What's going on inside The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times? That's what this special edition is all about... |
Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg/Getty Images |
Let's get this part out of the way first: Newspaper endorsements normally don't matter much. If The Washington Post had gone ahead with its expected endorsement of VP Kamala Harris, we wouldn't be sending out a special Saturday edition.
But a billionaire newspaper owner overruling his editors and deciding not to endorse Harris in a possible bid to appease Donald Trump? That does matter.
Owner Jeff Bezos is remaining silent, but many others are speaking out. The Post is in a state of absolute turmoil. "In the last 24 hours, at least one editor has resigned, and high-profile Post staffers have publicly expressed their dismay," Hadas Gold reports in this brand new CNN.com story.
Why so much fallout? Because so many of the fears, anxieties and hopes about the presidential election are encapsulated in this non-endorsement imbroglio.
The fears are obvious: "If we want to know how Trump is going to stifle the free press in the U.S., this is the answer," Robert Kagan told Erin Burnett last night. Kagan, a columnist at the Post for decades, resigned in protest yesterday. "This is how it's going to happen," Kagan said, "especially when the media is owned by corporate titans who have a lot to lose if Trump is angry at them." He called Bezos's action a warning about the near-future – "a sort of anticipatory capitulation on the part of a major media organization."
I think it's crucial to see the other side of the story as well, the sense of satisfaction from Trump loyalists. This is what they want: For Trump's critics to cave. For billionaires to be intimidated. For Trump to break the backs of institutions like the Washington Post. Breitbart's article about the Post filled up with celebratory comments. National Review's Jeffrey Blehar mocked the media's "garment-rending peals of agony" over the move.
Bottom line: No one is buying Post publisher William Lewis's explanation that "we are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates" – especially in light of the NYT's report that "Lewis and the opinions editor, David Shipley, made their case" to Bezos "not to end The Post's tradition of making a presidential endorsement." When Bezos nixed the endorsement anyway (without ever reading the Harris draft) Lewis was left to explain it to the public, according to the NYT.
Lewis pushed back on some of the tick-tock reporting in a new statement this morning. "Reporting around the role of The Washington Post owner and the decision not to publish a presidential endorsement has been inaccurate," Lewis told CNN. "He was not sent, did not read and did not opine on any draft."
"As Publisher," Lewis added, "I do not believe in presidential endorsements. We are an independent newspaper and should support our readers' ability to make up their own minds."
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The Post's newsroom treated Bezos's decision as front-page news today; the story by Manuel Roig-Franzia and Laura Wagner notes high up that "angry readers and sources flooded the email inboxes of numerous staffers with complaints." The story is the #1 most-read article on the Post's website this morning, and it has more than 36,000 comments so far.
I'm reliably told that the number of subscriber cancellations is in the thousands. (The Post isn't commenting.) An editorial writer told me this morning, "I am overwhelmed with the number of heartfelt messages from readers cancelling but expressing personal appreciation for what I do. It breaks my heart."
So what's the takeaway? Here's one: Whatever a media owner's motivations might be, the appearance of caving to Trump does real and lasting damage to any enterprise that isn't identified as pro-Trump.
Here's another possible takeaway: With so many businesses and investments at stake, Bezos has to make calculations that are much bigger than the Post. (Trump met with leaders from Bezos-operated space company Blue Origin in Texas yesterday.)
And here are a couple of the resulting headlines: Vanity Fair says "literal billionaires are afraid to publicly endorse Kamala Harris for fear of retribution by Donald Trump." The Bulwark says "the guardrails are already crumbling."
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The news section operates separately from the opinion department, but newsroom staffers are feeling the blowback. Several said they fear the Bezos non-endorsement is having a chilling effect. "People who are thinking about the prospect of covering a second Trump presidency are concerned that the owner won't have our backs," one of the staffers told me. "People are angry and feel like senior managers are undermining the journalism," another staffer told Gold.
>> As I wrote for The Atlantic earlier this year, Post staffers feel Bezos is too detached from the organization. They worry that he is disinterested in the paper he owns. This controversy is intensifying those concerns.
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"Newspapers should not endorse candidates" is a perfectly reasonable stance. I tend to agree with it because many consumers don't understand the differences between the newsroom and the opinion side. Some newspapers have gotten out of the endorsement game altogether; the Minnesota Star Tribune, for instance, said in August that it wouldn't endorse candidates this year. But timing is everything, right? Maybe this was the right move, but at the wrong time.
"To sort of declare a moment of high principle, only 11 days before the election, that's just highly suspect. It's just not to be believed," former Post editor Marty Baron told CNN's Michael Smerconish this morning. Baron said Trump "rewards his friends and he punishes his perceived political enemies, and think there's no other explanation for what's happening right now."
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Yesterday morning, not knowing this Post news was about to break, I wrote about the concept of "anticipatory obedience," which posits that people sometimes try to protect themselves by ceding power and currying favor with aspiring authoritarians. "On Tyranny" author Timothy Snyder told The Guardian's Lois Beckett that he believes that's exactly what Bezos is doing. "Oligarchs, the very wealthy people, want to tell us that they're just 'staying out of politics,'" he said. "But of course, when you stay out of politics in a way that harms democracy, what you are really doing is saying, we, the really wealthy people, are going to be fine in the new post-democratic order."
Truth be told, I looked far and wide for columns or comments in support of Bezos, but couldn't find any besides the pro-Trump "make liberals cry again" style of celebrating I mentioned up above. So here are three other POVs...
