Top Editors Eviscerate Jeff Bezos’ Decision to Kill WaPo Endorsement
‘Mightily P---ed’
Major reporters and former editors speak out after Bezos squashed a Harris endorsement drafted by Post writers.
Harry Lambert Special Correspondent Updated Oct. 25 2024 5:42PM EDT Published Oct. 25 2024 4:42PM EDT
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
David Maraniss, an associate editor at The Washington Post – whose coverage of Bill Clinton at the paper won him the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting – has spoken for many in The Post’s newsroom over Jeff Bezos’ decision to kill an endorsement of Kamala Harris for president.
Maraniss, who also served as The Post’s lead reporter during Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, has provided an excoriating statement to the Daily Beast after Bezos’ decision was confirmed by Will Lewis, the paper’s disempowered CEO.
Maraniss said: “I find this contemptible. Marty Baron is right. This is an act not of benign neutrality but of cowardice in the face of the biggest challenge to democracy in our post-WWII lifetimes.
“Ben Bradlee, ten years dead, is mightily p---ed in his grave.”
His statement echoes one made earlier today by Baron, the executive editor of The Post from 2012 to 2021, posted on X: “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). History will mark a disturbing chapter of spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”
Another major editor, Marcus Brauchli – who from 2008 to 2012 preceded Baron as The Post‘s executive editor, and edited The Wall Street Journal before that – offered his own eviscerating criticism of Bezos’ decision in a statement to the Beast: “There are perfectly good reasons a newspaper might give for not endorsing a presidential candidate.
“The Post didn’t offer any, and its timing was awful and looks, whatever the reasoning, gutless or craven. It also failed to explain whether it plans to continue endorsing in state and local races, where its viewpoint matters enormously to local readers.”
Don Graham, the former publisher of The Post, who sold the newspaper to Bezos – and whose mother, Katharine Graham, famously stood up to the Nixon White House over Watergate and the release of the Pentagon Papers – declined to comment.
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