I am writing this letter to fill in the information missing in our cancellation of our Post subscription yesterday. The closest option on the webform for reason was the tic box labeled “other”. In order to more adequately capture the reason it would have been handy to have a box labeled “disgust at the lack of editorial backbone”.
I have been a regular reader of the Post for many years, and I remember vividly the extra-extra large type face used to announce “Nixon Resigns” 50 years and a couple months ago. Nixon hated and feared the press and attacked it, and the Post in particular, repeatedly. With him out of the way the Post’s editorial board began the tradition of endorsing a presidential candidate every cycle. Trump’s attacks on the Post appear to have been successful in ending this tradition.
Growing up in the shadow of the Nation’s Capital I appreciated editorial commentary that often had more passion than sense. A little while after the remnants of the Post’s most significant local competitor paper were reforged by Sun Myung Moon into the Washington Times I was a guest on “Petey Greene’s Washington”. That show was filmed at WDCA channel 20 (UHF) just over the MD line off River Road. WDCA used the same studios as WTTG which, at the time of my appearance on “Petey Greene’s Washington”, had not yet become one of the first, if not the first, of Ruppert Murdoch’s FOX television stations. In other words, as I grew up in the shadow of the Nation’s Capital, I saw the perversion of media outlets into propaganda machines for something called “conservatism”, but which resembles more and more the authoritarian ideologies from the middle of the last century.
Since my current Subscription actually goes through March I was able to access and read the 25 October 2024 editorial note penned by William Lewis (publisher and chief executive officer of The Washington Post) about the decision to not endorse a presidential candidate. Due his apparent proximity to the telephone hacking scandal that occurred around 2011 while he worked at the Murdoch owned News International group Lewis has alleged first hand knowledge of at least the surveillance tactics that might be used against enemies of the state. He stepped down as News International group general manager in the wake of investigations into that scandal, and then, after bouncing through a few other news organizations, he found his way to the Post and penned a general explanation to the suppression of an endorsement by that paper.
William did not mention that the last presidential candidate the Post avoided making endorsements around had an enemies list with employees of the post on it, and the candidate who appears to have caused the Post’s editorial board to shy away from an endorsement this year also has an enemies list, and I bet it has employees of the Post on it too. I believe that William would be on any Trump enemies list; after all the Wall Street Journal won a Pulitzer Prize, while he worked in management there, for facilitating reporting that uncovered the Stormy Daniels hush money scandal that eventually would see Trump convicted for 34 separate felony counts. He had had a bunch to say about failing to endorse a presidential candidate in 1960 (JFK won), and 1972 (Nixon won); although the lack of an endorsement in 1972 confuses me as the Post had published the “Pentagon Papers” in the summer of 1971, and was actively covering the Watergate Scandal starting in the summer of 1972. Of course, the Watergate coverage was news reporting not editorial opinion so it is controlled differently. It appears that the Washington Post is returning to its tradition of fear in one department that is not offset enough by the fearless reporting in the other. Fortunately we are retaining our subscription to the New York Times.
