Standing Down

 

The decision by the owners of two major newspapers, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, to quash their editorial boards’ endorsements of Kamala Harris in the presidential race represents a sad trend. While decisions by some media organizations to forgo endorsing candidates are not new, the action by these two owners stands out.

Post owner Jeff Bezos argued that the public already thinks the media are biased and that endorsements not only don’t help with that perception but don’t change anyone’s mind anyway. As expected, critics believe Bezos caved to pressure from Donald Trump.

Was this a good business decision? It doesn’t look like it in the short term, with more than 200,000 readers canceling their subscriptions. Perhaps that wouldn’t have happened had the Harris endorsement been published, as readers are accustomed to newspapers making endorsements, a time-honored tradition.

Not all newspapers are unbiased, of course, but in the case of major legacy publications, news and opinion typically are well-understood to be separate. Political endorsements usually come with a substantial summary of the reasoning behind them. Further, there are op-ed pages where alternate points of view are encouraged. In fact, Bezos himself used the latter to explain his ruling.

The question arises, what good are editorial endorsements anyway? Presumably, newspapers are in the business of covering elections and are a lot closer to the issues than their readers, so an endorsement, theoretically at least, is based on a thorough  understanding of the facts available.

True, some voters, maybe out of being either lazy or too busy with other things, will slavishly follow a newspaper endorsement. Others don’t care, preferring to make up their own minds. But there is a lot of space in the middle, where voters use editorial endorsements as data points in their consumption of election-related material from a variety of sources.

Jeff Bezos’ decision was undoubtedly a surprise. But did he have the standing to do what he did? Absolutely. The only response I have is that he knew or should have known, as attorneys often say, what business he was getting into when he acquired the paper. It should not be simply a cash cow, a conversation piece, or a badge – especially the Washington Post, which already saved our republic, not all that long ago.