Dem
50
GOP
50
When the Los Angeles Times refused to endorse a candidate for president (despite decades of doing so in the past), it not only broke with its own history, it started a trend. Now The Washington Post followed suit. It won't endorse either, even though staff members were already writing an endorsement for Kamala Harris when the order came down from on high not to. One might think that it wouldn't be hard for a major newspaper to choose between a candidate who believes in a vigorous free press and one who sees the media as the enemy of the people and has threatened to close down publications that criticize him. One would apparently be wrong.
The Post's legendary editor-in-chief, Marty Baron, called it an act of "cowardice" that would throw the newsroom into chaos and put democracy in danger. Baron also tweeted: "Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage." At least one person has already resigned and there could be more. The excuse the publisher, Will Lewis, gave, is that the readers are smart enough to decide for themselves. He didn't explain how the readers suddenly got so educated, since the Post has been giving endorsements for decades—up until now. As far back as 1976 it made endorsements, in that year for Jimmy Carter. It is noteworthy that the statement came from Lewis personally, not from the editorial board, which apparently was going to make an endorsement (for Harris) until it was told to shut up.
What happened? Donald Trump's campaign is based on fear, intimidation, and threats of retribution. It works. Even Jamie Dimon, the outspoken CEO of the world's biggest bank (J.P. Morgan Chase) and a long-time Democrat didn't endorse anyone this time, despite his endorsement possibly having an impact on other Big Business types. Dimon clearly understands the power the president has to hurt even a bank with $4 trillion in assets.
Was fear the reason that the Post decided not to endorse, or was it Lewis' personal decision? There are already stories that Post owner Jeff Bezos made the call, including this one in The New York Times. The Times is a publicly traded company and endorsed Kamala Harris this year.
The nonendorsements of The L.A. Times and the Post didn't come out of nowhere and are part of a complicated tradeoff. Newspapers are in big financial trouble. It used to be that the only ways to get news were newspapers, radio, and television. The Internet upended that applecart and newspapers are now struggling. Many, especially local ones, have folded. One way for struggling newspapers to survive is to be bought by a benevolent billionaire who largely stays out of the way. That happened to both of the above papers, with Patrick Soon-Shiong buying The L.A. Times and Jeff Bezos buying the Post. Both have sunk a lot of money into their new hobbies and revitalized them. But eventually it became time to pay the piper. If Johann Wolfgang von Goethe were alive, maybe he could write a nice play about it.
Very rich people owning media properties which they use to promote their own interests is as American as apple pie. Think about William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Pulitzer, and Henry Luce. This is just a continuation of the past, but with new owners. The Times dared to endorse Harris, so maybe the only way to provide some safety for a paper is to make it a publicly traded corporation, preferably with the stock widely dispersed. Bezos really helped the Post get out of a ditch and for that he deserves a lot of credit. But he is likely afraid that a President Trump would punish Amazon if the Post endorsed Harris, even though Bezos owns the paper personally, not Amazon. Conceivably, he could hold an IPO, limit the number of shares anyone could buy to 10,000 (giving long-time subscribers first shot at the stock), and put the proceeds in an endowment run by the paper, but that seems unlikely.
It doesn't always work out badly for a publication owned by a billionaire, just sometimes. Laurene Powell Jobs bought The Atlantic and Michael Bloomberg bought Businessweek and haven't alienated their readers or staff members. Marc Benioff just bought the venerable Time Magazine for $190 million last week, so his influence is not clear yet, but he is a megadonor to the Democratic Party. (V)