A sickening moral collapse at the Washington Post

Originally published in Salon.

The shocking decision by The Washington Post not to make an endorsement in the presidential election — breaking with a decades-long tradition — is an extremely powerful statement. A non-endorsement says Donald Trump a reasonable choice.

It says: We are so terrified of a Trump presidency that we are bending the knee in advance. Most importantly, it makes clear that owner Jeff Bezos doesn’t want to lose government business in a second Trump administration.

I can’t imagine statements any more inappropriate from the newspaper of Watergate, the newspaper I spent 12 years working my ass off for. It’s heartbreaking. It makes me sick to my stomach.

To be clear: Every self-respecting journalist on both the news and opinion sides should be sounding the alarm about a possible second term for Trump. He poses a threat to democracy and the free press. On the news side, that requires brutally honest coverage of the threats Trump presents, with no false equating of the two parties — one of which has rejected reality and democratic values. The Post newsroom is hit or miss on that count. But on the editorial page, this shouldn’t have been a close call (and reportedly wasn’t, until Bezos got involved).

The very opposite of sounding the alarm is throwing up your hands and saying “well, you decide.”

Oligarchs as owners has been a disaster

The Post’s decision Friday comes just days after the Los Angeles Times also decided to forgo an official endorsement. This is no coincidence. Both papers are owned by billionaires whose business and personal interests are paramount.

“I think my fear is, if we chose either one, that it would just add to the division,” the billionaire owner of the LA Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong, told Spectrum News this week.

This makes it more clear than ever: You cannot be a truly independent news organization if you are owned by an oligarch.

Bezos’ business interests are so vast that he is one gigantic conflict of interest. As I wrote for the Columbia Journalism Review in 2022, the only way for the Post to regain its independence is for Bezos to transfer ownership to a non-profit.

For a while there, many of us in the newspaper business thought that benevolent billionaires were a plausible savior for news organizations like the Post and the LA Times. We were wrong. Just as these oligarchs are a plague on society, they are a plague on the news business. They have now ruined – possibly for good – two of our most treasured news organizations.

Will anyone quit?

Over at the Los Angeles Times, the editorial editor, along with two other members of the editorial board, have – admirably — resigned in protest.

We’ll see what happens at the Post. Robert Kagan — whose title was editor at large, but who was not a member of the editorial board — has resigned so far. But I’m not optimistic that we’ll see similar acts of heroism there, certainly not at the top. Bezos intentionally hired lickspittles as publisher and editorial editor. The Bezos-installed publisher, a morally challenged former Murdoch henchman and Tory lord named Will Lewis, took credit for the decision on Friday, claiming this shattering of decades of precedent is a statement of independence. Lewis wrote:

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.

He got that right. Then he continued:

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.

But the values the Post has always stood for include truth-telling and love of democracy and speaking truth to power. Pursuing accountability in Washington has been its core brand ever since Watergate. And here it lets Trump escape accountability, once again.

The editorial editor, David Shipley, was installed by Bezos after proving his loyalty to another oligarch, Mike Bloomberg, whose views he dutifully reflected in his editorials. Indeed, Shipley, along with his deputy Tim O’Brien, even left their jobs at Bloomberg Opinion to work (briefly) on their boss’ disastrous presidential campaign. So Shipley is not going to balk – especially after telling disgruntled editorial staffers that he “owned” the decision on Friday, according to NPR.

Nor, I fear, will any other members of the board, who include Charles Lane, Stephen Stromberg, Mary Duenwald, David E. Hoffman, James Hohmann, Mili Mitra, Eduardo Porter, Keith B. Richburg and Molly Roberts. I hope to be proven wrong.

Anticipatory obedience is the point

An overarching theme here is that the moves by the Post and the LA Times reflect what Timothy Snyder, the author of “On Tyranny,” calls “anticipatory obedience.” As Snyder wrote in his book:

Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.

The non-endorsements from the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times would certainly seem to fit the bill.

So, frankly, would the New York Times’ decision to bury its own scoop on Trump’s former chief of staff Marine Gen. John Kelly outing Trump as a Hitler-admiring fascist. I can’t think of a good reason why they didn’t banner it on the front page, can you? Or why they’ve been so listless in their coverage of Trump’s threats to sic the military on the “enemy within”?

As former Washington Post editor Marty Baron put it on Twitter:

This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty. @realdonaldtrump will see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner @jeffbezos (and others). Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.

Columbia Journalism professor Bill Grueskin wrote:

Here’s the thing about these LAT/WPost non-endorsements. They’re unimportant politically; few votes would be swayed. But the billionaire owners are (intentionally or not) sending a signal to the newsrooms: Prepare to accommodate your coverage to a Trump regime.

And that’s the even greater fear: That these institutions are not just succumbing to authoritarianism, they are advancing it.

Woe unto us.