Donald Trump hasn’t even been re-elected president yet, and our major media institutions are already bending the knee to America’s would-be autocrat.
On Friday, Will Lewis, publisher and CEO of the Washington Post, announced that the newspaper’s editorial staff will not endorse a presidential candidate for the first time in nearly four decades.
“We are returning to our roots of not supporting presidential candidates,” Will Lewis wrote in an op-ed.
Before 1976 – when the newspaper supported Jimmy Carter in the presidential election in the wake of the Watergate scandal – the newspaper did not issue endorsements.
Noting that the public may feel this decision was made for nefarious reasons, Lewis offered additional explanations – none of which should convince skeptics that their suspicions about what prompted this choice were unfounded.
If anything, they need to be confirmed. Lewis concludes: “It is primarily our job as a newspaper in the capital of the most important country in the world to be independent.”
A newsroom can easily function independently of the newsroom, and it usually does, at least at every major newspaper across the country. This has been the case for some time. It feels illogical to pretend it’s brand new.
Lewis’ announcement follows a similar announcement made days earlier by Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, who shared on social media that the newspaper would not endorse a presidential candidate for the first time in more than a century.
“The board was asked to provide insight into the policies and plans put forward by the candidates during this campaign and their potential impact on the nation over the next four years,” Soon-Shiong wrote on X on Wednesday. “With Putting this clear and unbiased information together, our readers could decide who would be worthy of being president for the next four years. Instead of following this path as suggested, the editors chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision.”
A graph-by-graph comparison of life under a Hitler reboot, as opposed to a centrist Democrat with no support, is a waste of everyone’s time.
These two non-serious statements have led to reporting revealing the true motivations of both men.
NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik revealed that an endorsement for Harris was prepared at the Washington Post, but billionaire owner Jeff Bezos “revised” the decision. Ultimately, management informed the newsroom of their choice to stop publishing recommendations.
In addition, Mariel Garza, editor-in-chief of the LA Times, reportedly resigned immediately after Soon-Shiong vetoed a decision by the newspaper to endorse Kamala Harris for president.
And she disputes Soon-Shiong’s account of what happened behind the scenes.
‘We threw an endorsement and weren’t allowed to write one’ she told The Wrap.
In her emotional resignation letter to editor-in-chief Terry Tang, Garza wrote: “It makes us cowardly and hypocritical, maybe even a little sexist and racist. How can we spend eight years railing against Trump and the danger his leadership poses to the country, and then fail to support the perfectly decent Democratic challenger – who we previously supported for the US Senate?
Former Washington Post editor Martin Baron, who led the editorial team during Trump’s first term, told NPR: “This is cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy a victim. Donald Trump will celebrate this as an invitation to further intimidate The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos (and other media owners). History will mark a disturbing chapter of spinelessness at an institution famed for its courage.”
Indeed, this is not a story about non-endorsements to signal independence and neutrality, but about wealthy entrepreneurs engaging in self-censorship to protect themselves from a vengeful Trump in a second term.
It is no wonder that so many people have resigned in protest at both newspapers.
Readers of each article are rightly angry.
In an update to his story, Folkenflik shared that Post readers are so angry, the paper says”Chief Tech Officer causes engineers to block Qs over his decision not to give approval [from] the Post’s own AI site search.”
Well, they feel betrayed by the people in charge of these newspapers :pPeople who think Donald Trump will win and who don’t want to experience retaliation therefore actively ignore their editors.
Editorial boards are expected to be independent voices. If an owner doesn’t want notes on his or her paper, then so be it. But to upend decades of tradition at the last minute and pretend it’s about political neutrality belies the true motivating factors.
To be clear, it is the prerogative of the owner of a respective publication to allow or deny the endorsement of a political candidate. And I won’t pretend that the president’s endorsements will necessarily be decisive in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. However, they are a function of journalism, and if one wants to engage in journalism, newspaper owners must respect the practices of journalism.
But this is exactly why I wish more politicians who value media would consider less capital-oriented ways of creating media in this country. We cannot leave our news spending in the hands of the wealthy because the choices made in this election cycle make it clear that this behavior will worsen. If these newspaper executives and owners endorse Trump as a candidate in this way, we should anticipate that if he becomes president again.
Think of what that suggests about how they will handle Trump’s mass deportations, national abortion bans, and all the tenets of Project 2025. A second Trump term will not only be harsher, but the institutional resistance to Trump will also be weaker.
Their obedience is about access and maintaining their more profitable business ventures outside of the media, but the public will suffer immensely.
It wouldn’t be unprecedented, but it’s worth being angry about.
