Furious Washington Post readers have accused the news organisation of “caving in” to Donald Trump and failing to abide by its principles, while staff begged supporters not to cancel their subscriptions, as the media outlet struggles to cope with the fallout of its decision not to endorse Kamala Harris in the US presidential election.

For the first time in more than 30 years, the Washington Post announced on Friday its editorial board would not be endorsing a candidate.

“We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates,” Will Lewis, the newspaper’s publisher and chief executive officer, said in a statement on Friday, less than two weeks before the critical poll.

In letters to the editor, readers expressed their “disappointment, disgust and despair” at the extraordinary decision, which has been fiercely criticised across liberal America and has prompted a wave of subscription cancellations at the newspaper that exposed the Watergate scandal and brought down a president.

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  • JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    I’m willing to bet they were preparing an endorsement of Harris and someone stepped in to block it.

    You know, someone with control of the Post who would benefit from Trump tax cuts.

    • aramis87@fedia.io
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      9 days ago

      The thing is, there’s no downside to it for Bezos. If Harris wins, she’ll operate as normal. If tfg wins and Bezos was against him, he knows he’ll get screwed over by the government somehow - an antitrust or monopoly investigation, something.

      But he’s telling fascists ahead of time that he’s okay with whatever tfg wants to do, just don’t hurt him. And that’s how fascists win.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        Let’s be honest, being billionaire taker scum he probably likes the fascists better anyway.

    • _bcron_@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      We all know Musk is gonna get all the space contracts and USPS/DeJoy will get free reign to set prices on the Amazon contracts so Bezos is kind of the idiot here