The Washington Post’s chief executive, Will Lewis, announced on Friday that the newspaper would not endorse a candidate for President this year and would not do so in future Presidential elections. Lewis cast the decision as the newspaper returning to its “roots”; before the nineteen-seventies, the paper rarely endorsed Presidential candidates. Members of the opinion section had already drafted an endorsement of Vice-President Kamala Harris. The decision to not run it, and to end the tradition of issuing endorsements in Presidential elections, was, according to multiple news reports, ultimately made by Jeff Bezos, the Post’s owner, though a spokesperson for the newspaper characterized it as a “Washington Post decision.” Several days before Lewis’s announcement, the editorials editor of the Los Angeles Times had resigned after, she said, the newspaper’s owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, blocked the Times’ editorial board from endorsing Harris. The decisions by the Times and the Post have raised fears that media publishers, preparing for the possibility of a second Trump Administration, are being cowed by him. Two other L.A. Times editorial-board members have left the paper over this controversy, and a Post opinion editor, Robert Kagan, resigned on Friday.
One of the people concerned about the Post’s decision is Marty Baron, the retired executive editor of the newspaper, who ran the newsroom from 2013 to 2021, and tweeted on Friday, “This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty.” He added that Trump “will see this as an invitation to further intimidate” Bezos, and that the move represented “disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.” (The New Yorker’s editor, David Remnick, who worked at the Post for a decade, told Semafor, “To think that the endlessly wealthy owner of The Washington Post can’t muster the nerve to go forward with an endorsement essay is a miserable omen.”)
Over the weekend, I spoke by phone with Baron, who also once ran the Boston Globe, where he directed the paper’s revelatory series of stories on sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed his relationship with Bezos, what he thinks is behind the Post’s actions, and how a newspaper owner should best support his editors.
Do you have inside knowledge of why this decision to not endorse was made, or are you just assuming that it was done to not anger Donald Trump?
I don’t have inside knowledge, no.
From the phrasing of your tweet, it seemed that you were pretty certain about why it was done.
Well, there are not many other reasons here. I don’t think it was a matter of high principle, as outlined in Will Lewis’s statement. You don’t make these decisions eleven days before the election without any deliberation with the staff, with the draft editorial sitting on the table. Obviously, if they had decided three years ago, two years ago, maybe a year ago that they didn’t want to do Presidential endorsements or political endorsements of any type, that would have been a perfectly fine decision. One can agree or disagree, but that’s not what happened here. And they continued to make endorsements. They’ve made an endorsement in the Maryland Senate race; they’ve made an endorsement in a Virginia House race. They have editorial opinions on all sorts of subjects, but in this one instance, the Presidential race, right before the election, the decision was made not to run one. They’ve tried to frame this as a matter of high principle and a return to the roots, and that just doesn’t make sense.
I’ve gone back and looked at your book, and you’re very complimentary of Bezos. Is there anything in hindsight that you think was similar to this or could have been a hint of something like this happening? Or do you view this as really a break with everything you thought you knew?
I view it as a break. In the book, I told things the way that they really were. People had a lot of suspicions about Bezos, but the reality is that he never interfered in our coverage in any way, and I was very grateful for that. And he did that despite enormous pressure from Donald Trump, starting when Trump began his campaign for the Presidency in 2015. And then certainly during 2016. After the election, Trump threatened Bezos, threatened Amazon, and then subsequently he tried to get the postal commissioner to raise postal rates. He intervened in a ten-billion-dollar cloud-computing contract with the Defense Department to make sure that it didn’t go to Amazon. He denigrated Bezos continuously—and yet Bezos stood by us. There were many examples where Bezos made clear that he wasn’t submitting to any pressure. And I relate those in the book.
Obviously, this involves something different. This is the editorial page. In fact, Fred Hiatt, former editorial-page editor, told me that in 2016 he framed things as “if and when we make a Presidential endorsement.” At the time, Bezos said, “Why would we not make a Presidential endorsement?” They went ahead and did make one, and it was a very strong one. They made an endorsement again in 2020. Those were very tough editorials, and there have been many tough editorials on Donald Trump since. But now they’ve decided not to do it. So it is a break.
In the book, you write, “Bezos’ ability to prosper despite Trump’s attacks, however, was not what made this chapter in US history so consequential. In some ways, Bezos’ resilience blurred the horror of what had just happened. A president of the United States had sought to marshal the full power of the federal government to sabotage the business of the man he perceived as an enemy.” What was it that made him resilient? How would you characterize that word?
First of all, it was based on the actual evidence, which was that Amazon continued to prosper. And despite Trump’s attacks on Bezos, despite Trump’s attacks on Amazon, they found ways to grow. And Bezos was leading the company at the time. I think that’s a demonstration of resilience on his part. He didn’t become poorer during that time; he became much wealthier. I think he has a sense that he can navigate his way through all sorts of different challenges. And, to date, he’s been able to do that. There’s plenty of evidence of his resilience.
Right, but, beyond that, your book made me think that fundamentally there was some principle involved—that he believed there was something wrong with the President of the United States bullying someone over business decisions because he didn’t like their newspaper coverage.
Absolutely. In 2016, I interviewed him because he had been attacked personally by Trump for the first time, and he was speaking at a conference that we had at the Post. I had been asked to interview him, and I made clear to his people that I was going to ask him about this. And Bezos said quite explicitly that he thought Trump’s behavior was entirely inappropriate for somebody who sought to be President of the United States, that threatening businesses violated all the norms of a democracy. He expressed strong opposition to that kind of behavior and he didn’t mince words about it. So, he is philosophically opposed to that. He does think it’s terrible. He does think that it’s bullying and it’s contrary to the Constitution and the rule of law and the norms of the democratic process in the United States.
Did you notice his politics changing at all during the course of your time running the paper?
No, I didn’t really discuss politics with him anyway.
Maybe I should say his “values.”
No. Actually, they were quite consistent and that’s what I really admired.
And so you feel somewhat at a loss now to explain this?
I feel exceptionally disappointed. And I worry about what it means, not just for the Post but for democracy. I think that anybody who owns a media organization needs to be willing to stand up to intense pressure. And Bezos demonstrated that he was capable of that and willing to do that. Now I worry that there’s a sign of weakness. If Trump sees a sign of weakness, he’s going to pounce even harder in the future.
It also just raises questions, because if Trump wins and the Post tries to cover him in the manner that it covered him during the first term, if it continues its aggressive coverage of Washington and the Trump Administration, there are going to be a million things that make Trump angry. This editorial, whether it runs or not, is going to seem like a footnote. It makes you wonder about what’s going to happen with the coverage generally.
I think that’s a concern. I’ve seen no evidence to date that Bezos has interfered in the news coverage. They continue to deliver very strong news coverage. I’m proud to have been associated with the Post and with so many of those journalists.
