The decision by Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post not to endorse Kamala Harris for president has prompted 250,000 readers to cancel their subscriptions, and at least one contributor, the neocon Robert Kagan, to quit. Twenty Post columnists (but not my favorites, Megan McArdle and George Will) have signed a protest declaring that not endorsing Harris is “a terrible mistake.” In the Atlantic, writer Ellen Quigley argues that not endorsing Harris is an act of cowardice by the paper’s owner.
Let’s not go overboard here. The Post is not endorsing Trump. (Now that would be a journalistic H-bomb.) Bezos is declaring that the paper will not be endorsing any candidate, now or in the future, and is returning to a policy it followed during the first two-thirds of the 20th century.
The outrage is not about the policy, as such. It’s about the sudden and unexpected loss of face for Kamala Harris. The Post was going to endorse her for president. Everyone expected that. It’s what a Democratic paper in a Democratic town does. Nobody thought such an endorsement would affect a single electoral vote — certainly not the three votes of the District of Columbia, which always goes Democrat.
After the announcement that the Post would be endorsing no candidate for president, 20 of the Washington Post’s high-profile editorial writers and columnists responded by denouncing the paper for abandoning “its commitment to democratic values, the rule of law and international alliances.” They didn’t use the word, “cowardice,” but they implied it. The Post then ran its employees’ manifesto in its own pages. That’s not the behavior of a coward.
Critics of the Washington Post assume that the decision came from its owner, Jeff Bezos, who is also the founder and principal shareholder of Amazon and Blue Origin. Bezos has now defended the decision, saying it had nothing to do with his other interests. “Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election,” he writes. “No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, ‘I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.’ None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.”
I agree. It’s something I’ve thought about for many years.” From 2000 to 2013, I was on the editorial board of the Seattle Times. Every election cycle, my colleagues and I would interview state-level and local political candidates and write endorsements. We also wrote the endorsement for president, though the major-party nominees never bothered to talk to us. In 2000, we endorsed George W. Bush; in 2004, John Kerry; in 2008 and 2012, Barack Obama. The publisher, Frank Blethen, made those calls, though in most of the cases the board agreed with him. The exception was in 2000, when the board would have gone for Gore.
I wrote the Times’ endorsements for John Kerry for president (Oct. 24, 2004), Dino Rossi for governor (Oct. 17, 2004, and Oct. 19, 2008), and Rob McKenna for governor (Oct. 7. 2012). All of these candidates lost. Of course, the editorial writers knew the paper’s endorsement would have no effect on the national election — and probably precious little on the elections for governor or senator, either.
The one time our endorsement was perhaps decisive was in 2012, when the paper pulled its support of Richard Sanders, who then narrowly lost his seat on the Washington Supreme Court. The big endorsements are the ones that get talked about, and that readers love to hate. In 2000, when the paper ran a long editorial supporting George W. Bush, hundreds of subscribers to the Seattle Times canceled their subscriptions. The Times’ endorsement mattered to those readers; it also mattered to the man who wrote it, Jim Vesely. But it didn’t matter to the election. The Bush-Gore contest was the closest such election in more than a century — and the opinion of the Seattle Times had no effect on it whatsoever. (Should it have?)
I thought it was fine in 2000 for the Times to list all the reasons to vote for George W. Bush. Voters should consider such arguments. The paper might also have listed the reasons to vote for Al Gore. It would have been better to state both cases — not by regurgitating poll-tested talking points, but in the journalists’ own words. The paper was following the advice to state both cases — not by regurgitating poll-tested talking points, but from in the journalists’ own thinking. This year, the Times, being a Democratic paper in a Democratic town, has endorsed Harris. But if it were also to run the case for Trump, I wonder: Could the editors find anyone on staff willing to write it? I note also that the Los Angeles Times, another big-city paper in a Democratic state, has backed away from its expected endorsement of Harris.
The main argument to abstain from endorsements is that such lining up with candidates for public office conflicts with the journalistic mission to report and analyze the news. When I was there, the Seattle Times dealt with this problem like other newspapers by keeping news and editorial in separate rooms. We didn’t talk to each other. I think the news reporters would have felt contaminated if they had talked to us. And I never went to the political reporters and said, “Are our endorsements a problem for you?” (I don’t think I wanted to hear their answer.) Candidates sometimes bellyached about our endorsements, and always some readers did, too.
Why, then, continue making endorsements?
