Woodward and Bernstein Slam Jeff Bezos for Canceled Kamala Harris Endorsement: 'Surprising
Ex-WaPo Editor:
This Is a Straight Bezos-Trump ‘Quid Pro Quo’
Robert Kagan tells the Daily Beast that Donald Trump’s meeting with Blue Origin executives the day its founder Jeff Bezos killed his paper’s Kamala Harris endorsement is proof of a backroom deal.
Updated Oct. 26 2024 4:29PM EDT / Published Oct. 26 2024 3:54PM EDT
Lewis, who is the newspaper’s publisher, claimed that the Post’s last minute nixing of its endorsement had nothing to do with its owner, and was instead because “I do not believe in presidential endorsements.”
- His claim contradicts reports from sources that Lewis “fought tooth and nail” to keep the endorsement.
“Some journalists will stick around for that. Some will leave. If they leave, they can be replaced,” he said.
Lewis has come under growing scrutiny in recent weeks after reports that he sought to discourage The Post from covering a British civil case regarding a phone-hacking scheme involving Rupert Murdoch’s media company, where he once worked. Lewis is not a defendant in the case and has denied wrongdoing. He has also denied trying to interfere with Post coverage.
- On Friday, a British editor who had been tapped by Lewis to take charge of The Post’s core newsroom later this year decided to withdraw.
- The move followed coverage in The Post and elsewhere examining past newsgathering practices by the two men, who had previously worked together in Britain.
Before venturing into the world of start-ups, Lewis led much larger companies, including the Wall Street Journal as its publisher and CEO for six years.
He previously worked as a top executive with Murdoch’s News Corp. and as a journalist for multiple British publications, including the Telegraph and the Financial Times.
New 'Washington Post' CEO accused of Murdoch tabloid hacking cover-up
Lewis founded the News Movement in 2020 with other investors — including Breen — who together put up $15 million in capital, company executives have said. The company began operations with a handful of employees in London and says it has since expanded to about 50 staffers.
Early last year, the News Movement acquired the Recount, a New York-based digital news start-up that produces short videos for Gen Z audiences, in a deal for an undisclosed amount of equity.
- While Lewis ran the News Movement, it forged a partnership with the Associated Press, where he serves on the board of directors, alongside other news executives. The News Movement also took on additional investors, including a fund controlled by a member of the royal family of Qatar, a gas-rich Persian Gulf country.
Robert Kagan was furious the paper would not endorse Kamala Harris for US president
Victoria Nuland’s husband quits WaPo after Bezos decision
The Washington Post’s editor-at-large Robert Kagan has resigned in protest after the newspaper, owned by Amazon magnate Jeff Bezos, decided to forego a presidential endorsement for the first time since 1988.
- Kagan is the husband of Victoria Nuland, the former senior State Department official who was directly involved in the 2014 US-backed coup in Ukraine.
- A self-described neoconservative, Kagan went from being a foreign policy adviser to Republican presidential candidate John McCain in 2008 to joining the Democrats in 2016 and endorsing Hillary Clinton.
While Kagan’s has been the only resignation so far, WaPo came under a torrent of criticism for Bezos’ decision. Susan Rice, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, denounced the move as “the most hypocritical, chicken sh*t move from a publication that is supposed to hold people in power to account.”
“This is cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty,” Marty Baron, the Post’s executive editor during the Trump presidency, told NPR in a statement, calling the non-endorsement of Harris “a disturbing chapter of spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”
Under Baron, the Post won several Pulitzer prizes for stories about the ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy theory and blaming Trump for the 2021 election-related riot at the US Capitol.
Kagan has argued that Trump would be a dangerous dictator and has advised the current President Joe Biden to respect, love and learn from ‘the Blob’ of the Washington establishment. He is also known for co-authoring the 1996 manifesto ‘Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy’, advocating for the US to become a “benevolent global hegemony.” His co-author, fellow neoconservative Bill Kristol, also joined the Democrats in 2016 and became an outspoken Trump critic.
- The head of editorials, Mariel Garza, resigned in protest of the decision she said made the paper “look craven and hypocritical, maybe even a bit sexist and racist,” having spent eight years “railing against” Trump.
OCT 22, 2024 • Video
Ethical Leadership in International Affairs
In this message for Global Ethics Day 2024, Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal shares his thoughts on ethical leadership and the role that ethics must play ...
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