Was The Washington Post Too Soft On Trump?

Adriana Stone 0 2 min read

Was The Washington Post Too Soft On Trump?

The Washington Post cut staff and the media world lit up. People on the left called it everything from tragedy to scandal. Then PBS asked former Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron to explain what went wrong.

Baron had a blunt answer. He said the paper stopped being tough enough on President Donald Trump. He says that drove subscribers away. He pointed to a string of editorial choices and business moves he thinks alienated readers.

Here’s the quote the segment ran with, verbatim:

BARON: And then I think he really became — took a real turn after it looked like Trump was going to be elected president yet again. And that was in 2024. And 11 days before the presidential election in 2024, they killed an editorial for — that was endorsing Kamala Harris. He said the paper wouldn’t endorse ever again for president.
And hundreds of thousands of subscribers canceled at that time, aggravating the financial problems that they had. Subsequent to that, he did all sorts of things that made things even worse, appearing at the inauguration on the stage with Donald Trump, buying the Melania so-called documentary for an exorbitant price, buying the right — Amazon buying the rights to The Apprentice.
And Amazon had bought the rights to Melania’s documentary as well. And then completely changing the opinion pages so that essentially they have no columnists who are really left of center. And they’re very deferential to Trump. And I think they lack a moral core.
And so all of that has driven subscribers away. And so for every subscriber that they get coming in through the front door because of the high-quality news coverage, I think they’re losing maybe two subscribers out the back door. Of course, I don’t know the numbers exactly, but clearly they have been losing a lot of subscribers.

That’s a strong claim. It’s also easy to push back on.

For years the Post ran aggressive anti-Trump coverage. It chased every lead, and sometimes chased stories that didn’t hold up. Readers noticed. Trust fell. Reputation matters for a paid product. When free news and social platforms deliver similar headlines, people ask: why pay for this?

Baron’s view is one slice of the story. Another slice is business reality. Subscriptions, ad trends and distribution matter more than editorial posture alone. Cutting endorsements or changing opinion pages won’t fix a product if readers think the newsrooms are untrustworthy or redundant.

The Washington Post still has resources and reach. But it faces a simple question: what do paying readers get that they can’t get elsewhere? Until the paper answers that, blame can land on many places—editorial choices, management bets, or the broader market.

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