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Bezos is making a "down payment" |
CNN tech reporter Brian Fung shared this assessment of the situation on Threads:
"I worked at the Post for nearly six years, writing many stories about Amazon. Bezos never interfered with my work. That he decided to break this critical norm now, at this moment, says everything about how much he fears Harris and the confident regulatory state she would inherit. Under Trump, any law, regulation or process not eviscerated would become subject to personal influence. FTC lawsuits? Merger approval? Contracts? It’s all on the table. This isn't surrender. It’s a down payment."
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Post opinion columnists speak out |
A total of 17 Post opinion columnists have now signed on to a statement calling the non-endorsement a "terrible mistake." Ruth Marcus, a 40-year veteran of the Post, also penned her own column about it. "I have never been more disappointed in the newspaper than I am today," she wrote.
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Woodward and Bernstein weigh in |
"We respect the traditional independence of the editorial page, but this decision 11 days out from the 2024 presidential election ignores the Washington Post's own overwhelming reportorial evidence on the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy," Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein said in a statement obtained by CNN's Kerry Rubin. They credited Bezos with providing the paper with "abundant resources" to cover that threat and said "that makes this decision even more surprising and disappointing, especially this late in the electoral process."
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What Bezos wants from the Post |
Ben Mullin and Katie Robertson report in the NYT that Bezos has told people "that he is interested in expanding The Post's audience among conservatives, according to a person familiar with the matter." He has specifically told Lewis "that he wants more conservative writers on the opinion section," a person said.
Yes, please! But the problem is always the same: because Trump has successfully defined real news as "fake" in the minds of MAGA loyalists, news outlets like the Post need other audiences — Democrats, independents, anti-Trump Republicans, "politically homeless" Americans, casual news consumers who don't care about politics — to survive and thrive.
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Meanwhile, at the LA Times... |
The subscriber cancellations are adding up fast at the Los Angeles Times, too, in the wake of its non-endorsement. Puck's Dylan Byers says the number is in the "thousands." Times reporter James Rainey filed a story Friday about the dustup.
>> TheWrap's Ross A. Lincoln reports that "alongside its endorsement" of Harris, the LAT's editorial board "had also planned a multi-part series against Donald Trump before the whole thing was quashed by owner Patrick Soon-Shiong."
>> Thought bubble: These non-endorsement calculations seem to be premised on a Trump victory. But all the polls suggest this is a toss-up election. What if Harris wins next month?
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Trump's talk with Joe Rogan |
It's no surprise why Trump was three hours late for his rally in Traverse City, Michigan last night – he was having an absolute blast with Joe Rogan. Trump was charmed by the podcast host and clearly very comfortable in Rogan's right-wing conspiracy chamber. Trump was given three hours to talk about all his familiar grievances and feuds. "I want to do it again with you," Trump said as Rogan wrapped. "You are a fascinating guy. You've done a great job."
Naturally, Trump's devotees think the interview was amazing and his critics think it was atrocious. You can watch the chat and read the transcript on YouTube (where it has already topped 12 million views). Of note:
>> Trump continued to assail "60 Minutes." Without evidence, he said of the Harris interview, "it wasn't editing. It was fraud." Of broadcast licenses, he said stations "should pay" for licenses because "it's worth a fortune."
>> "It's a whole new world out there:" Trump talked about campaigning on TikTok and podcasts and credited Barron with telling him what shows to visit. "He said, 'Dad, you don't know how big they are.'"
>> The NYT's recap says Trump "repeated his debunked claims of election fraud and speculated that there could be life on Mars in an interview aimed at young male voters."
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Beyoncé: Let's 'sing a new song' |
CNN's Michael Williams writes: Superstar and Houston native Beyoncé told Harris rallygoers "that the country is on the 'brink of history' and that it's time to 'sing a new song.' Beyoncé, who introduced Harris in Houston, said that, 'I'm not here as a celebrity. I'm not here as a politician. I'm here as a mother.'" CNN's team has a full story about the huge Friday night rally here.
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Biloxi anchor fired for anti-Harris video |
Big news in Biloxi: WLOX anchor David "Dave" Elliott, a 39-year veteran of the station, "says he was fired Friday morning over his personal political posts on X," the Biloxi Sun-Herald reports.
Elliott posted a video on social media "telling people they should stay home if they plan to vote for Kamala Harris" and decrying the left's "hatred for Donald Trump" as a "sickness." He claimed the video was a "satire," describing social media as a toy he plays with, but his employer obviously disagreed. Now people are arguing about the station's decision on his Facebook page...
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I must have woken up on the wrong side of the bed Friday morning, because I made a few mistakes in yesterday's newsletter, and I feel bad about each one of them. So let's correct the record:
>> The radio host who had a frank conversation with Anderson Cooper is Charlamagne tha God. I called him "the."
>> The author of Stop the Presses is Mark Jacob, without an S.
>> There is no new episode of "SNL" tonight! I accidentally included the listings for next week's episode. D'oh.
>> I wrote that CNN's town hall with Kamala Harris was the most-watched TV town hall of the general election cycle, but Sean Hannity's September 4 town hall with Trump was higher-rated. At first I didn't count it because Fox didn't title it as a "town hall" in the listings it sends to Nielsen, so it didn't show up in my data set.
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Halloween costume contest! |
I figure we could all use a laugh right now – so for the next few days, I'll share some funny and silly Halloween costume photos. Submit a photo by emailing our tip box here. Bonus points if the costume has a media theme! I'll go first – I turned "Monster Mash" into Monster Math at Trunk or Treat last night and made my kids' friends answer math questions to win candy:
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