Last week The Washington Post announced that it would not be endorsing a candidate in the 2024 presidential election, a decision made by its billionaire owner, and Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos. Elizabeth Stoycheff writes that the Post’s decision not to support a candidate, along with former President Trump’s calls for CBS to lose its broadcasting license, are part of a growing pattern of executive and political power overriding or attempting to influence journalistic decision-making in US media. When media truth is subjected to power, this risks further damaging both the US’ reputation for press freedom and public trust in the media.

The final weeks of the US Presidential election season are testing legacy media’s editorial independence from elite power. Jeff Bezos, founder of the Amazon online retailer and owner of The Washington Post, decided to discontinue a longstanding practice of the paper endorsing a candidate for US President. The Post has endorsed Democrats for the executive race in the modern era, including Joe Biden in 2020, Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Barack Obama in 2012.

This year’s decision to abruptly end the practice reportedly came after editorial staff had drafted an endorsement for Vice President Kamala Harris, suggesting Bezos was exercising his own influence to curtail the paper’s editorial stance. Subscribers and staff revolted in response, prompting a cascade of subscription cancellations and board resignations. The Post was not alone in its non-endorsement; the Los Angeles Times also axed its Harris endorsement last week, reportedly because owner Patrick Soon-Shiong disagreed with Harris’ stance on Gaza.

A week prior, former President Donald Trump called for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to revoke CBS’s broadcasting license after the network edited Vice President Harris’s meandering response in a 60 Minutes interview. Stripping a network channel of its license for a single editing decision would be an unprecedented act of post-publication censorship.

Threats to editorial independence from executive power

All these instances reveal a deeply troubling pattern in US media: failing to honor the editorial independence of the country’s most influential journalists, blurring the line between journalistic decision-making and executive power.

Bezos’ and Soon-Shiong’s decisions to intervene in their publications’ endorsements are clear examples of how corporate ownership can directly impact how issues are presented to the public. Blocking endorsements exhibits much more overt influence on editorial content than recent research of ownership biases have uncovered, including more subtle but compromising effects, such as selection bias and story placement.

Such actions resonate among the public, further reducing trust in mainstream media. In October 2024, Gallup found that only 31 percent of Americans trust the media to report news “fully, accurately, and fairly.” This statistic is deeply partisan, such that only 12 percent of self-identified conservatives have faith in the media. Fissures in trust of credible information sources make way for disinformation and conspiratorial thinking that erode the democratic process.

Trump’s anger at CBS is the latest attack to undermine reporting in mainstream media. He has consistently painted the press as an enemy, villainizing any outlet that presents him unfavorably as “fake news.” But this latest incident moves from rhetoric to policy, pressing a regulatory authority to silence a dominant voice.

“Washington Post” (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) by vpickering

Self-censorship and chilling effects among journalists

Not only is censorship a concern, but self-censorship that arises from this discourse is deeply problematic. Journalists may hesitate to publish stories that hold public figures accountable, fearing professional backlash. This creates a “chilling effect,” which, according to my own research, shows can silence minority viewpoints, thwart information seeking and limit civic participation. It can discourage reporters from asking the hard questions that uncover inconvenient truths.

Once a global leader in press freedom, the US has seen its press freedom rating decline drastically in the past two decades. Reporters Without Borders, a non-profit international organization that rates press protections around the world, relegated the US to 55^th in 2024, a drop of 10 countries since just last year. Its media system now ranks alongside non-democratic countries, like Gabon and the Ivory Coast, instead of its democratic peers in Western Europe. US political hostility toward the media was found to be particularly problematic in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona.

The media’s ability to serve as a Fourth Estate, providing a check on political power, is a cornerstone of American democracy. It is difficult to not become desensitized to actions that violate democratic norms and dismiss Trump’s threats as mere hyperbole. But continuing down this path—where truth is subjected to power—raises a critical question: Do we truly value a free press, or are we willing to let it be distorted by the very forces it was meant to keep in check?

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• Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor the London School of Economics. 
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