UPDATED:
Today The Washington Post publisher and CEO announced that the paper will not endorse a presidential candidate for the first time since 1988 although the decision came from Jeff Bezos, the owner. The paper joins the LA Times on the opposite coast, where the “newspaper’s owner blocked the editorial board’s plans to endorse Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris for president.”
Both papers are owned by tech billionaires: Bezos owns the Post (e-commerce) and Patrick Soon-Shiong owns the Times (medical tech).
Bezos notably hired Will Lewis to serve as publisher and CEO, a controversial selection due to accusations “of corruption and cronyism” in Great Britain. Lewis is certainly “going back” in his rationalization:
In explaining the call, Lewis cited a 1960 editorial board column explaining the paper’s position at the time not to endorse presidential candidates.
The Washington Post editor-at-large, Robert Kagan, resigned Friday.
The LA Times editorials editor also resigned in protest:
“I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not OK with us being silent,” Garza said. “In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”
Fourteen* Washington Post columnists responded:
Both papers have failed the test of defending democracy in a week where former Trump Administration officials (John Kelly and Mark Milley) have gone on the record that the presidential candidate is “fascist.” See a list of Republicans who oppose Trump’s candidacy.
The paper I've loved working at for 47 years is dying in darkness.
— david maraniss (@maranissdavid) October 25, 2024
After 5 years, I have canceled my subscription to the Washington Post.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) October 25, 2024
What does that mean, fascist? Here’s one example:
Trump’s suggestion he could use the military against an “enemy from within,” which he said includes Democrats like Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff from California, certainly sounds fascist. His Republican defenders argue it’s just hyperbole.
Trump wanted to use the military to disrupt domestic protests when he was in office, something that his top general at the time, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley, rejected, according to reporting in 2021. Milley also privately compared Trump’s election denialism to Hitler’s “big lie.”
Even if he doesn’t intend to use the military on Democrats, he has a history of trying to use the military to put down protests in the US, making the threat to quiet dissent.
Here’s another
If he wins the election, Trump has promised to do more to go to war with what he perceives as a “deep state” of bureaucrats at the Justice Department, the FBI and the Pentagon.
He has also suggested he would use the justice system to prosecute election officials.
All of this points in favor of at least a thematic alignment with some elements of fascism, built around a strong leader and where dissent in the government is dismissed. But there can also be more to fascism, such as complete control of the German economy and society. Trump has not suggested anything like that.
As to journalistic malpractice:
Trump’s decline is too dangerous to ignore
We can see the decline in the former president’s ability to hold a train of thought, speak coherently, or demonstrate a command of the English language, to say nothing of policy. So why are Republicans and the press holding Trump to a different standard than Biden?
The papers are ignoring the first point in Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century: “Do not obey in advance.”
Do not obey in advance. Lesson 1, first page, of my pamphlet "On Tyranny." https://t.co/dJnBKMWjls pic.twitter.com/L7Mso1e82b
— Timothy Snyder (@TimothyDSnyder) October 25, 2024
Dan Froomkin calls this a “Cronkite moment” for television newsrooms.
* Signed by: Karen Attiah, Perry Bacon Jr., Matt Bai, E.J. Dionne Jr., Lee Hockstader, David Ignatius, Heather Long, Ruth Marcus, Dana Millbank, Alexandra Petri, Catherine Rampell, Eugene Robinson, Jennifer Rubin, Karen Tumulty.
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The stakes in November have never been more urgent, nor the choices more extreme.
Remember: you are not voting for one person. You are voting for a team.
I’m voting for Team America not Team Russia-Hungary-North Korea.
Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com