP and LAT believe that even their wealth will not protect them from a Trump administration bent on revenge and (b) they believe a Trump victory is likely enough that they have to take precautions.
The problem with someone like Trump is that the list of people he considers "enemies" changes all the time. No one would truly be safe.
My wife suggested that Bezos and company are lining up for the expected tax cuts that will be coming from a Trump administration, They wouldn't want to bite the hand that feeds them.
I agree but I didn’t check “like” because I don’t like that this is probably true. On the other hand perhaps the multi billionaires think Trump is good for them and who cares about us little people!
I'm re-posting an opinion piece about this that someone just forwarded to me, from The Bulwark:
The Guardrails Are Already Crumpling
Jeff Bezos’s decision to pull a Washington Post endorsement of Harris is foreboding. But not necessarily for the reasons you think.
Jonathan V. Last
Oct 25
On Friday afternoon, the Washington Post announced that it would not be making an endorsement in the presidential race. After that, a number of things happened very quickly.
First, the paper’s former executive editor Marty Baron called the decision “cowardice.”
Second, at least one senior Post opinion writer resigned.
Third, it was leaked that the editor of the editorial page had already drafted the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris when publisher Will Lewis—who is a new hire, hailing from the Rupert Murdoch journalism tree—quashed it and then released a CYA statement about how the paper was “returning to its roots” of not endorsing candidates. The Post itself reported that the decision was made by the paper’s owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Everything about this story feels like a tempest in a teapot, a boiling story about legacy media fretting over itself in the mirror.
It’s not.
It’s a situation analogous to what we saw in Russia in the early 2000s: We are witnessing the surrender of the American business community to Donald Trump.
No one cares about the Washington Post’s presidential endorsement. It will not move a single vote. The only people who care about newspaper editorial page endorsements are newspaper editorial writers.
No one really cares all that much about the future of the Washington Post, either. I mean, I care about it, because I care about journalism and I respect the institution.
But this isn’t a journalism story. It’s a business story.
Following Trump’s 2016 victory, the Post leaned hard into its role as a guardian of democracy. This meant criticizing, and reporting aggressively on, Trump, who responded by threatening Bezos’s various business interests.
And that’s what this story is about: It’s about the most consequential American entrepreneur of his generation signaling his submission to Trump—and the message that sends to every other corporation and business leader in the country. In the world.
Killing this editorial says, If Jeff Bezos has to be nice to Trump, then so do you. Keep your nose clean, bub.
We have seen this movie before.
The year was 2003, and the scene was Russia, where Vladimir Putin, still in his first term as president, had not yet let the mask slip.
Putin was carefully consolidating power and he realized that the same oligarchs who had supported him initially were also a source of danger. Their money and control of important industries—especially the media—gave them independent bases of power. And every autocrat knows that dictatorship only works when his subjects understand that the only power they may have is the power he grants them.
At the time, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was the wealthiest man in Russia. He controlled Yukos, a massive oil company he cobbled together from formerly state-owned assets. He had the kind of wealth and power that made him untouchable, and he started making noises about getting more involved in politics—maybe even running for office.
So Putin had him arrested.
You may not remember this, but the Khodorkovsky case was a major piece of international news at the time. In the West, people weren’t quite sure what to make of it. Khodorkovsky’s people waged an aggressive PR campaign on his behalf claiming that his arrest was politically motivated and that Putin was becoming a thug.
Putin’s side portrayed it as an anti-corruption move, since Khodorkovsky was no angel.
Here in the West, we were all still giddy over glasnost and the end of the Cold War. We didn’t want to believe that Russia might be plunging back into authoritarianism. So people mostly took a wait-and-see approach.
But the Russians understood.
Khodorkovsky was convicted and sent to a labor camp in the Russian Far East while the government confiscated Yukos and redistributed it to Putin’s cronies. Khodorkovsky’s money, his power, his connections—none of it could protect him from Vladimir Putin.
The rest of the oligarchs got the message. If Putin could get to Khodorkovsky, he could get to anybody.
And so the oligarchs fell in line and ceased to be a source of concern to Putin. Instead of alternative power centers, they became vassals.
Which is exactly what Jeff Bezos has just taught Jamie Dimon and every other important American businessman.
These guys can hear the music. They’ve seen the sides being chosen: Elon Musk and Peter Theil assembling with Trump’s gangster government in waiting. They see Mark Zuckerberg praising Trump as a “badass.” And now they see Bezos getting in line, too.
What’s remarkable is that Trump didn’t have to arrest Bezos to secure his compliance. Trump didn’t even have to win the election. Just the fact that he has an even-money chance to become president was threat enough.
