Between You and Me: ‘A well-informed electorate is a prerequisite to democracy’ – Thomas Jefferson

By Leah S. Dunaief

Newspapers themselves made the news this week before the election. Both The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post decided not to endorse either candidate for President of the United States. This is so unusual that it made the national news.

What are the reasons behind this remarkable decision?

I’ll tell you the reasons given by the papers, and I’ll tell you what the pundits are declaring. I may even share my own thoughts on the matter.

After almost 50 years of making presidential endorsements, The Washington Post declared they would not be doing so in this election, or any future presidential election, according to Will Lewis, the chief executive and publisher. “We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.” This was after the editorial board had already drafted an endorsement of Kamala Harris, according to The New York Times’ article of October 26. The decision appeared to have come from Post’s owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos, who also has lucrative business contracts with the government, including through Amazon and the aerospace company,  Blue Origin.

The decision drew criticism “from reporters, editors and readers, along with an unusual rebuke from the legendary Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein,” according to The Times. The newspaper was accused of “cowardice with democracy as its casualty,” by Martin Baron, The Post’s former editor featured in the movie, “Spotlight,” dealing with systemic sexual child abuse by numerous priests.

The Post tried to explain. David Shipley, the newspaper’s opinion editor, said The Post was no longer going to tell people how to vote but rather “trusting readers to make up their own minds.” 

So far this year, “The Post has endorsed candidates in House and Senate races in Virginia and Maryland,” said The Times. The decision not to endorse a presidential candidate was “clearly a sign of pre-emptive favor currying” with Mr. Trump, according to Robert Kagan, a long time writer and editor at large of The Post. In a dissenting editorial, 18 Post opinion columnists signed their names to a column calling the decision not to endorse a “terrible mistake,” since the paper all along has been emphasizing  that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy.

The owner of The Los Angeles Times, billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, had also recently quashed presidential endorsements, again seemingly due to conflicts of interest.

The Times Beacon Record, before each Election Day, publishes a section with interviews of the candidates that take place in our offices with the editorial board. In our section, to be found elsewhere in the papers and on the web today, we also print endorsements. We are an independent news organization, favoring neither major political party. Hence our endorsements run the gamut, neither red nor blue, settling on our choice of the best possible candidates to represent us.

Why do we do this? 

It takes a great deal of time to catch up with the office-seekers, schedule their interviews,  preferably with each other, pose questions to them, write up their responses and decide on whom to vote for. And that is our role: to tell you finally, as a result of our proximity to them and their previous efforts, as well as their stated goals, that these are the ones we would vote into office. 

We are decidedly not trying to push you, our readers, into your choices. We have enough confidence in you to assume you can decide if given enough information, and our role is to do just that. We try to reflect the candidates’ positions with our interviews, tell you how they registered on us, then reveal how we would vote. The rest is up to you.

What we are adamant about is the responsibility each of us has to vote. People in distant lands fight and some even die for that privilege. Because we take it for granted, statistics show that many of us don’t bother following the candidates and voting for the best choices. When that happens, we get what we deserve: government we don’t want.

Please vote, and also vote on the two propositions at the back of the ballot.