Post chief executive and publisher Will Lewis said in a statement to the Globe that Bezos “was not sent, did not read and did not opine on any draft” of an endorsement and that the Post is an “independent newspaper and should support our readers’ ability to make up their own minds.”

The Globe spoke to Baron over the weekend about the Post’s decision, which followed a similar non-endorsement from the Los Angeles Times, where Baron worked from 1979 to 1996. He also discussed his experience working with Bezos and overseeing a newsroom that covered Trump, and what this moment says about the future of legacy news organizations. The conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

You rarely speak out against the paper where you served as executive editor. Why did you feel it was important to do so following the Post’s decision not to endorse a presidential candidate?

I thought this was a moment of extraordinary importance. I think that democracy is at stake in this election. I think that the pillars of democracy, particularly media institutions, need to stand up for what’s right. We need to resist pressure, no matter how severe, and I felt in this instance, what the Post demonstrated was weakness, and weakness only invites more pressure.

Other newspapers, including the billionaire-owned Minnesota Star Tribune, announced months ago that they would do away with political endorsements. But the Post made the decision less than two weeks before the election, and they’re solely making the decision about endorsements in the presidential race. What does this signal to you?

If they had announced this three years ago, if they’d announced it two years ago, or a year ago, or maybe even six months ago — that’s still getting pretty close — I would have said, fine.

It’s a totally reasonable decision to come to, to say you don’t want to do presidential endorsements, and people can agree or disagree. That sort of decision should come after a really deliberative discussion with the publisher, with the owner, the editorial board, all talking with each other. That’s not what happened here.

This happened less than two weeks before the election. According to the Post’s own reporting, citing four sources, Jeff Bezos made the decision, and the editorial board was just informed of what that decision was. So there was no substantive deliberation about whether this is a wise course or not a wise course, what the advantages or disadvantages of presidential endorsements are. This clearly was made for other reasons. It wasn’t made based on high principles.

Publisher and CEO Will Lewis is justifying the decision by saying he doesn’t believe in presidential political endorsements and this is a matter of principle. Given your knowledge and experience with the dynamics between Trump and Bezos, and his business interests that he has with his other companies, what do you think prompted this decision?

It’s risky to speculate here, but I don’t think that the rationale that they’ve articulated makes a lot of sense. I mean, with the exception of only one presidential election year, they’ve been making presidential endorsements for almost half a century.

Is he saying that Katharine Graham and Don Graham, members of the family that owned the Post for eight decades, were violating the principle of independence? It just doesn’t meet the laugh test. There were obviously other reasons.

Trump has been putting pressure on Bezos since he started running for president in 2015, and it became more intense in 2016, and it continued after Trump became president. He threatened to do huge damage to Amazon and Bezos’s commercial interests, solely because of the coverage of The Washington Post. And he’s kept up that kind of language, and he’s become even more virulent in his pledge to seek vengeance on his perceived political enemies. One can only imagine that Bezos is feeling the pressure.

You worked under Bezos for many years. Does it surprise you that this decision came from him?

Well, I’m no longer getting surprised by anything these days. When I was the executive editor of the Post, he resisted enormous pressure from Trump. Trump threatened to raise postal rates for package deliveries. He intervened in a $10 billion Defense Department contract for cloud computing to make sure that it didn’t go to Amazon. And throughout that, even as Trump was denigrating him and attacking him, Bezos stood by us. He didn’t yield to the pressure. I was enormously grateful for that.

Now it appears that he’s yielded, out of some sort of fear for the consequences of a possible second Trump presidency. I view that as a betrayal of core principles at the Post — those are the principles that have defined the Post, an organization that’s demonstrated enormous courage and resisted immense pressure over decades.

I don’t know that I’m necessarily surprised, but I’m deeply disappointed.

In your statement Friday, you wrote that Trump will see this “as an invitation to further intimidate” Bezos. How could you see this affecting not just Bezos, but the Post going forward, when it comes to the editorial board, the newsroom, or just the brand itself?

The brand is pretty much defined these days by the phrase that appears on the top of every single product of The Washington Post, and that is, “Democracy dies in darkness.” Bezos talked about that at the time as we were working on it, when we came up with it, and actually, Bezos came up with it.

