The Cowardice of the Washington Post

My former employer runs and hides in the darkness.

Photo by Unlimited Access on Unsplash

I am, in my heart, an institutionalist.

I think institutions that earn reputations for being responsible stewards of knowledge, of civic life, of speaking truth to power and money are Rare and Good Things worth preserving. For most of my adult life I have wanted to be associated with institutions that meet this description. I have succeeded to some degree in that quest — and I am loyal to those institutions that continue to live up to their ideals. As for the institutions that change, like the Republican Party? I leave.

When Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, I was warily hopeful that the key institutions of civil life would resist Trump’s illiberal and unlawful impulses because it was, you know, the right thing to do. And many of them did! But what is truly bizarre is that, even after Trump lost in 2020 and his most unlawful and violent power grab was laid bare for everyone to see, a lot of institutions — the United States Senate, the Supreme Court, the Republican Party — have acquiesced to Trump’s brand of illiberal populism.

This appeasement of Trump now extends to the private sector. Earlier this week I referenced the impulse of billionaires like Jamie Dimon and Bill Gates to stay quiet in their support of Kamala Harris for fear of risking the wrath of Donald Trump. Apparently, this now extends to billionaires that own newspapers. On Tuesday Semafor’s Max Tani reported that Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, “a doctor who made his fortune in the healthcare industry” according to Tani, “blocked the paper from endorsing a candidate for president this year.” This triggered a lame-ass explanation on social media from Soon-Shiong and a series of resignations from the editorial board.

And now we turn to my former employer, the Washington Post.

Before I hired the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World, I helmed a hard-working staff over at the Post, writing the online Spoiler Alerts column for them from 2014 to 2022. It was an exciting time to be a Postie. Under Marty Baron, the paper broke a lot of stories and made a lot of waves. It did what a newspaper is supposed to do — tell the truth and hold power to account. When I was there, Jeff Bezos owning the Post was viewed as a good thing. Sure, after Baron stepped down the Post seemed to be struggling, and Bezos seemed a bit disengaged, but I still had faith in the Washington Post as an institution.

I was wrong.

While the Post’s reporting remains excellent, it’s impossible to look at the Post’s management and come away with any confidence that they know what they are supposed to be doing beyond covering their asses.

Ironically enough, it was the Post’s reporters — in particular, Manuel Roig-Franzia and Laura Wagner — who broke the story that explains my current state of fury:

The Washington Post’s editorial board announced Friday that it will not make an endorsement in this year’s presidential contest, for the first time in 36 years, or in future presidential races.

The decision, 11 days before an election that most polls show as too close to call, marks the second time this week that a major media organization has declined to issue an endorsement in the race between the Republican nominee, former president Donald Trump, and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, after years of making such endorsements. Earlier this week, Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, blocked a planned endorsement of Harris, prompting the resignation of the newspaper’s editorials editor.

An endorsement of Harris had been drafted by Post editorial page staffers but had yet to be published, according to two sources briefed on the sequence of events who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The decision not to publish was made by The Post’s owner — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — according to the same sources.

“This is cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty. Donald Trump will celebrate this as an invitation to further intimidate The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos (and other media owners),” former Post executive editor Martin Baron, who led the paper while Trump was president, said in a text message to The Post. “History will mark a disturbing chapter of spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”….

The decision has roiled many on the editorial staff, which operates independently from The Post’s news staff, a long-standing tradition of American journalism designed to separate opinion writing from day-to-day news coverage.

NPR’s David Folkenfilk has more about that roiling in the editorial staff:

Colleagues learned the news from the editorial page editor, David Shipley, at a tense meeting shortly before Lewis' announcement. The meeting was characterized by two people with direct knowledge of discussions on condition of anonymity to speak about internal matters.

Shipley had approved an editorial endorsement for Harris that was being drafted earlier this month, according to three people with direct knowledge. He told colleagues it was being reviewed by Bezos.

On Friday, Shipley said that he told other editorial board leaders the day before that management had decided there would be no endorsement, though he has known for weeks. He added that he "owns" this decision. The reason he cited was to create "independent space" where the newspaper does not tell people for whom to vote.

Colleagues were said to be "shocked" and uniformly negative. Post corporate spokespeople have not responded to multiple messages left by NPR on the subject….

Colleagues have told NPR that Bezos selected Lewis in part for his ability to get along with powerful conservative figures, including [Rupert] Murdoch.

