Member-only story
Is This the End of Editorial Endorsements?
Democracy dies in darkness. Autocracy thrives in dissembling.
Not just readers suffer the decision by the owners of the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times to unsubscribe to the tradition of endorsing political candidates. Democracy suffers.
Carol Leonnig, senior staff writer and investigative reporter for the Washington Post and co-author of A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of Amerca (2020) appeared on MSNBC, October 26, following the decision by the Post Editorial Board not to endorse candidate Kamala Harris for President. Leonnig suggested that the response by readers to cancel their Post subscription would risk hurting the investigative reporting by the Post for which subscriptions provide a resource.
This is a weak argument — cancelling one’s subscription is an action targeting a management decision by the Washington Post, not one side of its news operation. Moreover, Leonnig’s argument conceals a larger issue: how the public forms an opinion of a political candidate. For the editorial board, how an institution forms an appraisal of a public service office seeker.
Such is an endorsement by an editorial board — not a decision by ownership.
Management at both news organizations intervened and demonstrated spinelessness in upending a history of…