He called it a mission statement. He didn’t want to call it a slogan. He didn’t want to call it a motto. He called it a mission statement.

The message that he was trying to send was we have such high standards that we’re outraged when those standards are not met. Well, at the moment, I’m outraged because I don’t think the standards are being met.

You wrote in your book that you never experienced Bezos interfering with newsroom decisions. Does this decision make you concerned about the independence of the Post newsroom moving forward, especially in the case of a potential Trump administration?

I think that’s the worry, because when Trump sees weakness, he just pounces even harder. He knows that you’re going to yield to his wishes. Then he’ll seek to push farther. He’s like a wild animal. If he smells blood, he goes in for the kill.

This has not affected the news coverage, at all, from what I understand. Bezos didn’t interfere in the news coverage during my time there. I haven’t heard anything from anybody since I retired that he’s interfered in the news coverage, and I don’t think that he has.

But the fear is that when you show weakness like this, that you never know what might happen next. You have to ask yourself, when does Trump stop applying pressure? And the answer is never. Can this at some point affect other editorials regarding him, if he’s back in the White House? Could it in the future affect news coverage? That’s what has everybody worried at The Washington Post.

On the other coast, Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the LA Times, made a similar decision not to endorse a presidential candidate this year. Do you see this as a situation that’s similar to the one at the Post?

I don’t think I can say that because I don’t know.

What does this mean for our democracy when you have two of the biggest national publications not making an endorsement for a presidential candidate this year?

There’s been a lot of discussion about the words of Timothy Snyder, who wrote a great book, “On Tyranny,” and I think he makes good points. It suggests that powerful people in our country, people who have a lot of wealth, will make concessions to aspiring autocrats before they even ask for concessions, or simply out of fear. And that’s really dangerous.

I was proud to work with Jeff Bezos and to watch as he stood his ground despite immense pressure that was applied on him by Trump. That’s what I think is required. And this latest decision at the Post is just a sign that maybe he’s now yielded to pressure.

The reality is, if he wants to say that’s not the case, then let him say it’s not the case. Let him come forward. Let him speak. He’s an incredibly eloquent guy, he’s super smart and a lot smarter than me. He doesn’t need to have Will Lewis speaking for him. Let him speak for himself. Let him explain exactly what his thinking was.

We’re in this era of media fragmentation. We’ve seen Trump and Harris really lean into that, speaking a lot to podcasts or celebrities and influencers. We’re also in an age of social media, which has really largely impacted the news business. Do all of these developments, plus the endorsement issues, say anything about the relevance or lack thereof of mainstream legacy media?

I think we remain incredibly relevant. I don’t think Donald Trump would be spending his time trying to put pressure on mainstream media outlets if he didn’t think that they were important. Why would he bother? That’s number one.

Number two is that most of the actual reporting work to discover what’s really happening in government and politics and all of that, and in other powerful institutions, comes from traditional news organizations.

I think they’re incredibly important. They’re not irrelevant. They face an enormous amount of competition. They face enormous financial challenges. But their role in society and in this democracy remains essential. I can’t even imagine what our society would be like if we didn’t have traditional news organizations. Who would do the work?

Reportedly, the Post is losing thousands of subscribers in the wake of this decision. It’s prompted many reporters to speak out on social media, letting readers know that they believe this hurts the newsroom. What would you say to your former colleagues at this moment in the Post?

I’ll say what I’ve said to them: I’m sorry for what they’re having to endure. And I don’t think that readers should be canceling subscriptions. I’m not in favor of that. I haven’t canceled my subscription, and I have no intention of doing so.

Why is that? Because I want to support the news reporting that occurs at the Post. Because I want to support the investigative journalism they do. Because I know that so much of what we know about politicians, including Kamala Harris, is because of the hard work that really superb reporters at the Post and elsewhere do every single day. And I can’t even imagine where we would be if we didn’t have a newsroom with that kind of talent and that kind of determination telling us what’s happening in our government and in other powerful institutions in our society.

I understand why people are upset. I understand why people are canceling subscriptions. They want to make a statement of concern about what has occurred here. But they could be doing really long-term damage to our democracy, the very democracy which they are so concerned about.