Yoohoo remember democracy dies in darkness?

Oct 25th, 2024 | By Ophelia Benson
Category: Notes and Comment Blog

The former (now retired) editor of the Washington Post:

On political endorsement https://t.co/e5OTZhylIE

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.

— Marty Baron (@PostBaron) October 25, 2024

Here's the Washington Post's front page on January 7, 2021. Four years later, the paper, famous for its tagline "Democracy Dies in Darkness," doesn't want to take a stand on who is fit to be president. pic.twitter.com/WilxA8pfzG

— John Reeves (@reevesjw) October 25, 2024

The Washington Post in 2016:

Trump is unacceptable!

The Washington Post in 2020:

No second term for Trump!

The Washington Post in 2024 (after January 6th, and the increasingly explicit embrace of authoritarianism):

Never mind. pic.twitter.com/tM4JdnbLTI

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) October 25, 2024

There is no logic that isn't damning as to why the Washington Post and LA Times feel they can endorse in every local, state and federal election other than a presidential race.

— Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) October 25, 2024

If you are a journalist, this moment in U.S. history is WHY YOU GOT INTO JOURNALISM.

For the Washington Post to bend the knee to fascism and REFUSE to oppose Trump removes it from the journalistic space.

It has abandoned America when America needed it, and I will NEVER forget.

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) October 25, 2024

9 Responses to “Yoohoo remember democracy dies in darkness?”

#1
Blood Knight in Sour Armor
October 25, 2024 at 1:16 pm

The “please don’t hurt me again” explanation seems pretty straightforward. Might work too. Whereas the net benefit of endorsing a potential loser who wouldn’t retaliate if she won (and which 90 plus percent of the Post’s dwindling readership is already voting for) is pretty damn negligible. It *is* cowardice, but how heroic do billionaires tend to be?
#2
Blood Knight in Sour Armor
October 25, 2024 at 1:34 pm

Related note: anyone else contemplating how to change their lives if he wins? I think at the minimum I won’t be leaving the West Coast for the foreseeable future.
#3
Rev David Brindley
October 25, 2024 at 2:04 pm

Time magazine’s founder Henry Luce addressed the inherent conflict between profits and conscience in a letter to US president Herbert Hoover in 1937: ‘How are you going to regulate a free press? And if you don’t regulate it, I can see nothing to rely on except private conscience. And if you will rely to some extent on the private conscience of editor-publishers (hoping that the conscience of an Ochs will prevail over the conscience of a Hearst) why not rely also on the private conscience of bankers, manufacturers, educators, etc?’

The Men Who Killed The News, Eric Beecher.
#4
Ophelia Benson
October 25, 2024 at 5:09 pm

Former US president Hoover that is. He warn’t prez in 1937.
#5
maddog1129
October 25, 2024 at 8:35 pm

The Washington Post banner has changed.

“We killed democracy in darkness,” is the new slogan they have earned.
#6
What a Maroon
October 25, 2024 at 9:16 pm

Post columnists respond.

The Washington Post’s decision not to make an endorsement in the presidential campaign is a terrible mistake. It represents an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love. This is a moment for the institution to be making clear its commitment to democratic values, the rule of law and international alliances, and the threat that Donald Trump poses to them — the precise points The Post made in endorsing Trump’s opponents in 2016 and 2020. There is no contradiction between The Post’s important role as an independent newspaper and its practice of making political endorsements, both as a matter of guidance to readers and as a statement of core beliefs. That has never been more true than in the current campaign. An independent newspaper might someday choose to back away from making presidential endorsements. But this isn’t the right moment, when one candidate is advocating positions that directly threaten freedom of the press and the values of the Constitution.

Signed by 14 of the Post’s columnists. Several have also written columns (and one drew a cartoon) condemning the decision. Meanwhile, a lot of subscribers are cancelling.

I’m not ready to give up on the Post yet, after nearly 30 years–I’m too addicted to reading the physical paper with my morning coffee. But this feels like a betrayal.
#7
Ophelia Benson
October 26, 2024 at 3:11 am

Thank you for that, WaM.

It’s an absolutely horrific moment to do it.
#8
Mostly Cloudy
October 26, 2024 at 3:50 am

#2 :Blood Knight in Sour Armor : I live in the Republic of Ireland, so Trump II won’t be as bad for me as it would be for the unfortunate Americans (unless Trump gets an itchy nuke trigger finger).

I was watching the news last news, and my mother joked about us welcoming future American refugees into our city alongside the Ukrainian refugees.
#9
iknklast
October 26, 2024 at 8:48 am

Mostly Cloudy, maybe some of us who have ancestors that left Ireland during the potato famine will return to our ‘roots’.