Why The Washington Post’s nonendorsement might matter more

In 2017, just weeks into Donald Trump’s first term in office, The Washington Post officially announced a new slogan for the storied and celebrated journalistic institution: “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” allegedly a favorite phrase of iconic reporter Bob Woodward. While the paper’s executives insisted they had “come up with a slogan nearly a year ago, long before Trump was the Republican presidential nominee,” the mantra was quickly — and understandably — taken by many as a rallying cry, not just for the Post, but for the media at large during the already-evident tumult of the Trump administration.

Seven years later, as Trump approaches Election Day with promises of retribution and violence, the Post’s slogan is once again in the spotlight — this time in light of the paper’s sudden and unexpected decision to nix a planned presidential endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, allegedly “made by owner, Jeff Bezos,” the Post’s union said on X.

Although the impact of the Post’s decision not to endorse a candidate may, at this stage of the 2024 campaign, be electorally minimal (the same as if it had endorsed someone), the implications of such a move may be more concerning.

“This is cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty,” former Post editor Marty Baron said to NPR. “Trump will celebrate this as an invitation to further intimidate the Post’s owner” and other media owners.

What did the commentators say?

The Post’s decision to cancel its planned endorsement of Harris — coupled with a similar decision by the Los Angeles Times not to endorse a candidate this year after having endorsed Democrats for the previous four elections — is an example of “anticipatory obedience,” the Columbia Journalism Review said. Owners like Bezos and the Times’ publisher Patrick Soon-Shiong are preemptively acting out of fear that “if Trump wins he could take vengeance on companies that cross him.” What’s the use of having a net worth of over $200 billion if Bezos can’t buy “fearlessness in the face of a carnival-barking, would-be authoritarian who is basically a coin toss away from being, yet again, president of the United States?” asked Brian McGrory at The Boston Globe.

In the wake of the nonendorsement announcement, the “#BoycottWaPo hashtag spawned dozens of anti-Post comments, as well as remarks from notable public figures and influencers about canceled subscriptions,” the Post itself said in an article on reactions to the decision. The nonendorsement “already seemed to be impacting subscriptions,” said Semafor, with some 2,000 people canceling within the first 24 hours after the announcement — “an unusually high number,” according to one Post employee.

Not everyone agrees with how best to respond, however. Cancellations “do Donald Trump’s work for him,” Baron said to The New Yorker. “He would like to actually weaken these institutions and eliminate them.”

“Canceling a newspaper subscription helps politicians who don’t want oversight,” said CNN’s Jake Tapper on X. Doing so “does nothing to hurt the billionaires who own the newspapers,” and ultimately “will result in fewer journalists trying to hold the powerful to account.”

Although newspaper cancellations are a “reasonable impulse” for average people with “few ways of combatting forces bigger than them, forces such as the threat of authoritarianism,” The Atlantic said, doing so only hurts journalism as a whole. Subscribers should instead be “canceling their Amazon Prime subscriptions,” which are ultimately the engine of Bezos’ fortune.

What next?

Under Bezos, the Post “surely did more at the margins to help Harris by spiking the editorial — by outraging her supporters — than if it had been published on Sunday,” said Politico‘s John Harris. Still, by dint of his own role in the power structure the paper is meant to hold to task, Bezos should either sell the paper outright or “somehow put it in the hands of a truly independent nonprofit entity.”

More broadly, the episode is an “argument against billionaires buying newspapers,” said MSNBC‘s Jarvis DeBerry. While there may have been hell to pay if the Post and the Times had endorsed Harris, and then Trump won, that hell “will be visited on more vulnerable people to a much greater degree.” It is “unforgivable,” then, that these owners are “more concerned with their own interests than the interests of the readers they serve.”