At least two more staffers have penned their last story for The Washington Post as employees resign in protest over the broadsheet’s decision not to endorse Kamala Harris for the 2024 presidential election.
Editorial board members David Hoffman and Molly Roberts have issued their resignations, Semafor media journalist Max Tani reported on Monday. The two longtime Washington Post staffers each authored resignation letters slamming the paper’s decision not to endorse Harris.
“I believe we face a very real threat of autocracy in the candidacy of Donald Trump,” Hoffman, who took home the Pulitzer Prize last week and first joined the paper in 1982, wrote in his resignation letter, which was posted on X. “I find it untenable and unconscionable that we have lost our voice at this perilous moment.”
Roberts, another longtime employee of The Post who first joined the paper as a student intern while studying at Harvard University, said she was resigning due to the paper’s refusal to endorse Harris.
“I’m resigning from The Post editorial board because the imperative to endorse Kamala Harris over Donald Trump is about as morally clear as it gets,” Roberts wrote in her resignation letter. “Worse, our silence is exactly what Donald Trump wants: for the media, for us, to keep quiet.”
Their notices join one other known resignation among the editorial staff.
The Washington Post on Friday announced it would not endorse either presidential candidate, breaking 36 years of tradition – and eliciting outrage from staffers, subscribers and reporters at other outlets.
The newspaper then published an article written by two reporters saying that editorial page staffers had already drafted an endorsement for Vice President Kamala Harris.
“The decision not to publish was made by The Post’s owner – Amazon founder Jeff Bezos,” The Washington Post reported, citing two sources briefed on the events.
Bezos hired the paper’s CEO and publisher, ex-Wall Street Journal boss Will Lewis, in January despite internal protests over his alleged involvement in the UK phone hacking scandal.
Lewis has said he was the one who killed the Harris endorsement, not Bezos. In a column, he wrote that the newspaper was not breaking from tradition, but rather returning to the paper’s practice from years ago of not endorsing candidates.
He said it was “consistent with the values the Post has always stood for” and it reflected the paper’s faith in “our readers’ ability to make up their own minds.”
“We recognize 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 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.”
Robert Kagan, a member of the opinions section, resigned in protest. He said that Lewis’ explanation was “laughable” and that the decision not to endorse stemmed from an alleged deal between Bezos and former President Donald Trump.
Kagan told The Daily Beast that Trump’s meeting with executives from Blue Origin, Bezos’ space company, the same day the endorsement was killed was proof of their scheme.
After the paper’s non-endorsement, some Washington Post readers canceled their subscriptions and encouraged others to do the same on social media.
The turmoil in The Post’s newsroom echoes chaos at the Los Angeles Times, where at least three editorial staffers resigned in protest of owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong’s decision to block an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Soon-Shiong’s daughter said that the refusal to endorse Harris stemmed from dissatisfaction over the Biden administration’s Israel policies, though the billionaire denied that this was the case.
Some have decried the non-endorsement as Bezos’ attempt to cozy up to former president Donald Trump after their rocky history.
During his time as president, Trump frequently criticized Bezos for The Washington Post’s left-leaning coverage.
In 2019, Amazon accused Trump of political retribution after his administration denied the company a $10 billion Pentagon contract to provide cloud computing services.