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.
Two sources told The Post’s reporters that Bezos personally rejected an endorsement of Kamala Harris drafted by the paper’s editorial page staffers.
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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.”
A major venture capitalist in Silicon Valley told the Beast he thought the decision was “absolutely awful. I’m glad folks are resigning – Trump’s intimidation already at work.”
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.
But Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the household names who broke the Watergate story, put out their own statement:
“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.”
The Post‘s cartoonist and a number of the paper‘s columnists have also protested the decision.
