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‘Cowardice’: Former Washington Post editor slams paper for not endorsing presidential candidate
Marty Baron, who led The Boston Globe and The Washington Post for about a decade each, called the decision "disturbingly spineless."
Marty Baron, the former editor of The Boston Globe and The Washington Post, slammed the Washington D.C. paper Friday for not endorsing a presidential candidate at the request of billionaire owner Jeff Bezos.
“This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty,” Baron wrote on X on Friday.” “@realdonaldtrump will see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner @jeffbezos (and others). Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”
Baron led the Globe from 2001 to 2012 before heading to the Post, where he retired in 2021. He published “Collision Of Power: Trump, Bezos and the Washington Post” last year.
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Following his post on X, the Boston Globe interviewed Baron, who while at the Globe oversaw the paper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into sexual abuse in the Catholic church. Baron told the paper that “what the Post demonstrated was weakness, and weakness only invites more pressure.”
While Baron said the decision to not endorse presidential candidates is “reasonable,” it was the timing — two weeks before the election — he found troubling.
“If they had announced this three years ago, if they’d announced it two years ago, or a year ago, or maybe even six months ago — that’s still getting pretty close — I would have said, fine,” he told the Globe. “This clearly was made for other reasons. It wasn’t made based on high principles.”
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Baron said he saw the decision as a “sign” that Bezos has “yielded” to pressure from Trump, who has become “even more virulent in his pledge to seek vengeance on his perceived political enemies.”
“[Trump] threatened to do huge damage to Amazon and Bezos’s commercial interests, solely because of the coverage of The Washington Post,” Baron said. “And he’s kept up that kind of language, and he’s become even more virulent in his pledge to seek vengeance on his perceived political enemies. One can only imagine that Bezos is feeling the pressure.”
William Lewis, publisher and CEO of the Post, announced in a note on Friday that the newspaper will return to its tradition of not endorsing a candidate for president now or in the future, a tradition they initially broke in 1976 to endorse former President Jimmy Carter.
The Post endorsed Carter for “understandable reasons at the time,” Lewis wrote. He also said the non-endorsement isn’t “an abdication of responsibility.”
“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. “We also see it as a statement in support of our readers’ ability to make up their own minds on this.”
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The paper, which uses the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” previously endorsed Trump’s opponents in 2016 and in 2020. In a news article published the same day, the Post reported that editorial staffers had drafted an endorsement of Harris, but the decision to stay silent was made by Bezos, who bought the paper in 2013.
The Washington Post Guild, the union for staffers, called the decision “deeply concern(ing).”
“We are already seeing cancellations from once loyal readers. This decision undercuts the work of our members at a time when we should be building our readers’ trust, not losing it,” the union wrote.
The Los Angeles Times’ editorial board was also planning to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for the role, but their billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong decided to not publish the endorsement. The decisions at both the Post and the Times have prompted resignations from their editorial and leadership staff.
Earlier this month, the Globe endorsed Harris for president, and the newspaper also published a piece explaining its endorsement process.
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