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Home » So, why did the LA Times and the WaPo decide not to endorse anyone this year for the presidency?

So, why did the LA Times and the WaPo decide not to endorse anyone this year for the presidency?

The New Neo Posted on by

The easy answer would be: they hate Trump and his deplorable supporters, but they’re too embarrassed to endorse Kamala Harris because she’s performed so poorly.

Of course, that didn’t stop them from endorsing Joe Biden in 2020 or carrying water for him right up to the point of his disastrous debate in June with Trump. Nor has it stopped them from continuing to cover the news – including, of course, the presidential race – with their usual leftwing bias. So, why not an endorsement of Harris?

I don’t think it’s because they fear Trump retaliation if he’s elected. They probably realize that (a) he wouldn’t really be doing much to hurt them because in general his past threats have been just bluster, or (b) Trump already has plenty of motivation to do whatever he might be doing to them if he became president, and a Harris endorsement would hardly add anything to it.

So, what is it? The WaPo says it’s “returning to its roots” of non-endorsement prior to 1976. That’s nearly fifty years of endorsements, though. One would think that, since Trump is Hitler, the WaPo picked a funny time to end the endorsement practice. It really does seem a slap in the face to Harris, the only person who might have been reasonably expecting a WaPo endorsement for president this year.

Typical of other papers is this article in the leftist Guardian, in that they all seem to mention that owners Patrick Soon-Shiong (LA) and Jeff Bezos (Post) are billionaires. Well, yes, but they previously were billionaires who owned papers that endorsed Democrats for president. The Guardian writer, Margaret Sullinvan, opines:

All of this may look like nonpartisan neutrality, or be intended to, but it’s far from that. For one thing, it’s a shameful smackdown of both papers’ reporting and opinion-writing staffs who have done important work exposing Trump’s dangers for many years.

It’s also a strong statement of preference. The papers’ leaders have made it clear that they either want Trump (who is, after all, a boon to large personal fortunes) or that they don’t wish to risk the ex-president’s wrath and retribution if he wins. If the latter was a factor, it’s based on a shortsighted judgment, since Trump has been a hazard to press rights and would only be emboldened in a second term.

When Sullivan uses the term “press rights,” I believe it’s actually a code for “the right of the press to lie about Republicans and to suppress any news unfavorable to the left or deemed disinformation by the left.” Any actual free speech advocate, especially involving social media, is a great danger to the left.

However, there is a kernel of truth in the “Trump is a hazard to press rights” accusation, and that is that in 2022 Trump did advocate jail time in order to pressure reporters to reveal sources in cases of perhaps criminal leaks, such as the leak of the Dobbs draft long before the decision was officially issued. But reporters’ privileges to protect sources are not absolute; read this for a discussion of the legal issues. And quite a few reporters have indeed been jailed for refusing to reveal sources; one you might recall was Judith Miller. And I can’t find a record of any reporters actually jailed by Trump for anything during his administration.

More about the WaPo‘s decision [emphasis mine]:

Colleagues were said to be “shocked” and uniformly negative. Editor-at-large Robert Kagan, who has been highly critical of Trump as autocratic, told NPR he had resigned from the editorial board as a consequence.

Former Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron, who led the newsroom to acclaim during Trump’s presidency, denounced the decision starkly.

“This is cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty,” Baron said in a statement to NPR. “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.”

“Democracy dies in darkness” – I guess Baron really took that slogan to heart. But it’s been quite a long time since the WaPO was “famed for courage,” and it’s interesting that that “courage” was demonstrated by the paper’s role in taking down a previous Republican president, Richard Nixon.

Comments

So, why did the <i>LA Times</i> and the <i>WaPo</i> decide not to endorse anyone this year for the presidency? — 21 Comments

  2. Today’s WSJ editorial page discusses Kamala’s “wealth tax.” This may be part of the motivation of Bezos and Soon-Shiong.

    The reality check surrounds the “billionaire minimum tax,” which would stretch the definition of income to include gains on unsold assets. Households worth more than $100 million would owe a minimum 25% on their “total” annual income, including any increase in their overall wealth. The new tax would also nullify the so-called step up in basis for many of these households—a policy that eliminates the taxable gain of an asset when it’s passed to heirs.

  3. One of the sadder consequences of the last 8 years is that we now have to read American newspapers like they are Pravda. And one of the scarier things to contemplate is that this may have been true for much longer than the last eight years.

  5. My Facebook feed today is full of furious posts by my liberal, female D.C.-area friends and friends of friends, announcing that they canceled their WaPo subscriptions because of its “cowardly” decision not to endorse Harris. As a matter of principle, I don’t post politics on Facebook. But if I did, I would suggest to these friends that, if Jeff Bezos is thinking about his newspaper’s bottom line, which he’s a billionaire, so of course he is, he probably WANTS Trump to win.

