The Washington Post enters the political fray with disapproval

• The Washington Post’s disapproval of Donald Trump or Kamala Harris has sparked controversy.
• It comes after the LA Times made the same decision. Both newspapers are owned by billionaires.
• The disapprovals are being seen as political statements, whether that was the intention or not.

When something is a newspaper it doesn’t publish a news?

In this case, it’s right now. And it’s actually two stories: The Washington Post will not endorse 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 people. Patrick Soon-Shiong, who owns the Los Angeles Times, is worth $6 billion; Jeff Bezos, who owns the Post, has a fortune of $194 billion, making him the third richest man in the world.

And there are other similarities between the two nondecisions: The rationale behind the moves, for example, is being clumsily communicated.

But the big picture is that whatever the real reason behind the calls actually is — more on that in a moment — they’re being interpreted by observers, including some on their own staff, as a desire to avoid angering Donald Trump, and/ or an action to avoid angering readers.

The irony here is that it’s completely unclear that newspaper endorsements affect elections at all — especially national ones in a polarized country.

Similar stories

So if the Los Angeles Times or Post had announced they were no longer doing endorsements a year ago, or even months ago, it’s doubtful this would be a big story. Unless you’re a very close watcher of the New York Times, for example, you’re probably unaware that the paper announced it would no longer make endorsements in New York-area elections this summer.

Instead, the no-calls, made days before a tough election, are now the news.

“This is cowardice, with democracy as its victim,” said Marty Baron, who was the Post’s managing editor from 2012 to 2021, in or The tweet/X. “@realdonaldtrump will see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner @jeffbezos (and others). Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famous for bravery.”

Will Lewis, the Post’s publisher and CEO, announced the decision not to approve in an understated announcement, framing it as a return to the paper’s history. Although the paper had endorsed Donald Trump’s opponents in the previous two presidential elections, before the 1976 election, the Post made no presidential endorsements at all.

“We had it right before that, and that’s what we’re going back to,” Lewis writes.

However, a separate Post story 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 not to approve, and I would refer you to publisher’s statement in full.”

Explanation of decision of disapproval in LA

At the Los Angeles Times, owner Soon-Shiong tweeted/X on Wednesday trying to explain the paper’s disapproval. Instead of an endorsement, he said, he had told his editorial board to produce a “factual analysis of all [sic] POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE politics from EACH candidate”, so that “our readers can decide who would be worthy to be President”.

“Instead of following this path as suggested, the Editorial Board chose to remain silent and I accepted their decision,” he wrote.

It’s a little hard to understand how Soon-Shiong thought this would work. Earlier this summer, the Times’ editorial board had already declared that Trump was “manifestly unfit for office” and “an imminent threat to democracy.” If you’re starting from there, a pros and cons list doesn’t seem particularly helpful.

In any case, Mariel Garza, editorial editor of the LA Times, told the Columbia Journalism Review that she had not received such a request from Soon-Shiong. She resigned in protest on Wednesday.

“Of course it matters that the largest newspaper in the state — and one of the largest in the country still — refused to endorse such an important race. And it matters that we’re not even going to be fair to people about it, ” she wrote in her resignation letter. “The disapproval undermines the integrity of the editorial board and every single endorsement we make, down to school board races. People will rightly question whether each endorsement was a decision made by a group of journalists after extensive research and discussion, or through the decree from the owner”.

And the next day, Soon-Shiong’s daughter Nika, an outspoken opponent of Israel’s military action in Gaza, complicated matters with her series of tweets that seemed to suggest the paper’s disapproval was a reaction to that the conflict.

I have reached out to the Los Angeles Times for comment or clarification.

To return to where we started: There is little debate about whether the people who own newspapers can influence what those newspapers publish. (be they MUST(and how they should do it if they do is another matter.) In fact, some people specifically own news outlets. BECAUSE they want to throw their political weight. (See: Murdoch, Rupert.)

But regardless of what their intentions really are, the Post and Times disapprovals will be seen as political statements — no matter what. And if they don’t understand that, that’s another story.

Update: October 25, 2024 – This story was updated with a statement from a Washington Post spokesperson.