Washington Post endorsement of Harris quashed by owner Jeff Bezos, its own report says

Less than two weeks before Election Day, The Washington Post said Friday it would not endorse a candidate for president in this year’s tightly contested race and would avoid doing so in the future – a decision immediately condemned by a former executive editor and one that the current publisher insisted was “consistent with the values the Post has always stood for”.

In an article posted on the front of its website, The Washington Post – reporting on its own inner workings – also quoted anonymous sources within the publication as saying that an endorsement of Kamala Harris over Donald Trump had been written but not published.

Those sources told the paper’s reporters that the company’s owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos, made the decision.

The publisher of The Washington Post, Will Lewis, wrote in a column that the decision was actually a return to a tradition the paper had years ago of not endorsing candidates. He said it reflected the paper’s faith in “our readers’ ability to make up their own minds”.

“We recognise 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,” Lewis wrote.

“We don’t see it that way. We see it as consistent with the values The [Washington] 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.”