- The Washington Post’s non-endorsement of Donald Trump or Kamala Harris has kicked up controversy.
- It comes after the LA Times made the same decision. Both papers are owned by billionaires.
- The non-endorsements are being seen as political statements, whether or not that was the intent.
When is something a newspaper doesn’t publish a news story?
In this case, that’s right now. And it’s actually two stories: The Washington Post won’t be endorsing a presidential candidate this year. The move comes days after the Los Angeles Times made the same decision.
The obvious parallel between the two calls is that both newspapers are owned by very wealthy men. Patrick Soon-Shiong, who owns the Los Angeles Times, is worth a reported $6 billion; Jeff Bezos, who owns the Post, is worth a reported $194 billion, making him the third-richest person in the world.
And there are other similarities between the two non-decisions: The rationale behind the moves, for instance, is being communicated quite clumsily.
But the big picture is that whatever the true rationale behind the calls actually is — more on that in a moment — they are being interpreted by observers, including some on their own staff, as a desire to avoid angering Donald Trump, and/or a move to avoid angering readers.
The irony here is that it’s entirely unclear that newspaper endorsements affect elections — particularly national ones in a polarized country — at all.
So if either the Los Angeles Times or the Post had announced they were no longer making endorsements a year ago, or even months ago, it’s doubtful this would be much of a story. Unless you are a very close New York Times observer, for instance, you are probably unaware that the paper announced it would no longer make endorsements in New York area elections this summer.
Instead, the non-calls, made days before a fraught election, are now the news.
A separate Post story, though, reports that the Post’s editorial page had already drafted a Kamala Harris endorsement. It cites unnamed sources who say Bezos made the decision not to run the endorsement. In a statement to BI, Post Chief Communications Officer Kathy Baird said: “This was a Washington Post decision to not endorse, and I would refer you to the publisher’s statement in full.”
Explaining the non-endorsement decision in LA
At the Los Angeles Times, owner Soon-Shiong posted on Twitter/X on Wednesday trying to explain the paper’s non-endorsement. Instead of an endorsement, he said, he had told his editorial board to draft a “factual analysis of all the [sic] POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE policies by EACH candidate,” so that “our readers could decide who would be worthy of being President.”
“Instead of adopting this path as suggested, the Editorial Board chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision,” he wrote.