WASHINGTON, DC, United States (AFP) — The influential Washington Post newspaper, owned by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, announced Friday it will endorse neither Democrat Kamala Harris nor Republican Donald Trump in the US presidential election.

CEO William Lewis said this was a return “to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates”.

However, the Post’s editorial board had endorsed candidates for much of the last four decades — all of them Democrats — before deciding to stay on the sidelines in one of the most polarising elections in US history.

Newspaper editorials have little of their once-powerful political heft. But the Post, whose slogan is “Democracy dies in darkness”, is one of a small number of traditional media outlets that still retain considerable influence among Washington’s elite.

The decision to sidestep controversy comes days after one of Trump’s most senior aides during his presidency said the Republican had praised Hitler and was himself “fascist”, a characterisation repeated by Harris in a CNN town hall event.

Trump, meanwhile, says he represents the last chance to prevent what he describes as the collapse of the United States, claiming erroneously that the country is inundated with violent migrants and has become a “garbage dump”.

The Post’s decision follows a similar move by another of the big remaining US newspapers, the Los Angeles Times.

The owner of the Times blocked the editorial board from issuing an endorsement for Harris, according to Editorials Editor Mariel Garza who resigned in protest on Wednesday.

By contrast, The New York Times endorsed Harris in September, calling her “the only patriotic choice for president” and warning that “it is hard to imagine a candidate more unworthy to serve as president of the United States” than Trump.

The Republican got his own boost on Friday from the New York Post, the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid, which declared that “America is ready for today’s heroic Donald Trump to reclaim the presidency”.

In a statement, The Washington Post’s Lewis wrote that the paper would not ever make presidential endorsements again, as had been the tradition in its earlier years.

“Our job at The Washington Post is to provide, through the newsroom, non-partisan news for all Americans, and thought-provoking, reported views from our opinion team to help our readers make up their own minds,” he said.

The Post has been endorsing Democratic candidates consistently as far back as the 1980s, always making clear that the editorial board works separately to the newsgathering operation — as is typical in US news organisations.

The Washington Post’s former executive editor, Marty Baron, lashed out at the daily’s “cowardice, with democracy as its casualty”.

Baron said that Trump would see the decision “as an invitation to further intimidate” Bezos.

“Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage,” Baron wrote on X.

Lewis said he recognised that the board’s decision “will be read in a range of ways, including as a tacit endorsement of one candidate, or as a condemnation of another, or as an abdication of responsibility”.

“That is inevitable,” Lewis said. “We don’t see it that way.”