THE NEWSPAPER WORLD was rocked last week when two billionaire owners, Patrick Soon-Shiong of the Los Angeles Times followed by Jeff Bezos of The Washington Post, killed endorsements of Vice President Kamala Harris against the wishes of their editorial boards.
Harris supporters erupted in outrage, with many of them vowing to cancel their subscriptions and demanding to know how two wealthy men could be allowed to interfere with the sanctity of the editorial process. Aren’t media moguls supposed to be rarely seen and never heard?
Now, it’s true that Bezos’s and Soon-Shiong’s actions were outrageous, but that’s because of the high-handed, disrespectful manner in which they handled the endorsements. In fact, it is perfectly acceptable for newspaper owners to involve themselves in the editorial pages. The problem is that we journalists are not very good at explaining the ethics of our trade, and we too often act arrogantly toward the public we purportedly serve. As a result, endorsements are poorly understood.
With that in mind, and with the final day of voting barely a week away, here’s a guide to what you need to know about political endorsements and newspaper editorials in general.
• Owners have the final say. In decades past, rich men — and they were nearly always men — bought papers mainly so they could exercise political influence. In fact, the Post was founded in 1877 by a 38-year-old New Hampshire native named Stilson Hutchins whose main interest was to get involved in Democratic Party politics.
These days, large newspapers like the Post, the LA Times, and, for that matter, The Boston Globe have editorial boards comprising the paper’s opinion journalists, sometimes joined by a few members of the community. It’s the board that generally decides on whom to endorse. In most cases the owner and the board are sympatico, but occasionally the owner will overrule the board and endorse a different candidate. When that happens, we don’t usually hear about it.
At both the Post and the LA Times, management announced last week that endorsements would be ended altogether, and that, too, would not be outrageous except for the circumstances under which these announcements came about. Back in August, The Minnesota Star Tribune, yet another paper with a billionaire owner, said that it would no longer endorse candidates, and news of that move barely created a stir. Newspapers owned by the Gannett chain and by the hedge fund Alden Global Capital have been moving away from endorsements. Nonprofit news organizations are on the rise, and they can’t endorse lest they lose their tax exemption.
So endorsements may be fading away. The problem with Bezos and Soon-Shiong is that they acted at the last minute, overturning their editorial boards and convincing absolutely no one that there was any principle behind their decision beyond not provoking the wrath of former President Donald Trump. Indeed, both papers had already published endorsements in state and local races.
Given that, we should all be outraged at Bezos at Soon-Shiong — but not for what they did. Rather, their offense was the way they did it.
• Owners should steer clear of news coverage. Although it is acceptable for owners to get involved with the editorial pages, it is universally regarded as a serious ethical breach for owners to interfere with news coverage. This is sometimes described as the separation of church and state, which can be confusing, because the wall between news and advertising is also referred to as the separation of church and state.
Soon-Shiong has reportedly violated this sacrosanct rule on occasion. Earlier this year the LA Times’s executive editor, Kevin Merida, resigned, and supposedly one of the reasons for his departure was that Soon-Shiong had demanded that he kill a story about a friend of his whose dog had bitten someone. (I am not making this up.) Merida also left amid major cuts to the newsroom, so it wasn’t just the wayward canine that led him to conclude he’d had enough.
In contrast to Soon-Shiong, Bezos was a model owner from the time that he bought The Washington Post in 2013 until fairly recently. He stood up courageously to Trump’s threats against the Post and enjoyed a reputation for not interfering in coverage of his business interests, including Amazon and the Blue Origin rocket company.
But sometime after Trump left office and the Post’s legendary executive editor (and former Boston Globe editor), Marty Baron, retired, the paper began bleeding readers and money. At least outwardly, Bezos has seemed to be losing interest in the Post. Last year he hired a new publisher, Fleet Street veteran Will Lewis, and has stuck by him despite Lewis’s involvement in several ethical lapses, including an alleged cover-up in the U.K. phone-hacking scandal that has led to an investigation by Scotland Yard.
There is still no evidence that Bezos has ever interfered in the Post’s news coverage. But given the way he handled the Harris endorsement, he should now be regarded as someone who’s on probation.
• Endorsements don’t matter, except when they do. For all the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth over the canceled Harris endorsements, they were hardly likely to move any votes, especially given that the Post and the LA Times appeal mainly to a liberal readership already committed to voting for Harris. A presidential endorsement is more a statement of values than it is a genuine effort at persuading voters.
A contrarian endorsement — imagine The New York Times coming out for Trump — might make a few heads turn. Still, voters generally don’t need any guidance when it comes to presidential candidates or, arguably, prominent statewide positions such as governor or U.S. senator.
With more obscure offices and ballot questions, though, endorsements can make a real difference. Most of us would want to know who our local newspaper supports for, say, city council, select board, or school committee. For that matter, I’m glad that The Boston Globe’s opinion pages published “yes” or “no” endorsements of the five statewide ballot questions. You can read only so many competing points of view. A clear opinion from journalists who’ve taken the time to study the issues can be welcome guidance.
The Globe, by the way, is among a diminishing number of papers that continue to endorse up and down the ballot. The New York Times, weirdly enough, announced recently that it would no longer endorse in state and local races, where its imprimatur might be taken seriously, but that it would continue to endorse in presidential races — as it did, joining the Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Houston Chronicle, the Times Union of Albany, New York, and a few others in backing Harris.
So what is the future of endorsements? Two years ago, Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby joined Ellen Clegg and me on our podcast, What Works: The Future of Local News, to discuss exactly that subject. Jacoby opposed endorsements; Clegg, a former Globe editorial-page editor, favored them; and I was somewhere in the middle.
One idea that Jacoby suggested was that news outlets publish a grid fairly early in an election campaign showing where candidates stand on the issues. Then, whenever there’s a story about that particular race, it can link back to that issues grid.
I think it’s a great idea. I can also tell you that my journalism students are skeptical of newspaper editorials in general, never mind endorsements. The unsigned opinion piece, written in the institutional voice and handed down as though it were the word of God, may have seen better days.
Once we get past last week’s miserable developments at The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, maybe we can get back to the vital work of figuring out how we can better serve our communities.
Dan Kennedy is a professor of journalism at Northeastern University and the author, with Ellen Clegg, of What Works in Community News: Media Startups, News Deserts, and the Future of the Fourth Estate. Follow their updates and podcast at whatworks.news. Kennedy is also a member of CommonWealth Beacon’s editorial advisory board.
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