Post publisher Will Lewis published his explanation in the Post for this change of tack. The key paragraph:

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. That is inevitable. We don’t see it that way. 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. We also see it as a statement in support of our readers’ ability to make up their own minds on this, the most consequential of American decisions — whom to vote for as the next president.

I suspect Lewis got zero help from his editorial staff in writing that essay — because it’s a piss-poor argument. How is not endorsing “consistent with the values The Post has always stood for” given that the Post had endorsed a presidential candidate in every election but one since 1976?! How is a non-endorsement consistent with “veneration for the rule of law” when one of the major party candidates is a convicted felon who faces multiple federal felony charges?! Lewis further claims that not endorsing is consistent with “readers’ ability to make up their own minds on this”?! Is Lewis implying that if, God forbid, the Post endorsed one of the candidates it would somehow cause Post readers to lose their sense of self?!

The most absurd part of Lewis’ explanation is, well all of it — because the Post’s own reporting make it clear that Lewis did not make this decision for high-minded reasons — it was Bezos’ call! And it seems pretty clear that Bezos is fearful that Trump, who exacted vengeance on Bezos-owned firms during his first term, will do the same if he is re-elected. Baron’s condemnation is a tell that there was nothing noble about Bezos’ decision. Similarly, former Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel skeeted, “I worked at the paper for seven years and Bezos never interfered with a thing. This is five-alarm fire stuff.”

It is becoming readily apparent that even the coin-flip possibility of Trump becoming president again has cowed many institutions into premature appeasement. As Semafor’s Ben Smith told NPR, “One of the central media stories in the U.S. right now is the people who run big media companies making accommodations for a second Trump presidency and thinking about how to avoid antagonizing him.”

Bezos’ decision to block the Post from endorsing is just the latest depressing data point. Ironically, it was Robert Kagan who warned about this very possibility last year in the pages of the Washington Post:

If Trump does win the election, he will immediately become the most powerful person ever to hold that office. Not only will he wield the awesome powers of the American executive — powers that, as conservatives used to complain, have grown over the decades — but he will do so with the fewest constraints of any president, fewer even than in his own first term.

It is worth getting inside Trump’s head a bit and imagining his mood following an election victory. He will have spent the previous year, and more, fighting to stay out of jail, plagued by myriad persecutors and helpless to do what he likes to do best: exact revenge. Think of the fury that will have built up inside him, a fury that, from his point of view, he has worked hard to contain. As he once put it, “I think I’ve been toned down, if you want to know the truth. I could really tone it up.” Indeed he could — and will. We caught a glimpse of his deep thirst for vengeance in his Veterans Day promise to “root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American Dream.” Note the equation of himself with “America and the American Dream.” It is he they are trying to destroy, he believes, and as president, he will return the favor.

What will that look like? Trump has already named some of those he intends to go after once he is elected: senior officials from his first term such as retired Gen. John F. Kelly, Gen. Mark A. Milley, former attorney general William P. Barr and others who spoke against him after the 2020 election; officials in the FBI and the CIA who investigated him in the Russia probe; Justice Department officials who refused his demands to overturn the 2020 election; members of the Jan. 6 committee; Democratic opponents including Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.); and Republicans who voted for or publicly supported his impeachment and conviction.

But that’s just the start. After all, Trump will not be the only person seeking revenge. His administration will be filled with people with enemies’ lists of their own, a determined cadre of “vetted” officials who will see it as their sole, presidentially authorized mission to “root out” those in the government who cannot be trusted. Many will simply be fired, but others will be subject to career-destroying investigations. The Trump administration will be filled with people who will not need explicit instruction from Trump, any more than Hitler’s local gauleiters needed instruction. In such circumstances, people “work toward the Führer,” which is to say, they anticipate his desires and seek favor through acts they think will make him happy, thereby enhancing their own influence and power in the process….

The American press corps will remain divided as it is today, between those organizations catering to Trump and his audience and those that do not. But in a regime where the ruler has declared the news media to be “enemies of the state,” the press will find itself under significant and constant pressure. Media owners will discover that a hostile and unbridled president can make their lives unpleasant in all sorts of ways.

In response to Bezos’ decision, Bob Kagan resigned from the Post’s editorial board today. If I was still writing there, I would have joined him. As another member of the board told Semafor’s Maxwell Tani, “If you don’t have the balls to own a newspaper, don’t.”

This is an embarrassing display of cowardice from Jeff Bezos, Will Lewis, and anyone else at the Post who had a hand in making this call. It is also an extremely disturbing harbinger of the quiescence of major institutions if Donald Trump wins in November.