The Washington Post has announced that it will not endorse a United States presidential candidate in the upcoming election, a decision taken for the first time in 36 years.

“We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates,” Will Lewis, the newspaper’s publisher and chief executive officer said in a statement on Friday.

The decision, which breaks the long-standing tradition, was announced just weeks before the 2024 presidential election.

The Post’s editorial board has a long history of endorsing candidates, having done so in nearly every presidential election since backing Jimmy Carter in 1976. The paper was acquired by billionaire Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, in 2013.

It has sparked significant backlash from both current and former staff members, as well as other prominent figures, especially given the perception that this election is one of the most critical in recent US history.

The leadership of the Washington Post Guild, which represents the newspaper’s workers, expressed “deep concern” over the decision, highlighting the internal dissent it has generated.

Marty Baron, the former executive editor of the newspaper, has condemned the decision and labelled it “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty.”

He expressed concern that Donald Trump would interpret this stance as an opportunity to further intimidate the paper’s owner.

Susan Rice, the former US ambassador to the United Nations and a former domestic policy adviser in the Biden administration, also criticised the decision, calling it “hypocritical.”

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She referenced the newspaper’s slogan, “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” which was adopted in 2017 under Bezos’s ownership, stating, “This is the most hypocritical, chicken-shit move from a publication that is supposed to hold people in power to account.”

Two board members of The Washington Post, Charles Lane and Stephen W Stromberg, had prepared an endorsement for Harris, according to The Columbia Journalism Review.

David Shipley, the editorial page director, informed staff that the endorsement was “on track,” noting that it was something the paper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, had a vested interest in. But Shipley later informed the board that there would be no endorsement, which was followed by a puzzling editorial from the CEO.

NPR reported that Shipley had initially approved the editorial but then decided to cancel it, mentioning that it was under review by Bezos.