(I cancelled my subscription today.)
‘Washington Post’ won’t endorse in White House race for first time since 1980s — even though they editorialized that Trump is unfit to be President, and their news columns (frequently, if not frequently enough) make it obvious.
It’s not hard to imagine why owner Jeff Bezos did this: fear and greed. As Josh Marshall put it,
in the case of the Post, this is a bad and cowardly development. We can’t know for certain what went into these decisions. But the most obvious explanation is that they have billionaire owners who, especially in the case of Jeff Bezos, have other business interests which are vulnerable to adverse regulatory and contracting decisions as well as government harassment of other kinds. Those are very real threats and ones that a lawless president has a lot latitude to exact without much if any real prospect of redress. […]
The calculus is straightforward. If Harris wins the election, it doesn’t matter. Democratic administrations don’t play that way. Donald Trump’s do.
The big money is betting that there’s a real chance Trump gets elected. And in so doing helping make it so.
Kudos to Robert Kagan for immediately resigning, as an editorial contributor. Obviously these decisions will be harder for those employed by the Post full-time, and who find themselves in a dying industry where jobs are scarce. Even so…
