Jeff Bezos torpedoed the anticipated endorsement of Kamala Harris by the liberal Washington Post, and it wasn’t the first time there was a fuss over selecting a candidate.
WaPo announced it will make no endorsement in the presidential race.
It didn’t do endorsements until it supported Jimmy Carter in 1976, with the exception of 1952.
The editor said it was “returning to its roots.”
Other media reported that boss Bezos killed the newspaper’s already written editorial enthusiastically endorsing Harris, the master of meaningless word salad.
A similar occurrence took place this year, according to Business Insider, as Los Angeles Times’ billionaire owner stopped the paper from making a presidential endorsement, leading to the resignation of its editorial chief.
Some other newspapers no longer make endorsements these days, including the tiny daily paper in Jacksonville.
America’s best newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, last endorsed a presidential candidate in 1928, and it was Herbert Hoover. That didn’t work out very well as Hoover began laying the heavy-handed governmental intervention that caused and extended the Great Depression.
Another chuckle was in the 1980s when The Far Left Miami Herald editorial page editor Jim Hampton, who loathed Ronald Reagan, split with the executive editor and they compromised by telling their readers to vote for a candidate neither of them wanted, Independent John B. Anderson.
Then, in 1984, Hampton found himself opposed to the paper’s publisher, who wanted a Reagan endorsement. In a snit, Hampton decided to resign from the paper. The publisher refused to accept the resignation and in an astounding move allowed Hampton instead to write a goofy editorial explaining why he disagreed with his own newspaper’s endorsement of Reagan.
Closer to home, the local daily always endorsed candidates. The last editorial I wrote for the local paper before retiring was in support of George W. Bush for re-election.
However, four years later the paper endorsed Barack Obama, in a flip-flop that must have caused readers whiplash after more than a century of conservative opinion.
But, sources told me, the editorial writers forget to check with the conservative head of the chain that owned the paper at that time. The next day there was a humiliating un-endorsement of the candidate who had promised to fundamentally transform the greatest nation in history.
Today the company that now owns the local paper does not do endorsements.
There is some doubt that newspaper endorsements have much effect. My own impression always was that they mattered in local races, but very little in national races.
