2 Washington Post Editorial Board Members Step Down After Endorsement Decision

The two writers, David Hoffman and Molly Roberts, said they thought it was important for the paper to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential election.

Jeff Bezos, the very rich person proprietor of The Washington Post, whose choice to conclusion presidential supports at the paper set off a firestorm interior and exterior the paper final week, said on Monday in his to begin with comments almost the alter that it had been done to move forward the newsroom’s validity, not to secure his possess individual interests.

“Presidential supports do nothing to tip the scales of an election,” Mr. Bezos composed in an paper distributed on The Post’s site. He included: “What presidential supports really do is make a discernment of inclination. A discernment of non-independence. Finishing them is a principled choice, and it’s the right one.”

The paper had reported the choice to conclusion supports on Friday, in a note put out by Will Lewis, its chief official, who said it was “a explanation in bolster of our readers’ capacity to make up their claim minds” approximately the election.

But at the time, the company said nothing around Mr. Bezos’ inspiration for the choice. A few conjectured without prove that Mr. Bezos, the originator of Amazon, who has claimed the paper since 2013, was attempting to pick up favor with a potential Trump organization. The paper’s publication board had as of now drafted an support of Bad habit President Kamala Harris.

Mr. Bezos said on Monday that he had not and would not seek after his individual interface through his possession of The Post, and that “no quid master quo of any kind is at work here.”

“You can see my riches and trade interface as a rampart against terrorizing, or you can see them as a web of clashing interests,” he included. “Only my possess standards can tip the adjust from one to the other. I guarantee you that my sees here are, in reality, principled, and I accept my track record as proprietor of The Post since 2013 backs this up.”

Mr. Bezos said that whereas he wished his choice had come prior than it did, less than two weeks some time recently the race, the timing was due to “inadequate arranging, and not a few purposefulness strategy.”

After Friday’s declaration, a few of the paper’s best-known writers talked out almost the choice and thousands of perusers complained approximately it in comments on The Post’s website.

Marty Aristocrat, the later editor of The Post who driven the paper through a period of publication and commerce victory, called the choice “cowardice, with majority rule government as its casualty,” in a post on X. The incredible Post writers Sway Woodward and Carl Bernstein said in a explanation that the choice overlooked “The Washington Post’s possess overpowering reportorial prove on the danger Donald Trump postures to democracy.” The paper’s news scope of Mr. Trump has proceeded to be forceful in later days.

Earlier on Monday, three writers said they were venturing down from The Post’s 10-person publication board. All three are remaining at the paper in other roles.

The three — David Hoffman, who has worked at The Post since 1982; Molly Roberts; and Mili Mitra, the executive of group of onlookers for the conclusion office — all said amid a midmorning assembly of the publication board that they were venturing down, agreeing to a individual with information of the discussion.

In online explanations, Mr. Hoffman and Ms. Roberts said freely that they felt it was vital for the paper to underwrite Ms. Harris since they considered Mr. Trump a threat to the nation. Ms. Mitra did not react to demands for comment.

“I accept we confront a exceptionally genuine risk of absolutism in the candidacy of Donald Trump,” Mr. Hoffman said in his letter reporting his aim to step down to the editor of the supposition office, David Shipley. “I discover it untenable and unconscionable that we have misplaced our voice at this risky moment.”

Mr. Hoffman gotten a Pulitzer Prize for publication composing at a ceremony on Thursday for a arrangement on dictator administrations stifling disagree. He said he would proceed working on a few ventures he had underway, “including the extended exertion to bolster press opportunity around the world.”

Ms. Roberts said in a post on X, “The mission of an publication board is less difficult than it may appear: We need to make the nation and the world a superior put by supporting the best candidate or the best arrangement, and condemning the most exceedingly bad. We need to alter minds. But over all else, we need to type in with ethical clarity. If we can’t do that, what are we doing at all?”

Ms. Roberts said the basic on the publication board to support Ms. Harris over Mr. Trump was “about as ethically clear as it gets.”

Mr. Bezos finished his paper by saying that he would not permit the paper to “fade into irrelevance,” and that to recapture believe among perusers the paper required to work out “new muscles.”

“Some changes will be a return to the past, and a few will be modern inventions,” he proceeded. “Criticism will be portion and divide of anything modern, of course.”