As Legal Insurrection reported, The Washington Post announced Friday that they would not be making an endorsement in this year’s presidential election nor future presidential elections, capping off a disastrous week for the mainstream media that included a similar announcement from the Los Angeles Times.
“Our job at The Washington Post is to provide through the newsroom nonpartisan news for all Americans, and thought-provoking, reported views from our opinion team to help our readers make up their own minds,” the paper’s CEO/publisher, William Lewis, laughably proclaimed.
As was the case with the Times, the newsroom and opinion sides at the WaPo erupted in outrage, suggesting that the paper was abandoning its alleged responsibility to readers and that the decision was a “stab in the back”:
From Bob Woodward (who is an associate editor at the paper) and Carl Bernstein:
“We respect the traditional independence of the editorial page, but this decision 11 days out from the 2024 presidential election ignores the Washington Post’s own overwhelming reportorial evidence on the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy. Under Jeff Bezos’s ownership, the Washington Post’s news operation has used its abundant resources to rigorously investigate the danger and damage a second Trump presidency could cause to the future of American democracy and that makes this decision even more surprising and disappointing, especially this late in the electoral process.”
Prominent lefties and NeverTrumper types also had their undies in a bunch:
There was also a lot of predictable virtue signaling on the Twitter/X machine with people posting screengrabs of their subscription cancellations:
Some suggested that if the critics were really serious about it then they’d cancel their Amazon Prime memberships, too:
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) got in a chuckle for obvious reasons:
Perhaps most amusing were the calls for “conservative” columnist Jennifer Rubin to step up and practice what she preached after she praised the LA Times resignations and wondered when the rest of the editors at the Times would follow suit:
Cooke’s probably right. As of this writing, the only thing Rubin has done has been to add her name to the following letter from the opinion columnists who objected to the presidential non-endorsement decision:
The Washington Post’s decision not to make an endorsement in the presidential campaign is a terrible mistake. It represents an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love. This is a moment for the institution to be making clear its commitment to democratic values, the rule of law and international alliances, and the threat that Donald Trump poses to them — the precise points The Post made in endorsing Trump’s opponents in 2016 and 2020. There is no contradiction between The Post’s important role as an independent newspaper and its practice of making political endorsements, both as a matter of guidance to readers and as a statement of core beliefs. That has never been more true than in the current campaign. An independent newspaper might someday choose to back away from making presidential endorsements. But 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.
So stunningly brave, right? LOL.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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