One of the country’s few remaining family-owned and -operated metro papers, the Seattle Times, enthusiastically endorsed V.P. Kamala Harris, and raised questions about the billionaire-owned papers that have refused to endorse.
“As one of the country’s very few family-owned and -operated metro newspapers left, The Seattle Times is also apparently one of the few whose editorial board is willing to endorse presidential candidates,” they wrote in their Opinion section.
“This is unfathomable, given that the other leading candidate clearly threatens the foundation of our 248-year-old American democracy and the rule of law.”
They asked the question that haunts most thinking Americans: How is Donald Trump even in the position to destroy the country after “he fanned the Jan. 6 insurgency, after his felony convictions and after a civil court ruled he committed sexual assault?”
The Seattle Times editorial board attributes this in part to the loss of local papers, noting, “Too many of the rest are inferior products being milked to death by absent mercenary investors.”
“The decisions appear to have been made by the billionaire owners — Jeff Bezos of The Washington Post and Patrick Soon-Shiong of the Los Angeles Times. That prompted protests and resignations at both papers. The reasons given were about political divisions, wanting to let voters make up their own minds and to restore public trust, according to the Columbia Journalism Review,” the Seattle Times wrote.
A pause here while we wonder what billionaire Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos found so hard about allowing the once invaluable paper he bought to run an endorsement for the presidential race, especially as the paper endorsed down ticket races.
The billionaire South African owner of the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, also refused to allow the endorsement of VP Harris to run, claiming that he was trying to ease sharp divisions around the election.
Do these billionaires suppose a presidential candidate threatening to use the military against American citizens for disagreeing with him is “a perception of bias” as Bezos wrote disingenuously, or “division,” as Soon-Shiong claimed? If we are to believe their claims then their all-too-sheltered world view makes a potent argument that billionaires should be prohibited from owning a legitimate newspaper that is intended to inform regular people about how policies and people are impacting their lives.
The issue is clear even to their own staff. A Los Angeles Times staff writer managed to get this published, “The Los Angeles Times and Washington Post have seen significant subscription cancellations in the days since their billionaire owners decided not to endorse in the presidential race after the editorial boards at both newspapers proposed backing Vice President Kamala Harris.”
The Seattle Times was having none of it.
“At The Times, we have a wall between the newsroom and the editorial board. Editorial writers do not ask news staff about their opinions, nor do we get involved in their coverage. We do our own reporting.”
“Trump has become shameless in his pronouncements of his plans and his denouncements of so many Americans. He can only set the country back and put our nation at risk.”
The Seattle Times endorsement is what you should expect from any paper to which you subscribe. Newspapers should never obey in advance. They are supposed to speak truth to power.
Instead, other papers are also not endorsing, like the Gannett chains, USA Today, and the conservative Detroit News, which claims that they simply can’t, because neither candidate was worthy. So the Detroit News thinks a man who stands accused of inciting a deadly insurrection against the United States is on par with a former prosecutor and current Vice President with zero scandals in her history other than being a woman who is Black, which is obviously a big problem for some people, which renders them incapable of seeing her clearly and so they flounder about calling her a Socialist and a Marxist based on debunked Facebook claims. That, of course, is not something a legit paper would fall for, but the Detroit News remains confused.
When smaller outlets like the Seattle Times (and we here at PoliticusUSA) can take a stand against autocracy with significantly fewer resources than these billionaires have, it becomes impossible to ignore the threat of oligarchs enabling fascism out of their own self-interest, much like we see in Russia.
What greed, what avarice, what cowardice we are witnessing.
But there are papers like the Seattle Times, that are willing to take a stand. And there are so many people in this country who are taking a stand. Do not lose heart; instead, let these people and institutions showing themselves to be unworthy of your support strengthen your own resolve to leave it all on the field. We deserve so much better than this.
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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