On Friday afternoon, the New York Times and other news organizations announced that for the first time in nearly 50 years, the Washington Post will not endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election and will refrain from endorsing a candidate in all future presidential elections. It was reported. Too. In a memo to staff, Will Lewis, the paper’s embattled publisher, implied that the decision was made on grounds of editorial independence, calling it “the values the Post has always upheld.” “This is consistent with what we expect from our leaders: character and courage in service of American ethics, respect for the rule of law, and respect for human freedom in all its aspects.” Some people did. “It’s a despicable act at the expense of democracy,” Post editor Marty Barron wrote about X.
The Post’s move comes days after news broke that Patrick Soon-Shiong of the Los Angeles Times had blocked the paper from endorsing this year’s presidential candidates. “Disapproval undermines the integrity of the editorial board,” Mariel Garza, who resigned as the paper’s editorial editor on Wednesday, wrote in a letter to Soon-Shiong that was reprinted in the Columbia Journalism Review. , which undermines any support we make.” Until the school board race. People are right to wonder whether each endorsement was decided by a group of journalists after extensive research and discussion, or at the behest of the owners. ” In a post on “We were given an opportunity to draft and we were given an opportunity to draft how these policies would be reflected.” It influenced the nation… Rather than adopting this policy as proposed, the editorial board chose to remain silent, and I accepted that decision. ” (Elon Musk replied, “That makes sense.”)
If you’ve been following the trajectory of these two newspapers, and the news industry in general, over the past few years, I think these twin non-endorsements made sense. Without intending to unduly shorten a long story, I think it’s worth noting that both the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times were newspapers that were “saved” by very rich people many years ago. This is so that those newspapers can earn their own income.
Soon-Shiong, a biotech billionaire, did a huge favor for Los Angeles and the nation in 2018 when he bought the Times from the publisher then known as Tron. But starting in 2023, the Times has cut about a third of its newsroom in multiple rounds of layoffs, and Soon-Shiong said the paper could not afford to lose as much as $40 million a year, making the move. justified. The Washington Post, of course, has been owned by Jeff Bezos since 2013, and Bezos is currently the third richest person in the world with a fortune of $205.6 billion, according to Forbes’ Real-Time Rich List. are. But despite that money, Mr. Bezos agreed to layoffs and a takeover at the Post, and, frustrated that the paper was currently unprofitable, hired the apparently perverse Mr. Lewis as its publisher. I installed it.
Both men deserve credit for intervening to “save” their respective newspapers. But they’ve also already gotten all the praise they would get for doing so, and at this point they’re mainly trying to minimize the additional hassle those papers bring into their lives. I would wager that there is interest in that. and their bank balances. Unfortunately for them, running a reliable news organization in the era of the Trump administration has always been fraught with complications. Lately, fact-based news outlets have received a lot of hate for their reporting and analysis from conservatives who want to intimidate news outlets from doing unfavorable reporting on Donald Trump and his insane spewing within the Republican Party. There is always some kind of criticism being thrown at them. These critiques point to a large number of people focusing on the right and left as evidence of media bias, as opposed to recent evidence that the American right is disproportionately comprised of liars, charlatans, and crypto-fascists. often cites critical reporting and analysis. These cries of “prejudice” will never end. Manufactured abuses are constantly aimed at clouding the discourse and exhausting hard-working reporters into retreating.
Dahlia Lithwick
Newspapers will never save us
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This tactic doesn’t usually work, at least on the editorial side. The people left behind in today’s stripped-down newsrooms are generally wise, idealistic people who are not swayed or fooled by empty criticism of their work. Unfortunately, the people who sign these reporters’ paychecks aren’t always so reluctant. The biggest offices of modern media are sometimes filled with businessmen who hear half the country constantly shouting about media bias and wonder if the allegations are true. These people sometimes interpret the concept of “editorial neutrality” to mean that newsrooms should be equally critical of both major political parties. Nor would I be surprised if they privately fear that their news organizations’ revenue problems are partially due to their own news organizations. Newsrooms are too “anti-Trump.” The non-endorsement of the Times and Post was not an editorial decision. These were executive decisions. And it’s not like these executives want to avoid the risk ahead of a very close presidential election where one of the candidates is a vindictive asshole with a huge grudge against traditional media. It’s no wonder you wonder.
From a practical point of view, these approvals are not a big loss. After all, it’s not 1912 anymore, and few people rely on newspapers to tell them which presidential candidate to vote for. The support of newspapers is in many ways a relic from a time when these news organizations wielded much greater cultural influence than they do today. Nearly all Americans have already made up their minds about the presidential election, and the few who haven’t yet are almost certainly not regular readers of the Washington Post or Los Angeles Times.
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But as Mr. Garza pointed out in his letter to Mr. Soon-Shiong, the disapproval has more of an impact on other parts of the paper. If newspaper owners and publishers can decide whether to endorse someone for president, how can readers trust that all other endorsements are not influenced by the fat cat at the top? Sure, no one looks to newspapers to tell them who to support for presidential candidates, but people rely on newspapers for advice on who to support for county commissioners, state legislators, or other less prominent races. I think they would be happy to accept it. Interference with presidential endorsements affects the credibility of all other endorsements. As Garza pointed out, it is quite strange that a newspaper that has been reporting for years that Trump is unfit to be president would refrain from endorsing his opponent. A non-endorsement in this context makes Harris seem unfit to lead — at least, that’s what the Trump campaign currently thinks. They wrote, “Even her fellow Californians know she is not cut out for the job.”
Of course, none of this is new. For most of the history of American journalism, owners and publishers of newspapers, magazines, and other media have sought to influence their content, sometimes quite blatantly. But it’s a sad irony in some ways that this historical trend is resurfacing at Washington Posts everywhere. Perhaps more than any other American newspaper, The Post is filled with fearless journalists and heroic editors and embodies the concept of an independent newsroom that reports the truth, no matter the cost. It was the paper and its Watergate investigation that brought down Nixon. Apparently, today, the backlash the Post might receive for publicly endorsing the only candidate fit for president seems too high a price to pay.
