Quite a list of American publications, including The New York Times, Boston Globe, Seattle Times, Las Vegas Sun and The New Yorker, have endorsed Kamala Harris for president. And well they should.
This is not merely an election between Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative, left and righ’, this is an election between a candidate who believe in the American constitution and one who doesn’t. In other words, one who believes in freedom of the press and one who doesn’t. Regardless of a publication’s political bias, if it respects free journalism it should be endorsing Harris.
The editorial boards of two leading newspapers, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times agreed. The Post had an endorsement for Harris ready to go and the editorial staff of The Times were preparing one. And then the billionaire owners of the two papers stepped in and laid down the law—there would be no endorsing.
The Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and owner of a number of other companies including rocket maker and aerospace manufacture Blue Origin. The Times is owned by medical entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of NantWorks, a network of health startups, along with shares in Tribune Publishing and the Los Angeles Lakers.
The billionaires’ trashing of the endorsements was not taken lightly by the papers’ staff. Two of The Post’s columnists resigned. Nineteen protested in the paper’s own pages, lamenting the abandonment of its “fundamental editorial convictions.” Its editorial cartoonist satirized the Post’s slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” with a blacked-out square. Evan Woodward and Bernstein of Watergate fame commented, calling the decision “surprising and disappointing.” A former Post editor, Marty Baron, called it “cowardice.”
Over at The Times, the editorials’ editor quit along with two other members of the editorial board. The Post alone has seen over 200,000 subscribers cancel their subscriptions.
Was Marty Baron right, was it cowardice? Perhaps, but maybe it was just good business. Both billionaires’ companies do a lot of business with the federal government. And Donald Trump is a vindictive man who has threatened to use the powers of president to pursue his enemies. So maybe Bezos and Soon-Shiong are just doing what any good businessmen would do—staying on the good side of a lucrative customer.
Maybe the lesson here is that billionaires with various interests shouldn’t own newspapers. But who else can? Both papers are heavy money-losers. No one else could afford them.
There is an argument for a newspaper remaining neutral, but not when freedom of the press is threatened. And the timing of the billionaires’ actions gives the game away. If they had ended endorsing three years ago, or after this election, one could believe they were sincere. But when they prevent their people from endorsing Harris just two weeks before the election, it is hard to see it as anything but pandering to Trump.
This is how democracy is lost. Most power gained by demagogues is given voluntarily. Those who are most able to resist encroaching authoritarianism find it easier, perhaps even profitable, to comply.
This is a win for the demagogue in the race, and tragically a win handed to him by two of Americas’s most respected liberal newspapers.