This past week America’s second-largest newspaper chain stopped endorsing political candidates. Here’s what Jon Allsop in the Columbia Journalism Review newsletter wrote about it:
It’s newspaper-endorsement season again, and that means it’s Should newspapers do endorsements? season again. Last week, Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund notorious for slashing costs at its local titles, came down on the No side of the question, with editorial boards at papers that it owns stating that they will no longer endorse candidates for governor, US senator, or president. “Unfortunately, as the public discourse has become increasingly acrimonious, common ground has become a no man’s land between the clashing forces of the culture wars,” a company editorial explaining the change read, adding that, especially online, readers often struggle to differentiate between news and opinion content, perceiving the latter as revealing a bias in the former even though the two are typically walled off from one another. The editorial said that while the no-endorsement policy would apply in races that bosses see as “increasingly nationalized,” it would not in “more local contests, such as city councils, school boards, local initiatives, referendums and other such matters.”
Blaming this decision on “increasingly acrimonious” public discourse is bullshit. With hedge-fund-financed and most private-equity-financed newspaper buyouts, it’s all about money. Nothing else, just money, and any other excuse is a smoke screen. When a newspaper endorses a candidate, it angers someone, mostly the candidates it didn’t endorse and their followers, some of whom may cancel their subscriptions. Canceled subscriptions hurt newspapers’ bottom lines in two ways: 1) They lose subscription revenue and 2) they have lower circulation, which means they have to charge less for advertising. So, rather than anger anyone, the solution is not to endorse candidates for president, governor, or senator. It’s a money decision, not a journalism decision. Don’t be fooled by the fake moralistic language.
This past September Andy Borowitz’s book Profiles in Ignorance: How America’s Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber was published. In it Borowitz writes:
People sometimes call our nation “the American experiment.” Recently, though, we’ve been lab rats in another, perverse, American experiment, seemingly designed to answer this question: Who’s the most ignorant person the United States is willing to elect?
Borowitz writes that “By elevating candidates who can entertain over those who can think, mass media have made the election of dunces more likely,” and to prove his point he examines four Republicans: Ronald Regan, Dan Quayle, Sarah Palin and Donald Trump. The author divides what he calls the Age of Ignorance into three stages: Ridicule, Acceptance and Celebration.
During the Ridicule stage, ignorance was a magnet for mockery, a serious flaw that could kill a political career. Consequently, dumb politicians had to pretend to be smart. (Ronald Reagan and Dan Quayle)
During the Acceptace stage, ignorace mutated into something more agreeable: a sign that a politician was authentic, down-to-earth, and a “normal person.” Cosequently, dumb politicians felt free to appear dumb. (George W. Bush and Sarah Palin)
Finally, during the Celebration stage–the ordeal we’re enduring right now–ignorance has become preferable to knowledge, dunces are exalted over experts, and a candidate can win a seat in Congress after blaming wildfires on Jewish space lasers. Being ill-informed is a litmus test; consequently, smart politicians must pretend to be dumb..the ultimate embodiment of this stage is Donald J. Trump, and Trump wannabes such as Ted Cruz and Ron DeSantis–who, despite being graduates of our nation’s finest universities, strenuously try to outdumb him.
If the nation’s newspapers refuse to editorialize and endorse candidates and warn us how dumb many of today’s politicians are, especially Republican politicians (Herschel Walker, e.g.) then how are we going to know? Also, endorsements are good because they are positive. A newspaper (or magazine or radio or TV station) can say, “Reverand Warnock is awesome: smart, honest, and nice,” and they don’t have to say, “Herschel Walker is dumb as a rock and mean as a snake.”
Yes, newspapers (and magazines and radio and TV stations) should endorse candidates and save us from having another president, or a governor or a senator who tells us, as Borowitz writes, to “inject bleach.”
