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The Washington Post joins the La Times in saying it will not endorse a candidate for president and all heck breaks out

Oct 30, 2024

We first wrote about this on October 25 and what was not exactly a tempest in a teapot at the time has metastasized into a full-blown brouhaha. For those who haven’t followed  the escalating controversy, in a sense it began in 2017 when  The Washington Post, self-important as always, adopted the motto/slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” It just so happened to be a month after the inauguration of President Donald Trump. Then Mr. Trump was merely a “threat to democracy.” Now he is a “fascist” “a tyrant,” and a Nazi” in the eyes of people who take their cues from publications such as The Washington Post.

On October 27, Publisher and CED William Lewis said the paper will not make an endorsement in this year’s presidential election nor will it in the future. In a post on the paper’s website, Lewis wrote that the decision means “we returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.”

We recognize that this 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. We don’t see it that way. We see it as consistent with the values The Post has always stood for and what we hope for in a leader: character and courage in service to the American ethic, veneration for the rule of law, and respect for human freedom in all its aspects. We also see it as a statement in support of our readers’ ability to make up their own minds on this, the most consequential of American decisions — whom to vote for as the next president.

Of course, the staff went bonkers, and did thousands of readers. We’ll get to that in a second.

Manuel Roig-Franzia and Laura Wagner first wrote about the brouhaha at 1:09 p.m. EDT.

The decision, 11 days before an election that most polls show as too close to call, marks the second time this week that a major media organization has declined to issue an endorsement in the race between the Republican nominee, former president Donald Trump, and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, after years of making such endorsements. Earlier this week, Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, blocked a planned endorsement of Harris, prompting the resignation of the newspaper’s editorials editor.

Three of the ten-member Washington Post editorial stepped down: “David Hoffman, who has been at the paper for more than four decades, Molly Roberts and Mili Mitra, who is also the Washington Posts director of audience for the opinions section,” according to Sareen Habeshian of Axios.com.

NPR’s David Folkenflik filled in background not found in the accounts of the Post and the New York Times.

Colleagues learned the news from the editorial page editor, David Shipley, at a tense meeting shortly before Lewis’ announcement. The meeting was characterized by two people with direct knowledge of discussions on condition of anonymity to speak about internal matters.

 

Shipley had approved an editorial endorsement for Harris that was being drafted earlier this month, according to three people with direct knowledge. He told colleagues the decision was to endorse was being reviewed by the paper’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos. That’s the owner’s prerogative and is a common practice.

 

On Friday, Shipley said that he told other editorial board leaders on Thursday that management had decided there would be no endorsement, though Shipley had known about the decision for awhile. He added that he “owns” this outcome. The reason he cited was to create “independent space” where the newspaper does not tell people for whom to vote.

In a text message to The Post, former Post executive editor Martin Baron, “who led the newsroom to acclaim during Trump’s presidency, denounced the decision starkly,” according to Folkenflik, laid into the decision.

“This is cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty. Donald Trump will celebrate this as an invitation to further intimidate The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos (and other media owners). He added, “History will mark a disturbing chapter of spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”

Using anonymous sources Roig-Franzia and Wagner wrote

An endorsement of Harris had been drafted by Post editorial page staffers but had yet to be published, according to two sources briefed on the sequence of events who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The decision not to publish was made by The Post’s owner — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — according to the same sources.

New York Times reporters Benjamin Mullin and Katie Robertson wrote

The Post’s editorial board had contacted the Harris campaign and the Trump campaign to request interviews ahead of its decision to endorse, two of the people said. Ms. Harris declined the interview and the Trump campaign didn’t respond, one of the people said.

For their part, wasting no time, The New York Times editorial board, endorsed Ms. Harris for president on Sept. 30. Interestingly enough they also told their readers in August they would stop endorsing candidates in New York elections, including the New York City mayoral race and governor.

But the fight at the Washington Post drags on. While three high ranking Los Angeles Times writers quit, I see resignations from the editorial board but not from the Post.

Meanwhile, “At least 250,000 Washington Post readers have canceled their subscriptions since the news organization announced Friday that the editorial page would end its decades-long practice of endorsing presidential candidates.” reported Elahe Izadi. “The figures represent about 10 percent of The Post’s digital subscribers.”

I couldn’t find how many subscribers—print or digital—the Post has lost in the last decade but it’s a mountain.

Amidst all the doomsday talk, the owner Jeff Bezos pointed another doomsday scenario that was far more real in an article he wrote under the headline: “The hard truth: Americans don’t trust the news media.”

In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress. But in this year’s Gallup poll, we have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working. …

 

Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion. It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility (and, therefore, decline in impact), but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility. …

 

Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, “I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.” None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one. Eugene Meyer, publisher of The Washington Post from 1933 to 1946, thought the same, and he was right. By itself, declining to endorse presidential candidates is not enough to move us very far up the trust scale, but it’s a meaningful step in the right direction. I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it. That was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy.

Most of the rest of the opinion piece was denying that Bezos was bending to pressure or looking to win favors should Trump win.

One other point. Mullin and Robertson did offer some context:

A growing number of news outlets are moving away from political endorsements. In 2022, the second-largest newspaper operator in the country, Alden Global Capital, announced that its 200 newspapers would no longer endorse candidates in races for president, Senate and governor, saying readers were “often confused” about the distinction between news and opinion. The new owners of The Baltimore Sun said in January that they would also stop making endorsements.

No doubt about it, tough sledding ahead for The Washington Post. On the other hand, as a newspaper written for itself and a selected clientele, they are getting what they so richly deserve.

Categories: Politics
Tags: election