The Authors Guild stands in solidarity with the staff of The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, who have raised serious concerns about their owners’ recent decisions to halt their planned presidential endorsements just a matter of days before the election. In both cases, these final-hour decisions overruled the papers’ editorial boards and brought their editorial independence into question. As the Washington Post Guild revealed in a letter, the endorsement was already drafted when Jeff Bezos, the Post‘s owner, made the decision to squelch its publication. Similarly, in a letter to management, Los Angeles Times staff reported that the editorial board “had planned an endorsement — one that was rejected,” contradicting the statement of owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, who said that the board had chosen to remain silent.  

W. Ralph Eubanks, president of the Authors Guild, explains, “The revocation of the respective editorial boards’ previous independence is troubling because it was a sudden reversal of policy and only days from the election. Moreover, they were rare instances of the owners’ editorial interference, raising serious questions about conflicts of interest and whether external pressures came into play.”   

These sudden shifts in policy by the owners, in defiance of their staff, resulted in the immediate resignation of editorial board members and other staff, and many others signed letters protesting the decisions. As a general matter, newspaper owners have the prerogative to engage in their papers’ endorsement decisions, as well as to establish policies of non-endorsement. But in these cases, the editorial staff had been hired for their opinions, had procedures in place for making these endorsements, and all recent editorials supported the endorsements that the editorial boards had prepared. The Washington Post Guild defines its editorial board’s essential purpose as “to share opinions on the news impacting our society and culture and endorse candidates to help guide readers.”  

The ripple effects of these misguided decisions are already visible throughout the industry. USA Today and 200 other Gannett-owned newspapers have just announced they also will not make presidential endorsements. This last-minute panic of newspapers to avoid the wrath of a candidate who has openly threatened to harm his opponents (and take over executive agencies and influence the judicial process to allow him to do so, should he win) reveals an alarming and chilling effect on press freedom.  

Marie Arana, president of the Authors Guild Foundation, notes, “The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times are esteemed news organizations because they have followed rules of journalistic integrity. It is a sad day for journalism and democracy when the views of their accomplished journalists are set aside for political reasons.”  

News outlets today operate within a challenging landscape. With two-thirds of their former advertising dollars now going to major tech companies, newsrooms have laid off two-thirds of their staff in the last 15 years. The result is that many news organizations today need to rely on the resources of billionaire owners or large conglomerates, such as Gannett and Alden Global Capital. This leaves the newspapers subject to the conflicting commercial interests of their owners at the expense of editorial independence.   

Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild comments, “We must find a way forward for quality, independent journalism to support itself. U.S. copyright law has not kept up with new forms of commercialization of the news, and this has allowed tech companies to siphon advertising revenue from news producers, requiring the very deep pockets of private interests to come to the rescue. This has compromised U.S. journalism and created a crisis for editorial independence.”  

Rasenberger added, “Copyright law was enshrined in the U.S. Constitution precisely because our founders understood the crucial importance in a democracy of having a means for independent writing and discourse, free of the influence of patrons. Even the most well-intentioned billionaire owners can be bought when their largest commercial ventures are threatened.”   

With the Washington Post Guild and the Los Angeles Times Guild, the Authors Guild calls on the Post and Times to immediately release their carefully prepared presidential endorsements. These endorsements represent the considered judgment of experienced editorial boards and were developed through established processes.  

Let’s not forget that the Post’s own founding principles stated that “the newspaper’s duty is to its readers and the public at large, and not to the private interests of its owners.” When editorial voices are silenced or their work selectively withheld, the public loses access to fully transparent and accurate reporting — the very foundation of an informed electorate. 

These recent acts of editorial constraint threaten essential values and cast doubt on the Washington Post‘s commitment to transparency, which it has proclaimed it stands for, reminding readers in every issue since 2017, “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” 

The Authors Guild Council 

The Authors Guild Foundation Board