Near the end of the election, two major newspapers announced they would not endorse a presidential candidate this year. The Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post announcements came within three days of each other.
The Times is the largest newspaper in the western United States and the sixth largest in the country. The Post is the third largest newspaper in the nation. Both newspapers enjoy major influence. To underscore the importance of a free press, the Post, in 2017, adopted its slogan: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
This newspaper broke the Watergate scandal, the Pentagon Papers and many more significant “scoops,” often earning Pulitzer Prizes. Suddenly this influential newspaper of record has withdrawn from endorsing a political candidate. Is our democracy becoming enshrouded in darkness?
On Oct. 25, the Post stopped its editorial board from drafting a presidential endorsement, announcing there would be no endorsement this year; this, despite multiple decades of presidential endorsements. A few days earlier, the L.A. Times interrupted and killed its editorial board’s endorsement. Mariael Garza, editorials editor, resigned. She was followed by others, “including a Pulitzer prize-winning editorial writer,” according to Margaret Sullivan, columnist at The Guardian.
Sullivan’s opinions carry a lot of weight with me because of her clear thinking, as well as her journalistic experience and accolades. Before joining The Guardian, Sullivan was media columnist with the Washington Post for six years, preceded by a four-year stint as public editor at the New York Times. She’s been a media, politics and culture columnist with the Guardian since 2023.
Commenting on the L.A. Times and Post decisions to withhold editorial endorsement, Sullivan wrote, “There’s no way to see this decision other than as an appalling display of cowardice and a dereliction of their public duty.”
I find this deeply disturbing. Although journalism is changing, with electronic opinions generated on social media by artificial intelligence, many thoughtful readers still seek carefully wrought opinions. Such opinions, based on confirmable facts, navigate the nuances required for thoughtful decisions by readers. Such decisions are best based around opinions written by thinkers like Sullivan and other unnumbered dedicated journalists.
Despite contrasts between presidential candidates, “shockingly — the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post have decided to sit this one out,” Sullivan writes. She observes that these major news organizations are each owned by a billionaire, then comments, “There’s no other way to see this other than as an appalling display of cowardice and a dereliction of their public duty.”
Summarizing a brief history of each paper, Sullivan concludes, “it’s a shameful smackdown of both papers’ reporting and opinion-writing staffs who have done important work exposing (political) dangers for many years.” She decries the apparent fear of “wrath and retribution,” should one candidate win.
Sullivan quotes a former Post editor who called the paper’s decision, “disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.” After resigning from the L.A. Times, former editorials editor Mariel Garza told the Columbia Journalism Review, “I am resigning because I want to make it clear that I am not OK with us being silent. ... In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”
Sullivan reported multiple resignations at both papers, observing, “They do so at considerable personal cost, since there are so few similar positions in today’s financially troubled media industry.” The dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism said the failures to endorse constitute “an abdication.”
Axios observed that these failures to endorse added “to a growing number of papers that are choosing to back down from political endorsements across the country.” Noting that the Post’s editorial board “had already drafted and approved an endorsement,” Axios said the decision not to publish “was made by The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos.”
Here’s the big picture, Axios concludes: “With trust in mass media at an all-time low, more publishers are choosing to avoid the potential blowback of endorsements.”
To an old newspaperman like me, this cowardly approach truly abnegates any responsibility to readers and the public. Granted, editorials are opinions, not news, but a good editorial is based on facts interpreted through a filter of personal biases. Self-respecting editorial writers examine their own motives carefully when crafting their opinions.
Of course, we could always return to the days following our country’s founding, “when violence against journalists ran rampant.” Publishers shamelessly touted their personal preferences, little concerned with facts. They printed lengthy anonymous screeds with no accountability. Of course, occasionally they were horsewhipped down Main Street as rioters burned their presses.
Might we again be headed in that direction?
Haug and his editor and wife, Jolie, work together on many projects. Contact Pete at petes.pen9@gmail.com. His internet archives are at favs.news/author/petehaug.
