Newspaper presidential endorsements may not actually matter that much, but billionaire media owners blocking editorial teams from publishing their endorsements out of concern over potential retaliation from a future Donald Trump presidency should matter a lot.
If people were legitimately worried about the “weaponization of government” and the idea that companies might silence speech over threats from the White House, what has happened over the past few days should raise alarm bells. But somehow I doubt we’ll be seeing the folks who were screaming bloody murder over the nothingburger that was the Murthy lawsuit saying a word of concern about billionaire media owners stifling the speech of their editorial boards to curry favor with Donald Trump.
In 2017, the Washington Post changed its official slogan to “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
The phrase was apparently a favorite of Bob Woodward, who was one of the main reporters who broke the Watergate story decades ago. Lots of people criticized the slogan at the time (and have continued to do so since then), but no more so than today, as Jeff Bezos apparently stepped in to block the newspaper from endorsing Kamala Harris for President.
An endorsement of Harris had been drafted by Post editorial page staffers but had yet to be published, according to two people who were briefed on the sequence of events and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The decision to no longer publish presidential endorsements was made by The Post’s owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, according to the same two people.
This comes just days after a similar situation with the LA Times, whose billionaire owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, similarly blocked the editorial board from publishing its planned endorsement of Harris. Soon-Shiong tried to “clarify” by claiming he had asked the team to instead publish something looking at the pros and cons of each candidate. However, as members of the editorial board noted in response, that’s what you’d expect the newsroom to do. The editorial board is literally supposed to express its opinion.
In the wake of that decision, at least three members of the LA Times editorial board have resigned. Mariel Garza quit almost immediately, and Robert Greene and Karin Klein followed a day later. As of this writing, it appears at least one person, editor-at-large Robert Kagan, has resigned from the Washington Post.
Marty Baron, who had been the Executive Editor of the Washington Post when it chose “Democracy Dies in Darkness” as a slogan, called Bezos’ decision out as “cowardice” and warned that Trump would see this as a victory of his intimidation techniques, and it would embolden him:
The thing is, for all the talk over the past decade or so about “free speech” and “the weaponization of government,” this sure looks like these two billionaires suppressing speech from their organizations over fear of how Trump will react, should he be elected.
During his last term, Donald Trump famously targeted Amazon in retaliation for coverage he didn’t like from the Washington Post. His anger at WaPo coverage caused him to ask the Postmaster General to double Amazon’s postage rates. Trump also told his Secretary of Defense James Mattis to “screw Amazon” and to kill a $10 billion cloud computing deal the Pentagon had lined up.
For all the (misleading) talk about the Biden administration putting pressure on tech companies, what Trump did there seemed like legitimate First Amendment violations. He punished Amazon for speech he didn’t like. It’s funny how all the “weaponization of the government” people never made a peep about any of that.
As for Soon-Shiong, it’s been said that he angled for a cabinet-level “health care czar” position in the last Trump administration, so perhaps he’s hoping to increase his chances this time around.
In both cases, though, this sure looks like Trump’s past retaliations and direct promises of future retaliation against all who have challenged him are having a very clear censorial impact. In the last few months Trump has been pretty explicit that, should he win, he intends to punish media properties that reported on him in ways he dislikes. These are all reasons why anyone who believes in free speech should be speaking out about the dangers of Donald Trump towards our most cherished First Amendment rights.
Especially those in the media.
Bezos and Soon-Shiong are acting like cowards. Rather than standing up and doing what’s right, they’re pre-caving, before the election has even happened. It’s weak and pathetic, and Trump will see it (accurately) to mean that he can continue to walk all over them, and continue to get the media to pull punches by threatening retaliation.
If democracy dies in darkness, it’s because Bezos and Soon-Shiong helped turn off the light they were carrying.
