The newspaper has bucked five decades of tradition by refusing to back a Democrat for the presidency
More than 200,000 people have canceled their subscriptions to the Washington Post after the newspaper’s owner, Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos, canceled its tradition of endorsing presidential candidates, NPR has reported.
The Washington Post has endorsed presidential candidates since 1976, all of them Democrats. However, the newspaper announced on Friday that it would no longer do so, making Vice President Kamala Harris the first Democrat in almost 50 years to miss out on the Post’s backing.
The decision has apparently angered the Post’s liberal readers, with 200,000 canceling their digital subscriptions by Monday afternoon, according to NPR. This number, which accounts for around 8% of the paper’s paid subscribers, continued to grow in the hours that followed, NPR reported, citing two anonymous sources at the Washington Post.
Among those who canceled their subscriptions were Oscar-nominated actor Jeffrey Wright and ‘The West Wing’ actor Bradley Whitford.
Three of the newspaper’s ten-person editorial board have since stepped down, while 21 of the Post’s opinion columnists signed a statement describing the non-endorsement as “a terrible mistake.” They argued that “this isn’t the right moment, when one candidate is advocating positions that directly threaten freedom of the press and the values of the Constitution.”
In an op-ed on Monday, Bezos explained that “presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales in an election,” and “create a perception of bias.” Eliminating them will help restore public trust in the media, he claimed, pointing out that journalists are now viewed by the American public as less trustworthy than members of Congress.
Last month, Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong announced that the newspaper would also not be making presidential endorsements, while USA Today said on Monday that it would hold off on backing either Harris or former President Donald Trump. The LA Times had backed Democrats in every election since it resumed its policy of endorsements in 2008, while USA Today backed President Joe Biden in 2020 and called Trump “unfit for the presidency” in 2016.
The New York Times, Boston Globe, Seattle Times, Las Vegas Sun, and the New Yorker have all endorsed Harris, while Trump is currently backed by the New York Post, Washington Times, and Las Vegas Review-Journal.