On the debate over newspaper presidential endorsements

By the time this column goes to publication, there’s a good chance we’ll know who the next president of the United States will be.

Meanwhile, the debate is still raging over the importance (or lack thereof) of newspapers making presidential endorsements.

It all started in late October when the Los Angeles Times, one of the leading newspapers in Vice President Kamala Harris’ home state of California, declined to endorse either presidential nominee in this year’s election.

According to a Times news piece, the paper’s owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, denied his daughter Nika’s statement that the decision had to do with disagreements over the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.

Instead, the paper said Soon-Shiong was concerned “that picking one candidate would only exacerbate the already deep divisions in the country.”

The move, along with Soon-Shiong proposing his columnists lay out their own cases in op-eds, did not go over well in the newsroom or the opinion/editorial side, with some editors and editorial board members resigning in anger. Others with the paper took to the Twitter/X machine to express their outrage.

“It makes us look craven and hypocritical, maybe even a bit sexist and racist,” editorial page editor Mariel Garzan wrote in her resignation letter. “How could we spend eight years railing against Trump and the danger his leadership poses to the country and then fail to endorse the perfectly decent Democrat challenger?”

There have also reportedly been subscription cancellations by the thousands.

A similar eruption happened at The Washington Post a few days later when publisher and chief executive officer William Lewis wrote that they would “not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election.”

“Nor in any future presidential election,” he wrote. “We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.”

Columnist Karen Attiah exemplified the tone and tenor of her colleagues’ backlash in a tweet in which she described the decision as “an absolute stab in the back.”

“What an insult to those of us who have literally put our careers and lives on the line, to call out threats to human rights and democracy,” she also wrote.

Undeterred by the pushback at other news outlets, USA Today made the same call, although a spokesperson told Fox News Digital that “local editors at publications across the USA Today Network have the discretion to endorse at a state or local level.”

Some folks on the left who were upset about these decisions blamed them, without evidence, on a supposed “fear” of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. What they didn’t pause to consider was that maybe it was Harris being such a devastatingly awful candidate that tipped the balance away from them making the traditional endorsements of whoever the Democratic nominee happens to be that we typically see in these papers.

Whatever the case may be, the eruptions over all of this are way overblown, in my opinion. The fact of the matter is that media trust is at all-time lows, and not just among conservatives but liberals, too.

In fact, I would be willing to bet money that not that many, if any at all, people who still have subscriptions take their paper’s endorsement into account when trying to decide for whom to vote.

To be blunt about the matter, newspaper endorsements in presidential elections aren’t what they once were to people.

So perhaps the best thing for reporters, columnists and others complaining that their employers are shirking their alleged responsibilities would be to put their energies to better use. One way they can start down that road is to, quite simply, get over themselves.

North Carolina native Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym Sister Toldjah and is a media analyst and regular contributor to RedState and Legal Insurrection.