The 20 disgruntled columnists at the Washington Post wrote, “There is no contradiction between The Post’s important role as an independent newspaper and its practice of making political endorsements, both as a matter of guidance to readers and as a statement of core beliefs.” Well, it’s one thing to say there’s no contradiction, and quite another to support it with argument, which they don’t. Their word “guidance” suggests a paternal relationship that readers might not entirely enjoy.
I’m not arguing here for facts-only journalism. I’ve heard that argument, and it’s wrong. Bias is implied in the very idea of a newspaper story. To write a story is to choose which facts to put in and which ones to leave out, which ones to emphasize, and how. And that’s the news columns. Then there are analysis pieces, which offer more interpretation. On the op-ed page columnists make arguments — and on the editorial page, the paper makes institutional arguments. Maybe editorials should be signed, which would identify who’s talking. (The paper does that on its other pages.) Even if a paper wants to keep an institutional voice, it might stop short of endorsing candidates for office.
At the Seattle Times 20 years ago, the conflict between journalism and election campaigns was a problem we lived with. The editorial board had Governor Christine Gregoire in several times a year. She never mentioned that we’d twice endorsed her opponent, Dino Rossi. All of us were on good behavior, and the meetings went well. But that was then, and that was Chris Gregoire. This is 2024 and Donald Trump. One can imagine the Washington Post editorial board talking with President Trump after having endorsed Kamala Harris, and the atmosphere being somewhat different.
I’m not about to cancel my subscription to the Washington Post. It’s a good paper, and I think it made a good policy decision. I admit that the timing could have been better.
If the Post, as well as the LA Times who also pulled their traditional endorsement, return to endorsing a presidential candidate in the next election then they’ll look even more foolish. The face that a businessman with no publishing experience made this call is about as wrong as the timing.
With all respect, what Bezos did was , in effect,endorse Trump, and he and Trump know that. I’d refer you to to David Remnick’s op ed “Standing Up to Trump” in the Oct.30 edition of The New Yorker Magazine where he discusses WAPO’s cave and gives some historical context to a Russian journalist recently released in the prisoner swap.
I’m mostly thinking of this as evidence that he doesn’t belong in journalism, but a thought that just crossed my mind: what if he knows more than we do about what’s coming, and how bad it’s going to be for those who have opposed the Orange Mussolini, and he’s trying to save a few necks at his paper? Yeah, of course that would be treacherous cowardice that none of them are going to be grateful for, and not much help anyway, but … well, let’s hope we don’t find out.
The problem here is that one candidate respects our democratic processes and freedoms, and the other intends to abolish them. (I’ll let you choose which is which.) It’s not even a close call. A convicted felon, fraudster, sexual assault perpetrator, and the instigator of an attempted insurrection, and so forth and so on, and Bezos thinks it is okay to stand on the sidelines? When they come for you, don’t look for sympathy. Further evidence that the likes of Musk and Bezos lack moral character should not be allowed to run the world.
I’m not convinced. As you write, any “news” story has a point of view — what gets into a story, versus what doesn’t get said. But opinion is different. It’s analysis offered by voices who are paying attention. Any publication that only offers predictable, safe views isn’t doing a very good job at analysis. That WaPo offers the stale half-baked writing of a Marc Thiessen or the political hackery of a Hugh Hewett to represent the right is tedious and unconvincing.
No, it’s unlikely that anyone’s mind is going to be changed by a political endorsement for president, particularly one so obvious given the case against Trump made daily in the opinion columns. But to not endorse is to not finish the job, to complete the assignment, to give the final grade. If the paper were to have done the expected and made the endorsement, few would have probably even have noticed. For Bezos at this late date to yank the call draws far more attention than business as usual.
His printed explanation betrayed an astonishing lack of understanding about how newspapers work and what the actual job is. Astonishing because he owns the thing. Given the entirely predictable furor such a decision was certain to be met with, it might be worth spending more time thinking about why he did it. Somehow the notion of Bezos thinking he might appease Trump given the paper’s record in covering him seems a bit too pat of an explanation.
If anyone knows about timing, it’s Bezos, and anyone who has ever worked at a newspaper (I’m looking at you Mr Ramsey).
How do you explain this decision, one week before the election? Was Bezos asleep? This was a tactical, last minute decision, presented as a well thought out strategy. I don’t buy it, even through Prime.
