Although Washington Post publisher William Lewis was the one who announced that the newspaper would discontinue making presidential endorsements, starting with this one, it was owner Jeff Bezos who killed an endorsement for Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris, the Post reported late Friday afternoon.
The Post, quoting two anonymous sources, reported that "an endorsement of Harris had been drafted by Post editorial page staffers but had yet to be published," adding that the "decision to no longer publish presidential endorsements was made by The Post's owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos."
Officially, the paper's chief communications officer referred the Post reporters to Lewis' statement earlier in the day.
"This was a Washington Post decision to not endorse," Kathy Baird, communications officer, told the Post reporters.
Regardless, the decision not to endorse is a first for the newspaper since 1988.
"We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates," Lewis wrote in an opinion piece. "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."
Former Post Executive Editor Marty Baron, who retired in 2021, called it "cowardice with democracy as its casualty."
"Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage," Baron said in a post on X.
The announcement comes less than two days after the head of the Los Angeles Times' editorial board resigned in protest after that paper's owner quashed an endorsement of Harris. More editors have since quit the Times after Semafor first reported that Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the paper's billionaire owner, blocked the endorsement.
Soon-Shiong's daughter, Nika Soon-Shiong, took to social media early Friday to pin the decision on the Times' editorial board, while also saying the endorsement for Harris was nixed over her support for Israel.
"This is not a vote for Donald Trump. This is a refusal to ENDORSE a candidate that is overseeing a war on children. I’m proud of the LA Times' decision ..." Nika Soon-Shiong said in a post on X.
"There is a lot of controversy and confusion over the LAT's decision not to endorse a presidential candidate. I trust the Editorial Board's judgment. For me, genocide is the line in the sand," she said in another.
That runs contrary to what Soon-Shiong said in his post on X and what former editorials Editor Mariel Garza told Columbia Journalism Review and wrote in her resignation letter. Neither mentioned anything about Harris' support for Israel as a factor.
"Ever since Dr. Soon-Shiong vetoed the editorial board's plan to endorse Kamala Harris for president, I have been struggling with my feelings about the implications of our silence," Garza said in her resignation, published by CJR. "I told myself that presidential endorsements don't really matter; that California was not ever going to vote for Trump; that no one would even notice; that we had written so many 'Trump is unfit' editorials that it was as if we had endorsed her."
"Of course it matters that the largest newspaper in the state — and one of the largest in the nation still — declined to endorse in a race this important. And it matters that we won't even be straight with people about it," she concluded.