It’s absurd for US newspapers to not make an endorsement in the presidential election

I have spent much of this week watching with a mix of fascination and horror the calamity striking The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times following their baffling last-minute decision to not endorse a candidate in the US presidential election.

For those who have missed the furore, a recap: news emerged last week that Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the LA Times, had vetoed the paper’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris. Mariel Garza, the paper’s editorials editor, immediately resigned, and other staff have followed.

The Washington Post has suffered a subscriber exodus.Credit: AP

In her resignation letter, Garza said that staying silent wasn’t just indifference but constituted complicity. “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 who we previously endorsed for the US Senate?” she wrote. Fair point.

Within days, one of the United States’ most revered newspapers, The Washington Post, announced its editorial board also would not endorse Harris or Donald Trump. The paper’s decision broke a near-uninterrupted run of presidential endorsements stretching back to Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Jeff Bezos, the Post’s owner and billionaire Amazon founder, framed the decision as one of principle and warned that endorsements created a perception of bias and non-independence. “I would also like to be clear that no quid pro quo of any kind is at work here,” Bezos said. “Neither campaign nor candidate was consulted or informed at any level or in any way about this decision.”

Bezos conceded that the timing of the announcement – about a week from election day, when both candidates are polling neck-and-neck – was unfortunate and should have been made much sooner.

Realistically, neither paper would have endorsed Trump in a million years, but the failure to have a say on the most important presidential election in generations has caused a huge stir in the US.

The backlash to both papers has been ferocious: 250,000 Washington Post subscribers have reportedly cancelled, representing 10 per cent of its customer base. For a paper that recorded a $US77 million ($118 million) loss last year, the exodus is an extraordinary blow.

Newspaper endorsements have existed for centuries, but as the influence of traditional media falls and distrust in the media rises, they are far more controversial these days. Some believe they have outlived their use-by date.

Here’s my take: I certainly don’t think election editorials shift any votes. Perhaps they once did, but not now. I also recognise that people are increasingly sceptical about the motives of the media. I also understand that some less regular readers have trouble disentangling the view of a masthead expressed in an editorial and the paper’s overall news coverage of an election.

But I struggle with the idea of sitting this one out. I do not think it is credible to publish an editorial every day of the year expressing a view on all manner of issues but then not have a say on something as big and important as this contest.

I have written two election editorials in my time as Herald editor. The first was endorsing Anthony Albanese and Labor in the 2022 federal election, the second backing Dominic Perrottet in last year’s state poll. In both cases, I consulted widely across the newsroom with senior editors and reporters before settling on a position. My drafts were also circulated to a large group who offered feedback before publication.

In the five decades since 1973, the Herald has endorsed the NSW Coalition 11 times and NSW Labor once (in 2003). It did not support either party on three occasions.

At the federal level, since 2001 we have supported the Coalition three times (John Howard in 2001, Tony Abbott in 2013 and Malcolm Turnbull in 2016), and Labor four times (Kevin Rudd in 2007, Julia Gillard in 2010, Bill Shorten in 2019 and Albanese in 2022). We made no endorsement in only one contest – Howard v Mark Latham in 2004.

The Herald will next week publish an editorial on the US election. It won’t make any difference to the outcome, but it makes zero sense to sit this one out.

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