“Loss of face” for Harris? What does that even mean? Cowardice is not a word that the objecting writers used – but I will. Editorial comment (endorsement, in this case) is not journalism, but an expression of perspective by the board when they have the nerve). Trump has repeatedly attacked the 1st Amendment, and threatened those who incur his displeasure. “Shut up” said the bully. “OK”, said Bezos (with his eye on his investments that will be at risk should Trump regain the office.) Likewise, the LA Times ownership have clearly failed us, regardless of their fig-leaf rationalizations. History shall judge.
“No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, ‘I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.’ None….” This is almost laughable on its face. The reason that owners, publishers, and editorial boards endorse political candidates in the first place is to influence voters to vote for their preferred candidate. There are a great many readers who believe that their newspaper is an authoritative voice and therefore will be directionally nudged if they’re undecided. This is why there are political ads. The difference here, of course, is that the newspaper can advertise for its candidate without actually having to pay for the political advertising, and it’s ‘advertising’ can be couched as an ‘endorsement’ which gives it more authority.
“What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence.” While this is certainly true, the idea that the WaPo endorsing Harris would create a perception of bias is also laughable. That perception of bias has already been well cemented by the reporting and opinions that the WaPo (and LA Times) have produced on a daily basis for years. To say that the endorsement of a candidate (Harris), would create the perception of bias after the ongoing landslide of biased content is pretty rich. I challenge anyone to show me an article that has been produced by either of those papers since 2020 that was positive or supportive of Trump, Trump policies, or the Trump administration. They are predictively one-sided, and have sold out to the Democratic Party. Independent? Non-biased? You have to be kidding me.
This is precisely why all the liberal folks are canceling their subscriptions, quitting their jobs in protest, and writing snarky comments here. They WANT the Washington Post to be biased, and they want any benefit to their cause that might come from a Harris endorsement. They’re not upset that the paper didn’t do an endorsement, they’re upset because the paper didn’t endorse Harris. They want that biased unpaid advertising influence, however small, on any undecided reader. And, they want to be able to point to the paper as agreeing and supporting them versus the paper being neutral.
“Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.” Well, at least Bezos got that part right.
Perhaps you don’t understand what an editorial is:
noun
a newspaper article written by or on behalf of an editor that gives an opinion on a topical issue.
Your sarcasm is clear, but your point isn’t. Perhaps you don’t understand what an endorsement is.
David,
No sarcasm intended. I really thought that you didn’t know what opinion means. An Editorial is an Opinion.
Opinion;
1a: a view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter.
b: APPROVAL, ESTEEM
Almost sounds like what you are saying, doesn’t it!
Or perhaps you don’t understand what “bias” is.
One of the Seattle Times columnists has an article today, wherein he comments that he isn’t involved in the endorsement process and wouldn’t want to be. Does that make him unbiased, in Bezos’ logic? Apparently, but Bezos is putting us on – he knows better.
What would make a Seattle Times columnist or reporter biased is not their editorial board’s published judgement. Nor is it, for that matter, their own judgement, which is very likely quite evident if we’re talking about the columnists. I mean, at this point they’re mostly writing about Trump … enough said.
Bias is when you read the content and get a distorted picture, because the reporter or columnist has omitted facts that were known to him or her. Everyone has opinions, and journalists are neck deep in the story and couldn’t possibly avoid it. Pretending this can be denied because the editorial board didn’t issue an opinion, is hogwash that Bezos can’t believe himself.
If they had endorsed Harris, everyone would have expected that and it would mean practically nothing. At the last minute announcing there would be no endorsement, means a lot more – obviously not in terms of what the editorial board thinks, they’re quitting, but it’s a crypto-endorsement from Bezos: whether he thinks Trump is an acceptable choice for president or not, it isn’t worth it to him to take a stand. Treacherous cowardice.
Our house is on fire, and Mr. Ramsey’s journalistic integrity and impartiality will not dampen the flames. Democracy will have died in the dark.
You are absolutely right Mr. Ramsey, and Jon Stewart agrees with you and with Bezos’ decision in a long interview with Ezra Klein in the New York Times today.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/04/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-jon-stewart.html
It’s well worth the read or listen, the best I’ve seen with Klein, but to warn you, it is pretty long. At the end, Stewart recommends reading Vonnegut.
Bezos wasted no time kissing up and congratulating Trump. Of course, Bezos’s personal fortune soared with the win along with the world’s richest men. That tells you all you need to know about refusing to endorse a female candidate.