The Washington Post stuns observers by not making a presidential endorsement
‘MediaBuzz’ host Howard Kurtz reports on how The Washington Post is refraining from making a presidential endorsement for the first time in decades on ‘Special Report.’
Newspaper presidential endorsements used to be newsworthy. Now, they only make news when they don’t happen. Both journalists and the left automatically assume the papers will support Democrats like they do the other 364 days a year.
But fast-forward to the 2024 presidential election, where we are living through a real-time fact check of news media neutrality and watching the press fail big time.
Liberal staffers of the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post saw their plans to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president canceled and the uproar that followed was as predictable as their usual list of endorsements. Of course, they’re upset. They spent years pretending Donald Trump is evil incarnate, but not even the guys who write their checks believe them.
Billionaire Jeff Bezos, who founded Amazon, owns the Post. He wrote a piece for the paper explaining how journalism has lost credibility and, "Most people believe the media is biased." (Duh.) He admitted some of the problem, noting, "It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility." But he didn't. He added that canceling endorsements is "a meaningful step in the right direction."
Bezos probably won’t win many media friends, saying, "Lack of credibility isn’t unique to The Post. Our brethren newspapers have the same issue." And then adding that, "The Washington Post and the New York Times win prizes, but increasingly we talk only to a certain elite."
Journalists think their bosses might be "caving to Trump" because they believe he’s going to win. Newsies are terrified the bosses are right. (Getty Images)
That endorsement boycott is catching. USA Today just did the unthinkable and embraced it. A spokesperson from the paper reportedly told the Daily Beast that the paper will provide readers with "the facts that matter and the trusted information they need to make informed decisions." The Tampa Times joined in the fun, as well. The era of newspapers openly expressing their biases might be coming to an end before our eyes.
Here are three more reasons for the leftist media freakout:
Caving to Trump
Journalists at both newspapers threw a collective tantrum over the canceled endorsements and others in their field were there to support them. NPR’s David Folkenflik asked if the news outlets "pull[ed] punches to appease Trump?" MSNBC opinion editor Jarvis DeBerry declared, "The rich owners of The Washington Post and L.A. Times just capitulated to Trump." Vanity Fair warned that billionaires were in "fear of retribution by Donald Trump." And Slate paraphrased the Post slogan, "Democracy’s Death in Darkness."
CNN’s reliable Trump hater Brian Stelter wrote in a special Reliable Sources newsletter, "the appearance of caving to Trump does real and lasting damage to any enterprise that isn't identified as pro-Trump." Caving to Trump means not giving full-throated support to his opponent.
Journalists think their bosses might be "caving to Trump" because they believe he’s going to win. Newsies are terrified the bosses are right.
FAR FEWER NEWSPAPERS ARE ENDORSING HARRIS THAN BACKED CLINTON OR BIDEN
Going Postie
Because the Post is based in the nation’s capital, there was more of a media freakout for that decision. Current and former Post staffers lined up to defend their open support of Democrats – like always. (They’ve endorsed every single Democrat presidential nominee going back into the 1980s.)
Former executive editor Marty Baron blasted the paper’s decision as, "cowardice, a moment of darkness that will leave democracy as a casualty." Pulitzer Prize winner David Maraniss, a Post associate editor, called the move "contemptible." He added, "This is an act not of benign neutrality but of cowardice in the face of the biggest challenge to democracy in our post-World War II lifetimes."
Opinion page writers expressed their angst under the headline: "The newspaper’s refusal to endorse a presidential candidate is a mistake." Eighteen Post columnists delivered a generic response saying the move "represents an abandonment of the fundamental editorial convictions of the newspaper that we love." It was the kind of milquetoast wording guaranteed to protect their hefty paychecks. (Three outraged Post staffers actually resigned.)
Posties all fantasize that they are Woodward and Bernstein still fighting an evil Nixon presidency. In reality, they are a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party and covered up President Biden’s obvious cognitive issues until he was destroyed in the presidential debate. They don’t aspire to be journalists. They want to harm Republicans.
And, of course, the actual Watergate duo of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein called the publisher’s action "disappointing" and said it "ignores the Washington Post’s own overwhelming reportorial evidence on the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy."
That threat to "democracy" is a common media and far left lie from outlets that freak out that their approved candidate might not win. What really scares Posties is a threat that Democrats might lose.
Upsetting Hollywood
Naturally, celebrities were up in arms, too – either complaining or even canceling their subscriptions. Because one of the top two leftist newspapers in the U.S. wasn’t far left enough for them. And that upset journalists even more, because the far left is their real audience.
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The liberal celebrities either calling for subscribers to cancel or just whining about the lack of endorsements would look familiar to anyone who follows social media. Actors Henry "the Fonz" Winkler, Jeffrey Wright and Jon Cryer, author Stephen King, New York Daily News sports columnist Mike Lupica and lots more. Former Obama and Biden adviser Susan Rice complained on X, "As a DC native and lifelong subscriber to the Post, I’m disgusted. You have lost us."
Both critics and competitors of the papers got the last laugh. Conservatives mocked the far left’s purity test that had them cancel subscriptions, while The Atlantic begged, "Don’t Cancel The Washington Post. Cancel Amazon Prime."
The New York Times reminded readers why it remains the most far-left newspaper in America by endorsing Harris, "The Only Patriotic Choice for President." The paper actively hates patriotism, except when staffers think it might convince a few rubes to vote their way.
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In reality, journalists don’t care what readers think. News staffers gave up pretending they were unbiased decades ago, even before the Gen Z activists invaded their organizations.
The whole episode will give journalists someone to blame if Trump wins re-election. They’ll never accept that decades of bias completely undermined their influence. And that happened long before their publishers ran from Harris faster than rats leaving a sinking ship.
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