Three Washington Post journalists said they were stepping down from the paper’s editorial board on Monday in the wake of a decision by the newspaper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, not to endorse a presidential candidate. All three are staying at the paper in other roles.
The three — David Hoffman, who has worked at The Post since 1982; Molly Roberts; and Mili Mitra, the director of audience for the Opinion department — all said during an midmorning meeting of the editorial board that they were stepping down, according to a person with knowledge of the discussion.
In online statements, Mr. Hoffman and Ms. Roberts said publicly they felt it was important for the paper to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris because they considered former President Donald J. Trump as a danger to the country.
“I believe we face a very real threat of autocracy in the candidacy of Donald Trump,” Mr. Hoffman said in his letter announcing his intent to step down to the editor of the opinion department, David Shipley, a copy of which was reviewed by The New York Times. “I find it untenable and unconscionable that we have lost our voice at this perilous moment.”
Mr. Hoffman received a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing at a ceremony on Thursday for a series on authoritarian regimes suppressing dissent. He said he would continue working on several projects he had underway, “including the expanded effort to support press freedom around the world.”
Ms. Roberts said in a post on X, “The mission of an editorial board is simpler than it may seem: We want to make the country and the world a better place by supporting the best candidate or the best policy, and condemning the worst. We want to change minds. But above all else, we want to write with moral clarity. If we can’t do that, what are we doing at all?”
Ms. Roberts said the imperative on the editorial board to endorse Ms. Harris over Mr. Trump was “about as morally clear as it gets.”
Ms. Mitra did not respond to requests for comment.
The Post’s announcement on Friday that it would no longer endorse presidential candidates, ending a decades-long tradition less than two weeks before the election, generated instant pushback from journalists inside its newsroom as well as external critics. Some speculated that Mr. Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, was trying to gain favor with Mr. Trump.
Marty Baron, the recent editor of The Post who led the paper through a period of editorial and business success, called the decision “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty,” in a post on X. The legendary Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein said in a statement that the decision ignored “The Washington Post’s own overwhelming reportorial evidence on the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy.”
Will Lewis, the publisher and chief executive, said in a note to readers on Friday that the paper’s decision to no longer endorse presidential candidates was “a statement in support of our readers’ ability to make up their own minds on this, the most consequential of American decisions — whom to vote for as the next president.”
The editorial board, which consists of 10 members and is separate from the newsroom, had already drafted an endorsement of Ms. Harris, the Democratic nominee. Mr. Lewis said in a separate statement on Saturday that Mr. Bezos had not read the draft before he made his decision. The paper’s news coverage of Mr. Trump has continued to be aggressive in recent days.
Mr. Bezos voiced reservations about running an endorsement as early as late September, during a meeting in Miami with leaders of The Post, according to four people with knowledge of the process. Mr. Lewis and Mr. Shipley tried to persuade him in additional discussions not to stop the endorsement so close to an election.
On Monday, members of the opinion department grilled Mr. Shipley on why Mr. Bezos made his decision. One staff member said the damage had been incalculable.
Mr. Shipley said that he had tried hard to dissuade Mr. Bezos, who has owned The Post since 2013, but was unsuccessful, according to a person familiar with the meeting. He did not explain what rationale, if any, Mr. Bezos gave for his decision.
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