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    Friday, November 08, 2024

    Journalistic endorsements now come in news coverage

    Journalists around the country are outraged that the publishers of the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times decided at the last minute to prevent their newspapers from publishing editorial-page endorsements of Democrat Kamala Harris for president. A few journalists at the papers have resigned over it.

    The writers union at the Post complains that the paper's owner, Jeff Bezos, founder of internet retailer Amazon, "interfered" with the editorial page. The union seems not to have heard that, as press critic A.J. Liebling wrote, freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one. The Post's writers don't seem inclined to concede Bezos any discretion even though he is covering the newspaper's big financial losses, which approach $100 million a year.

    Of course the Post management's first explanation of the decision against endorsing Harris or anyone was weak — that the newspaper was reverting to its old policy of not endorsing candidates. So it was suspected that Bezos figured that Republican nominee Donald Trump, considered by most journalists to be the incarnation of evil, well may be elected and then could make trouble for Amazon, which, because of its size, is always bumping into legal and regulatory issues. Indeed, if the owner of a news organization has other business interests, they can conflict with providing independent news and commentary.

    But then few journalists complained when Bezos bought the Post as it and the rest of the newspaper industry were weakening. Journalists then were glad that the new owner could afford to lose some money.

    In an essay in the Post this week Bezos acknowledged his potential for conflict of interest but offered better justification for avoiding endorsements: that they may reduce confidence in the paper's fairness even as confidence in journalism generally is collapsing. Besides, Bezos argued, endorsements persuade few people anyway.

    The situation is a bit different with the L.A. Times. Its owner, medical billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, says the paper's decision not to endorse for president is for this year only and is based on the belief that endorsing would just worsen the country's bitter political division.

    This explanation isn't so persuasive either, since it's hard to see how that division could be much worse than it is, and since California is so Democratic that no newspaper endorsement can make much difference. Maybe Soon-Shiong also has some business interests that the next president could mess with, though they may not be as obvious as those of Bezos.

    In any case no endorsement may be persuasive if it comes from news organizations that are as politically partisan year-round as the Washington Post and most other major news organizations have been lately, and the endorsements from such organizations may serve mainly to make editorialists feel more relevant.

    Indeed, since most major news organizations suffer Trump Derangement Syndrome and have gotten rabidly partisan this year, their constant slanting of the news already has provided de-facto endorsements nearly every day. Most major news organizations have reported in great detail the many scandals involving Trump while ignoring or discounting the many involving President Biden and his administration, starting notoriously with the influence-peddling business long operated by his son Hunter and the incriminating evidence recorded on his laptop computer, which turned out not to be the Russian disinformation major news organizations sought to make it.

    There's no separating journalism from politics. The selection of every news story and commentary is a political act -- not necessarily a partisan one but still an act arising from the world view of journalists, politics in a broad sense. But whatever their political views journalists should strive for fairness.

    Instead last weekend some journalists likened Trump's rally at Madison Square Garden in New York to the rally held there in February 1939 by the pro-Nazi German-American Bund, as if many other political events have not also been held there over the years, including the 1992 Democratic National Convention, and as if Trump's vulgarity isn't often matched by that of his adversaries, who now are calling him a fascist and another Hitler.

    Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. He can be reached at CPowell@cox.net.

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