Billionaire Owners Block Harris Endorsements, and Trust in Media Further Erodes

The news that the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times will not endorse a candidate for president is reverberating among Bay Area news outlets and highlighting issues of media ownership.

Both newspapers’ editorial boards, which operate independently of the newsrooms, had reportedly drafted endorsements of Vice President Kamala Harris. However, the decision not to endorse ahead of a neck-and-neck race between Harris and former President Donald Trump was influenced by the outlets’ billionaire owners, whose other businesses have lucrative contracts with the government.

Media experts are opining that Post owner Jeff Bezos and Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong engaged in preemptive self-censoring before a potential second Trump presidency. Society of Professional Journalists ethics leaders condemned the owners’ actions on Monday, saying in a statement that they worry it “marks the beginning, and not the end, of such interference.”

Jesse Garnier, chair of the journalism department at San Francisco State University, said that kind of influence over a newspaper’s publishing further erodes the public’s trust.

“Newspapers have lost a lot of their value and their trust within their communities, and standing on the sidelines and not speaking up to endorse a presidential candidate is just another example of that,” he said.

Garnier said that when newspapers stop endorsing candidates, they also stop doing the legwork for their communities by considering their values and needs and viewing a candidate and their potential impact on them. It takes the “we” out of a community newspaper, he said.

“That has been part of the problem with the news industry for decades, and the separation and the lack of trust and the erosion of the financial underpinnings of journalism are all centered around the same concept,” Garnier said.

Jim Sweeney, editorial director of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, said the L.A. Times didn’t endorse candidates for president from 1976 to 2008, but the Post’s and Times’ decisions not to endorse a candidate for president just days from Election Day in a tight race is odd.

“It adds to the surprise, the appearance, the uproar,” Sweeney said. “I would have certainly been much more comfortable if that was going to be my directive had it come a few months earlier, a year earlier.”

In the Press Democrat’s endorsement of Harris, Sweeney wrote the arguments for electing her “are just as persuasive as the arguments for defeating Donald Trump.” The top comment on that piece thanks the paper for not being at “the whims of an owner” like the Times or the Post.

However, under previous owners, the Press Democrat editorial page was barred from endorsing a candidate, specifically in the 2012 election between then-President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney. Sweeney said that immediately changed under the newspaper’s current owner, Sonoma Media Investments, who doesn’t tell him what goes on the editorial page.

An important part of the endorsement process is vetting, Sweeney said.

“People come in and talk to us. Candidates will sit with us for a couple of hours and answer all our questions, and it’s our opportunity to kind of give our best judgment,” he said. “Oftentimes, we’ll use the word ‘recommendation’ rather than ‘endorsement.’ It’s not telling anybody how to vote, but we feel like we’ve got some insight and some information, and people can take it and weigh it with all of the other things that they may be considering.”

The San Francisco Chronicle’s endorsement page lists its pick for president as “coming soon,” and the Bay Area News Group, which publishes the Mercury News and East Bay Times, is currently working on its endorsements.

Then there are news outlets that have a firm policy to never endorse.

Cityside — which operates local newsrooms in Berkeley, Oakland and Richmond — can’t endorse candidates because its outlets are nonprofits, and IRS rules prohibit them from favoring any candidate for public office. (Note: This reporter is currently working on contract with Cityside’s Richmondside newsroom.)

Lance Knobel, Cityside’s CEO, said that even if they had a for-profit or other funding structure, they wouldn’t automatically do endorsements because they run the “pretty dominant” news source in three East Bay cities.

“I’m wary of using that position to advocate for one politician or another,” Knobel said. “I think if we were in a situation like the national one, I probably wouldn’t hesitate if we weren’t a nonprofit because when there’s a choice between good and evil, that’s not too difficult a thing to do.”

Monday, Knobel sent emails to Cityside subscribers, assuring them that Berkeleyside, Oaklandside and Richmondside don’t have billionaire owners, which Knobel said was an opportunity to re-emphasize why it’s important to support independent nonprofit local news.

In the email, Knobel wrote that the Post and Times took the path of “anticipatory obedience,” a term used to describe one of the steps a society takes before it falls to tyranny.

Knobel said the Times’ and Post’s owners’ decision to not state a preference for the next president is rooted in fear and economics.

“The most basic kind of game theory for somebody who’s running a business is, I will do this public act of obeisance as a way to hopefully not get on an enemies list because, on the other side, it’s of absolutely no consequence whatsoever,” he said. “Nobody’s going to come after me for this if Kamala Harris is the next president of the United States, so I just need to cover my bases. It may be as simple as that.”

NPR reports more than 200,000 people had canceled their digital subscriptions to the Washington Post by midday Monday, representing about 8% of the outlet’s paid subscriber base. Resignations in protest have followed as well, both there and at the Times.