Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, explains why the WaPo is not endorsing a candidate in this year’s presidential election:
Voting machines must meet two requirements. They must count the vote accurately, and people must believe they count the vote accurately. The second requirement is distinct from and just as important as the first.
Likewise with newspapers. We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion. It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility (and, therefore, decline in impact), but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.
Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, “I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.” None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.
Read the whole thing. The WaPo hasn’t always endorsed presidential candidates.
The WaPo has 2.5 million online subscribers or at least it had that many. My understanding is that about 10% of those have cancelled their subscriptions over the paper’s non-endorsement.
Not all major newspapers endorse political candidates. The last presidential candidate endorsed by the Sun-Times was Hillary Clinton in 2016.
It all sounds good. I think the reality is that they decided Trump is going to win and Bezos wanted to decrease the risk of Trump getting revenge.
Steve
I see it slightly differently or at least would express it slightly differently. Endorsing Harris accomplishes exactly nothing other than meaningless virtue-signaling.
If the WaPo endorses Harris, Trump is elected, and he is as vindictive as his opponents claim, the WaPo has a lot to lose. Its position, as both a hometown DC newspaper and an outlet for the prevailing DC wisdom, is unique. Losing access ends its role as outlet for the prevailing DC wisdom.
One of the things revealed by this incident is that the WaPo editorial staff is very committed to meaningless virtue-signaling. That’s not a job for journalists but they very clearly see it differently.