{"id":3839,"date":"2025-08-08T14:30:52","date_gmt":"2025-08-08T19:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/?p=3839"},"modified":"2025-08-08T14:31:45","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T19:31:45","slug":"nabj-co-founder-says-censorship-policy-changes-led-to-washington-post-departure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/nabj-co-founder-says-censorship-policy-changes-led-to-washington-post-departure\/","title":{"rendered":"NABJ co-founder says censorship, policy changes led to Washington Post departure"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>By Brandon Henry, NABJ Monitor Digital<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joe Davidson, columnist and co-founder of the National Association of Black Journalists, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/2025\/06\/27\/joe-davidson-leaves-washington-post\/\">left The Washington Post<\/a> this summer after 20 years due to a policy restricting the level of opinion and commentary in news section articles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Davidson, who wrote the Federal Diary (renamed Federal Insider in 2016) for 17 years, cited \u201cmanagement interference\u201d as a reason for his departure, along with eight other columnists who left the company within the last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He also said a lack of leadership contributed to low morale in the newsroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cMorale in the whole organization was really falling, it was really dropping quickly because of Jeff Bezos\u2019 actions,\u201d Davidson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bezos, founder of Amazon, bought The Post in 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Davidson said one of the first editorial decisions that influenced his decision to leave was Bezos blocking an editorial that would have endorsed former Vice President Kamala Harris for president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then, after the 2024 presidential election, Bezos not only <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/JeffBezos\/status\/1854184441511571765\">congratulated President Donald Trump<\/a> on his victory, he also <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cvgpqeq82rvo\">attended the inauguration.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Davidson said these developments were an \u201cunseemly way for the leader, the boss of the Washington Post, to interact with the President.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cHe&#8217;s acting like a supplicant,\u201d Davidson said. \u201cI mean, it&#8217;s one [thing] holding, stopping the nomination or the endorsement of Kamala Harris. Then we see him, kind of in center stage, endorsing Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">&#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NABJ?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@NABJ<\/a> founder and WABJ member Joe Davidson says The Washington Post killing his columns that called a pay raise for federal employees &quot;well-deserved&quot; and criticized Trump led to his departure from the newspaper <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/p3fbifUkof\">pic.twitter.com\/p3fbifUkof<\/a><\/p>&mdash; WABJ &#8211; Washington Association of Black Journalists (@WABJDC) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WABJDC\/status\/1943329389523145006?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">July 10, 2025<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Bezos\u2019 influence within The Post did not end there. In April, Davidson wrote a column about how \u201cyou can draw a line through many of Donald Trump&#8217;s policies where the ingredient, a key ingredient, is an attack on thought, speech and belief.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Davidson said the column was killed and he knew then his time at The Post was coming to an end. He said he is unsure if Bezos directly impacted the killing of the column, but believes it \u201cwould be naive\u201d to ignore the context of Bezos\u2019 interactions with Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And when several top journalists began leaving last October, he said knew he wasn\u2019t alone and did not feel comfortable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI hung in there as long as I could, maybe even longer than I should have, I just couldn&#8217;t hang. I just had to get out of there,\u201d Davidson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Davidson said that the censorship within The Post was \u201cpart of a policy of no commentary or opinion in the news section, as opposed to the opinion section, but the policy was unannounced and it was unevenly enforced.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s really a good management practice to have an unwritten policy. It got to the point where it was simply untenable for me to stay. I said in my resignation letter that these policies have left me, as a columnist, without a column,\u201d Davidson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, what\u2019s next for Davidson? The co-founder said a couple of organizations have approached him about writing, but he said he would like to do more volunteer work and traveling. Some of that travel includes his annual attendance at NABJ conferences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Davidson has been to all 49 NABJ conventions, from Texas Southern University in 1976, to the 50th anniversary conference in Cleveland this week. He said when he comes to the conventions, he gets a feeling of being part of a family that stretches across the country and, to some extent, even around the world.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBeing around all of these Black journalists is very encouraging, invigorating. It&#8217;s like a big family reunion, and it&#8217;s very productive,\u201d Davidson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Djibril Diallo, president of the African Renaissance and Diaspora Network, and a friend of Davidson, said their relationship goes back so many years, it is hard to remember a time when he was out of the picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Diallo said that Davidson has always been more than a colleague to him, and that his commitment to African issues aren\u2019t performative or episodic, but rooted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cLong before it became fashionable to talk about global Blackness or pan-African solidarity in media, Joe was already doing the work,\u201d said Diallo. \u201cDavidson is one of those rare figures whose contributions are both foundational and ongoing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While Davidson has done a lot for NABJ, he mentions that he gets a great deal of joy and pride out of seeing the NABJ Student Multimedia Project cohort grow and develop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Davidson said it&#8217;s the connections that feed him and keep him returning every year to NABJ, an organization that means so much to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI&#8217;m very glad and very proud to have been a part of it, and still a part of it. For all these decades, half a century, it&#8217;s kind of hard to believe, really,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>By Brandon Henry, NABJ Monitor Digital Joe Davidson, columnist and co-founder of the National Association of Black Journalists, left The Washington Post this summer after 20 years due to a policy restricting the level of <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/nabj-co-founder-says-censorship-policy-changes-led-to-washington-post-departure\/\" title=\"NABJ co-founder says censorship, policy changes led to Washington Post departure\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3844,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[441],"class_list":{"0":"post-3839","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-nabj25"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3839"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3843,"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3839\/revisions\/3843"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabjmonitor.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}