    Remember how Trump’s 2016 win boosted the fortunes of the NYT, which had previously been heading toward irrelevancy, losing readers right and left? Here we are in 2024, and we know that the WaPo has been bleeding readers so badly that earlier this year the paper tried to bring in a whole new editorial viewpoint and warned its most rabid “woke” employees that they might be working in the wrong place. Wouldn’t a Trump victory help a lot in turning this around?

    I am going to bet that if Trump wins, all of those liberals who are canceling their WaPo subscriptions will hasten to sign back up, for the comfort of four more years of lies and bashing.

  9. How many people would actually vote based upon a recommendation from their newspaper? I don’t think very many anymore, if at all, and possibly these papers just didn’t want to back an obvious loser?

  10. The spoiled children masquerading as “journalists” need to understand that newspapers are–first and foremost–businesses. The owners–not the “reporting” and “editorial” staffs–dictate corporate policy and strategy. If you don’t like the employer-employee relationship, quit. Or even better, start your own newspaper.

    The beauty of being Neo is that she’s both owner and reporter/editorial writer. It’s not even a little bit clear to me why the newspaper business should be any different from the oil business (corporate managers–not geologists–decide which wells to drill) or the car business or the airline business. If you deliver a high quality product at a fair price, everyone wins. If you deliver liberal tripe that no one wants to read, your paper loses money and eventually goes out of business (and there’s a lot of evidence that such is the case in the news business).

    I can’t wait until Jen Rubin resigns from the WaPo (but, of course, we already know that her “principles,” like Groucho Marx’s, are situational (i.e., principled people at the LA Times should resign–but she needs to hang onto her undoubtedly overpaid gig to “fight fascism”)).

  11. They’re either:

    1. Afraid of being mocked as fools if the stock market soars and Putin and Chi decide to play nice, and the Middle East settles down if Trump wins, or;
    2. Afraid of being associated with a five-alarm dumpster fire if he doesn’t!

    I’ll bet on 2.

  12. Sorry about the link. Must be something about different OSs. It’s a cartoon from the Powerline week in pictures. Punch line:
    “Breaking News!!! In an election race between Hitler and Kamala Harris, the LA Times and WAPO will not endorse Harris.”

  13. The LAT staff wanted Elizabeth Warren in 2020. Soon-Shiong stopped them from endorsing her in the primaries. He let the paper endorse Biden in the general election. Was it something he wanted or was he just letting the staff have their way? I think he’s more of a business guy than any kind of ideologue.

    Jeff Bezos does have political leanings, but Amazon is involved in a lot of things and Bezos has to worry about how the government will treat it. Not that Trump’s a vindictive guy, but maybe Bezos doesn’t want to take chances with how any administration would treat his companies.

  14. My theory is that both papers need to do some significant downsizing and it is far cheaper if you can get the employees you need to get rid of quit rather than buy out their contracts.

  15. @J.J.Sorry about the link. Must be something about different OSs.

    It’s how you are getting to the link; I think you are giving us something that tries to open your email. Check the address of the link you posted

    https://connect.xfinity.com/appsuite/api/image/mail/picture?folder=default0%2FINBOX&id=82553&uid=49cade08a2064e7c8a5a607a7de9ec74%40open-xchange.com

    and compare it with the original

    https://www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2024/10/Screenshot-2024-10-25-at-4.12.43%E2%80%AFPM.png

  16. Links to Powerline pics of the week never work now for many months running. AesopFan used to link them last Spring/Summer and they wouldn’t process, so . . . it ain’t you or your link, it’s Powerline’s doing.

  18. The Bottom Line is speaking to the publishers, and the publishers are speaking to the editors. I think that the polling – the ones that are conducted in order to gain intelligence on the actual social trends, not to create or steer the preferred ones – are telling them that voter sentiment has shifted. And voter sentiment is upstream of subscriber sentiment. To me, it seems clear that the newspapers are sensing a change in the waters, and are adjusting their tack and their sails in hopes of surviving the seas ahead.

  20. As I’ve said, I think these backtrackings are last-minute efforts to salvage the credibility of these Great Media that they weren’t totally in the tank for Democrats. Though, of course they were,

    Even the rich owners didn’t interfere with all the “Democracy Dies in Darkness” and “Trump is Hitler” malarkey.

    Now they are not endorsing Kamala, since they see some unpleasant Writing on the Wall.

    We’re not in the tank! We are Hard-hitting True Journalists Telling It Like It Is!

    Right? Right?

    In the words of Carole King and the Shirelles:

    Will you still believe us tomorrow?

  21. Interesting Miketas C. I still get the cartoon when I click on my link. When I click on the link you provided, I get an Error 101.

    The mysteries of Tech. Makes me want to go back to smoke signals or the telegraph. 🙂

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