That is possible if their editorial staff honestly believe two things:

- The rule of law and the republic as a process are superior to anything else.

- One of the candidates does not subscribe to these sufficiently.

In that case, and given the political duopoly, they could still claim to be impartial towards candidates. Their only allegiance/partiality would lie with the rule of law and the republic as a process.

You’re thinking about this too hard. It’s a definitional question. If you have two candidates and you endorse one of them, you’re de facto partial with nothing else playing any role in the definition.

> If you have two candidates and you endorse one of them, you’re de facto partial with nothing else playing any role in the definition.

Endorsing on a specific issue, party, gender, or any specific quality that a large number of individuals share, is not uncommon. The specific individual is not what the endorsement must be partial to. Maybe the choice (since it's inherent to the process), but that's the distinction that was being made.

Thinking that one of the candidates will literally destroy the country is some weird meaning of being "impartial" that I have never encountered before.

There's a difference between the opinion staff and the news staff.

>The Post’s decision has roiled many on the paper’s opinions staff, which operates independently from The Post’s news staff, a long-standing tradition of American journalism designed to separate opinion writing from day-to-day news coverage.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/10/25/washin...

I understand the internal logic of newsroom design, but if it was ever a genuine firewall it's not in modern times. The NY Times opinion editor was famously forced to resign in 2020 when he published an op-ed that the newsroom found unacceptable.