TOI Correspondent from Washington: In a sign that some political mavens and liberal scribes see as fear of retribution from MAGA supremo Donald Trump if he returns to the White House, two prominent US newspapers, both owned by billionaire businessmen, have withheld their traditional endorsement for presidential candidates.
The Washington Post, owned by Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos, and The Los Angeles Times, owned by healthcare magnate Patrick Soon-Shiong, are both sitting out the endorsements in 2024, causing turmoil in the editorial section and the newsroom. Several journalists, in what is typically a liberal-dominated field, have resigned in protest. Some readers in the Washington DC and LA metropolitan areas are cancelling their subscriptions.
Explaining the decision, Washington Post’s publisher William Lewis said the paper will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election, nor in any future presidential election, as it returns to its roots of not endorsing presidential candidates, which it has done since 1988.
“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,” he wrote.
The Columbia Journalism Review however reported that the paper’s opinion editor had approved a Kamala Harris endorsement, and it was killed by the owner Jeff Bezos. A similar spiking took place earlier in the week at the Los Angeles Times, where Patrick Soon-Shiong, who is also the publisher, blocked the editorial board’s plan to endorse Harris.
Several senior editorial personnel in both publications have resigned in protest. They include Mariel Garza, the editorials editor at LA Times, and Robert Kagan, a WaPo editorial columnist.
The Post though allowed its staff to vent freely in its columns about the decision. Opinion columnist Ruth Marcus wrote on Friday that she has “never been more disappointed in the newspaper than I am today, with the tragically flawed decision not to make an endorsement in the presidential race.”
“At a moment when The Post should have been stepping forward to sound the clarion call about the multiple dangers that Donald Trump poses to the nation and the world, it has chosen instead to pull back. That is the wrong choice at the worst possible time,” she said.
A harsher denunciation linking the decision to fear of Donald Trump came from Martin Baron, WaPo editor from 2012 to 2021, who called it “cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty,” alluding to the paper’s slugline “Democracy dies in darkness.”
“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 courage,” Baron said in a statement.
According to CJR, both Bezos and Soon-Shiong are trying to hedge their bets out of fear that their business interests could be harmed during a second Trump presidency. Soon-Shiong, who made his fortune as a biopharmaceutical innovator, is working on new drugs that would presumably require FDA approval and Amazon faces an antitrust lawsuit that will take years to litigate or settle, it said.
Arguments on social media, which has quickly eclipsed legacy media, also centered the dailies backing down of endorsement suggesting that Trump is on the path to victory although polls show him tied with Kamala Harris.
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