Robert Robb
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By Robert Robb
The Washington Post is experiencing a subscriber revolt over its failure to endorse in the presidential race.
Its owner, Jeff Bezos, has defended the decision as one based exclusively on principle. However, that’s hard to credit for two reasons: Timing. And the completely unpersuasive principle argument Bezos provided in a column attempting to justify the decision.
Now, I don’t think newspapers should endorse candidates for office, for reasons articulated anon. But, for a newspaper that has historically endorsed candidates, a principled decision to get out of that business is made, and announced, months ahead of the election, not a couple of weeks before the votes are counted.
According to Bezos, the principled reason to get out of the endorsement business is to regain credibility among readers who think that the Post is biased. In making that argument, he deployed one of the more idiotic analogies I’ve ever encountered. According to Bezos, newspapers are analogous to voting machines:
Voting machines must meet two requirements. They must count the votes accurately, and people must believe they count the vote accurately. The second requirement is distinct from and just as important as the first.
“Just as important as the first?” Not even remotely true. It would be far worse for voting machines to be inaccurate but believed than to be accurate and disbelieved in some quarters. In fact, the only job of a voting machine is to be accurate.
Being accurate is not the only job of a newspaper, but it is an essential and fundamental one. Bezos will never persuade a center-right audience that the Washington Post isn’t biased, because it is. But it provides excellent reporting and commentary. It counts the votes accurately.
There is a difference between neutrality and objectivity. The Post generally reports things from a liberal perspective, in the topics it chooses and the angles it pursues. But its reporting is reality-based. It takes care that what it reports as having happened or said actually happened or was said, and is conveyed in context.
Good journalism is objective, not necessarily neutral. My favorite national news and commentary site these days is The Dispatch. It is consciously center-right but non-Trumpian. It reports and offers commentary on things center-right readers are interested in. But it also has a commitment to reality-based objectivity. It takes care to accurately count the votes.
A newspaper committed to trustworthy, objective journalism, even if provided from an ideological perspective, can attract some readers outside its ideological ambit. I subscribe to the Post to gain access to the indispensable reporting of Arizona-based Yvonne Wingett Sanchez. Locally, the Arizona Agenda has an admitted leftward tilt. But it is the first thing I read in the mornings, for the news and the lively writing.
Bezos is right about the limited effect of institutional endorsements of candidates, and here gets closer to the real principled argument against them.
No one has the slightest doubt, if the Post were to endorse, who it would endorse. And the Post endorsement would have no effect on the outcome of the presidential race. Politically, it would be a non-event.
I was a Pulitzer Prize judge for editorial writing for two years, in 2013 and 2014. In the course of that, I read hundreds of institutional editorials submitted by newspapers across the country, putting forth what they regarded as their best written and most impactful work. I obviously don’t remember every editorial I read. But I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a single candidate endorsement editorial submitted.
The vast majority of them, however, railed, argued and reasoned as eloquently as they could about what public officials were doing or not doing.
And that approaches my principled argument against newspaper endorsements of candidates. Newspapers can, and should, be filled with commentary praising and damning what candidates do and say. This cycle there has been no shortage of such commentary about the presidential candidates in the Post. And there’s no question about which candidate got the worst of it. Readers canceling their Post subscription because the paper didn’t beat up on Trump enough weren’t paying attention.
In making an endorsement, newspapers go from offering objective if ideological commentary, to being a player in the actual political game. They are joining a team, when they are supposed to be watching, reporting, and commentating on the game from the stands.
This distorts and influences their role. Newspapers will deny it, but when a newspaper becomes a player rather than a spectator, it affects how editorial writers react to events. There’s a natural human tendency to not find fault with your officially-designated candidate and not find something to credit in the opponent. There’s at least a slight slippage in the commitment to objectivity.
There is also at least a slight slippage in influence as well. It’s easier to dismiss editorial criticism of an opponent, or praise for an endorsee, as an exercise in partisanship, rather than objective commentary.
There is an irony about the influence of institutional editorials in today’s environment of ideologically-oriented media. The Post has much more influence over what liberal candidates do and say, and what liberal readers think, than those on the center-right. The Wall Street Journal, conversely, has more influence on center-right and conservative politicians and readers than those on the left. An endorsement limits the willingness and ability to exercise this influence, which may be one of the reasons the Journal doesn’t endorse candidates.
I made these arguments consistently after I joined the editorial board of the Arizona Republic in 1999, and was often a conscientious objector in the newspaper’s endorsement process. The Republic ultimately got out of the endorsement business, but more due to a sharp decline in the staff available to do all the vetting and writing than a fresh appreciation for the cogency of my arguments.
Is the distinction between robust commentary about candidates and the endorsement of them really all that important? I would continue to argue that it is. A newspaper's most valuable asset is trustworthy objectivity.
Robust commentary is compatible, even vital, to creating and maintaining that. An endorsement, even one as obvious as the Post endorsing Harris, is being, at least in some part, a partisan rather than an observer.
Editor's note: Robert Robb writes about politics and public policy on Substack. Reach him at robtrobb@gmail.com. Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at AzOpinions@iniusa.org.