Or maybe that’s not remarkable. One of Timothy Snyder’s rules for resisting authoritarians is that “most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given.” People surrender preemptively much more often than you might expect.
Two weeks ago, Ian Bassin and Maximillian Potter wrote what might be the most prophetic essay of the year. They warned about “anticipatory obedience” in the media.
Seventeen days later, Bezos made his demonstration.
In case you needed reminding: The “guardrails” aren’t guardrails. They’re people.
And they’re already collapsing. Before a single state has been called.
Has The Post's draft endorsement of Harris been "leaked" yet? I look forward to reading on social media the endorsement Jeff Bezos doesn't want us to read.
I'm disappointed, but it doesn't make me want to cancel. No one who reads the Post on a regular basis would not understand how the Editorial Board feels about the election. And, frankly, the Post, in public opinion, leans left. So if you're an independent, the likelihood that you'll go to the Post for perceived unbiased opinions is probably low. But that said, I think that it's disappointing because I think there needs to be a record that there were newspapers who felt strongly about the election, the possibility of messing with our constitution, the possibility of political repercussions happening in the future and that the NEWSPAPER OF RECORD IN WASHINGTON, DC refused to take a stand. THAT is incredibly disappointing. This is an election of values. Where are the values, Washington Post??
Not mention what happens if the Trumpists win and REALLY start re-writing history (Jan 6, was "a day of love," and the rioters are political prisoners...anyone remember?) and there are no newspapers that stood up for what was about to happen? What history will we be teaching in 50 or 100 years (ESPECIALLY if the Dept. of Education is disbanded)?
Seems we learned about Royalists when we studied the American Revolution…
I guess I’ll… sort of… defend this. I read and 100% agree with the endorsements in the NYT, New Yorker, and the Atlantic. But reading them I couldn’t help being like… who is this for? Is it for me to nod along with? That’s not helpful… I don’t really need the NYT editorial board to explain why Trump is terrible. Is ANY potential Trump voter remotely persuaded by this? I don’t think so! I think they see these endorsements as elite media grandstanding at best, and a sign of the untrustworthiness of these sources at worst. (Now, does declining to endorse win back any of that trust? I doubt it. But I think that’s what they are going for— an attempt at some kind of humility like, admitting that nobody who is on the fence in this election really cares what the WaPo editorial board thinks)
So does that mean that Fox News or the NY Post won't be endorsing anyone either? To me it sounds that the LAT and WaPo see some writing on the wall and don't want to piss off Trump if he wins the election.
They just lost a lot of customers judging by posts on Hax’s chat.
I am kinda persuaded by this. Where is the one person in the universe who was waiting to hear from the Post before deciding how to cast his vote? And don’t call them cowardly - it would have been easy enough to endorse Harris just like every other time, instead of getting the subscriber base up in arms by declaring “independence.” And while we are at it let’s give the, props for doing good news gathering and reporting, which we still need to rely on. So all you subscription-canceled folks … maybe reconsider?
Yeah I don’t plan to cancel over this. I do think the timing of this announcement is… extremely less than ideal and borderline deranged. The best time to decide to stop issuing endorsements would have been maybe like… mid 2021 or something?
I don’t think media political endorsements are effective at persuasion in any direction. But I do see them as touchstones of personal reality. When a touchstone is suddenly gone, it’s as if you were transported to the future and when you make your way back home and it’s just different and the warmly remembered core of your existence no longer warms you and you have to reconnoiter the grounds and find what’s what and what’s where and who can you trust now. It’s unsettling and disturbing and if discovered to be the result of one or another unnecessary human failing instead of normal aging behavior, then it can also be enraging.
Just canceled my subscription over this, after a lifetime of reading the Post, since I was first discovered the comics (probably 48 of 53 years? Maybe a little more?). I'm legitimately teary over it, but I also felt that I had to. I hate this, I HATE it.
In a perfect world there would be no need for newspaper endorsements. People would read and think critically and arrive at their own informed decisions. But that’s not our world. A newspaper’s endorsement often makes people’s decisions for them. And for a newspaper to fail to endorse—thereby implying that Harris and Trump are equally acceptable candidates—is beyond irresponsible, not to mention unbelievably cowardly. Shame on them.
liked because of "thereby implying that Harris and Trump are equally acceptable candidates"--because that's what it does
Hey WaPo, grow a pair.
This is moral cowardice of the highest order. I have cancelled my subscription to the post. In the words of a commenter on the editorial who beat me to it: "I thought 'Democracy Dies in Darkness' was a motto. Turns out it's a mission statement."
The Editor at Large at the Post, Robert Kagan, has resigned. https://meidasnews.com/news/washington-post-editor-at-large-resigns-over-newspapers-non-endorsement-report